Kulm Hotel Arosa Switzerland

Arosa is a great favorite of mine. A village in the Engadine, nestled in a remote Alpine valley at an altitude of 6,000 feet, reachable only by mountain railway or by a fairly harrowing, narrow and curvy mountain road, it provides an ideal setting for both summer and winter vacations. The summers provide opportunities for long hikes with superb vistas along the way or, if one is so minded, a number of climbs of varying levels of difficulty can be undertaken. There are the usual tennis courts and swimming pools and an active nightlife at the hotels. In winter there are fine ski slopes, two ice rinks, sledding paths and not too difficult walks on well cleared paths. The Kulm has the perfect location, right at the foot of the main ski slope. One can literally step out the front door, snap on one's skis and ski to the bottom of the lift. The hotel is a grand old lady, with its origins in the nineteenth century. It has been thoroughly modernized and given a new, unfortunately rather prosaic, facade. The public rooms are comfortable, the bedrooms vary in size from the average to the vast, depending on price. There is an elaborate spa with a sauna and an indoor pool. The hotel has no fewer than five restaurants. It's of course pricey. In summer the minimum daily rate for a double with breakfast is $300, in winter that goes up to $500. Consider that, with meals on top of that, this is probably what you'd expect to pay for a week long cruise on one of the luxury lines these days.

Hotel Storchen Zurich Switzerland

Having concluded four Spanish itineraries, I now propose a tour around the country in which the modern notion of vacationing first arose. (Cf. my book RUSH TO THE ALPS). The first thing to keep in mind is that the eighteenth century motto "Pas d'argent, point de Suisse" (No money, no Switzerland) applies today in spades. For a quarter of a century or so after the Second World War the Swiss National Bank, in order to promote Swiss exports and the tourist industry, kept the Swiss franc at an artificially low level of 4.35 to the dollar, a valuation which, unlike other currencies, never varried. The result was that, at the beginning of the period one could count on getting full pension (a room and three meals) in a five star resort hotel for a truly ludicrous eight dollars a day per person; even toward the end of it, this had only doubled. However when, in 1972, the SNB decided that America's indebtedness had reached a point at which the losses such a policy entailed could no longer be borne and it let the dollar float, it immediately floated straight down, to the point where the exchange rate is now close to parity. Hence Switzerland is right up there as one of the most expensive countries in the world for Americans to vacation in, so be prepared to reach deep into your pocket.

Zurich is the main gateway to Switzerland and most people fly into there. The Hotel Storchen, a four star establishment, boasts of having been in continuous operation for six hundred years and that is how many Swiss Francs a double with a river view will cost you for a night. You might be able to do somewhat better on Priceline, but don't count on it, in season the hotel is generally fully booked. That said, the location is hard to beat. The hotel is situated on a bank of the river Limat, on the New Town side. You are in the city center, everything is within easy reach, the banks, the department stores, the luxury goods shops for which the city is famous, any number of restaurants are all within walking distance. The theaters and the opera house are a short trolley ride away. (In Zurich everyone rides the trolley, it's best to get a day ticket to avoid being nickle and dimed to death). The hotel itself offers large, very nicely furnished rooms with very good sound insulation. The personnel is friendly and, as is the case in establishments of this class throughout the country, everyone speaks good English. This is a very pleasant place to stay, a perfect one if one is on an expense account.

Parador Gredos; Parador Siguenza Spain

Parador Gredos. In the first year of the 20th century King Alfonso built this as a hunting lodge in the midst of the Sierra de Gredos. When the decision was taken to build a series of state operated luxurt hotels for the Seville World's Fair, he donated it to the state and here, in 1928, the first parador opened its doors. Although it has been enlarged and brought up to date several times since then, a large hunting lodge is what it remains in spirit. The furnishings are on the unpretentious side, the walls are made of thick stone, the emphasis is emhatically on the out of doors. One comes here mainly to escape the heat of the Madrid summers for a week end. (The capital is roughly an hour-and-a-half away). On one occasion we left Barajas Airport on a sweltering, sultry late April day only to arrive in Gredos in a snow storm. There are pleasant walks, mountain bike paths and a tennis court. And, if one gets bored by all this rusticity, the medieval city of Avila is half an hour away.

Parador Siguenza. Perched, like so many of the paradors, on a hilltop, this was originally an Arab fortress, then, after it fell to the Christians in the twelfth century, a bishop's palace. It dominates the countryside, a vast and imposing stone structure. The decor is resolutely medieval, the rooms of good size, the bathrooms sumptuous. There is a sauna which, when I was there last, was unisex. The Romanesque cathedral at the foot of the hill has a fine twelfth century tympanon. A very good reason for staying here is the proximity to the Madrid airport. Except at the heighth of the morning rush hour this can be reached in under an hour. Unfortunately this means that the parador is a favorite of the Madrilenos for weddings, and you already know what this entails.

Parador Ronda; Parador Carmona Spain

Parador Ronda. The parador, formerly the town hall, occupies an eighteenth century building. Immediately in front there is a three hundred foot vertical drop, the Tajo canyon. The view is fantastic, particularly from the old stone bridge which traverses the canyon. This however is not suited to those suffering from a fear of heights. The interior is modern and spacious, there's an outdoor pool. Of particular interest in the town are several well preserved houses from the Moorish period. Movie buffs will be intersted to know that Orson Welles is interred nearby on a typical Andalucian finca (farm).

Parador Carmona. This was first a Roman hilltop fortress, then a Moorish castle and, in the fourteenth century,was converted into a residential palace by King Pedro the Cruel of Castille to house his favorite mistress. His sobriquet, incidentally, derrives not from the fact that he was any more bloodthirsty than was the norm for medieval monarchs, but rather from the circumstance that he made a serious effort to enforce the laws of the land, something that was greatly resented by the Spanish grandees who were accustomed to having things their own way. The parador, an imposing structure with magnificent views of the plain below, is hence something of an architectural mishmash. It's best features are the Moorish elements, done by the same craftsmen who constructed the Alhambra in Granada. The bedrooms are large and lavishly furnished, some in faux Moorish style. The inner courtyard is a thing of beauty. There's an outdoor pool. This is a great place to stay in order to visit nearby Seville if one wants to avoid the heat of the city in summer. It's barely a twenty minute drive and there's a regular bus service.

Parador Granada Spain

Parador Granada. First, the bad news. This is the most expensive parador of them all, except in the off season using a special promotion such as the Golden Days, the prices are astronomical and, at most times of the year you have to reserve at least six months in advance. All this despite the fact that although the accomodations are in every way up to parador standards, they're by no means super luxurious. (We did get lucky one year, our room wasn't ready when we arrived and rather than make us wait they upgraded us to a suite, which was lovely). What we have done in the past is to husband our Amigos points until we had enough to stay there for free. The good news is that the parador is situated inside the Alhambra grounds so that one can visit it at any time of day that one wishes. That may not sound like a very big deal, but it is. If one arrives from the outside, unless one's on a package tour, something we don't much like, one has to stand in very long lines for tickets, for as much as two hours and it may happen, especially in the summer, that by the time you get near the ticket window that day's allotment has been sold and you're out of luck. (If you're willing to make do with fairly basic accomodations the little Hotel America is also inside the grounds, but rooms there are even harder to get than those at the parador). Anyway, the Alhambra is truly one of the wonders of the world. If I could see only one place in Spain, this would be it. The Moors held out in this hilltop fortress against the advancing Christians until the end of the fifteenth century, so what you have here is Moorish architecture in its full ripeness. The emphasis is on decoration. The filigree carvings of the Nasrid palace attain the very heights of what effect can be achieved with non representational art forms. The Lion's Court, a gift of Granada's Jewish community as a token of thanks for being tolerated there, is one of the most charming small interior spaces that I've encountered.The vast gardens of the Generalife are a splendid example of Arab soil management in dry climates. The views of Granada lying far below are nothing short of stunning. As a bonus, there is a palace built within the grounds by Charles I so that one can compare the Moorish and the Baroque cheek by jowl. The entire complex simply blows one away. And, at the end of a long day of exploration, to enjoy a drink in the parador's shaded courtyard with a fountain splashing happily in the background is sheer heaven.

Parador Cazorla; Parador Jaen Spain

The Cazorla parador, a newbuild, has an isolated location in the middle of a nature reserve in Andalucia. It's reached by driving almost twenty miles along a winding mountain road. The decor is fairly simple, with a decidedly rustic accent. The rooms are spacious enough but hardly lavish. There's an outdoor pool but its not heated. The environs are heavily forested. The whole atmosphere is that of a hunting lodge in the mountains. Obviously, one comes here not for the creature comforts, although those are certainly more than adequate, but for the absolute quiet in which one is immersed the moment one enters into the surrounding woods. There are hiking paths in various directions, game abounds. Out for an evening stroll, we encountered a whole family of wild boars. This is an ideal spot if you need to recharge your batteries after a concentrated and arduous period of sightseeing.

Jaen is a different proposition entirely. The parador is a thirteenth century Arab fortress, built at a time when the Moors were being hard pressed by the Christian Reconquista and increasingly retreated into hilltop fortresses whence they imposed an indirect control over the irrigated lands below which were cultivated for the most part by Berber peasants. And this is certainly a hilltop. In order to reach the parador one drives, seemingly forever, upwards through the town. Whenever one thinks that surely one has arrived, there's another set of hairpin curves to surmount. The parador, once one has reached it, is a massive structure with a huge square tower built of massive stone blocks. Inside the decor is vaguely oriental, some of the public rooms echo parts of Granada's Alhambra and the overall feeling is one of tasteful opulence. The views of the surrounding mountains are stunning and there's an outdoor pool. The town has a splendidly decorated Baroque cathedral and the largest Moorish baths in Spain. Just to the north is the junction of the Guadalquivir and Guadarama rivers and it's worth one's while to make a little circle drive through the region in order to get a feeling for the immensity of Andalucia's olive plantations.

Parador Alarcon; Parador El Saler Spain

The Alarcon parador, which is situated just south of Cuenca, is truly amazing. This is as close to staying in an early medieval castle that you'll ever get. Originally an eighth century Arab fortress, it was enlarged in the thirteenth. It sits atop a crag, isolated and virtually unassailable. The room we occupied, apart from the modern conveniences, was just as it would have been in the middle ages. The walls were bare, massive stone blocks, in order to get to the single, smallish window you had to climb a flight of three stone steps. In spite of this the room was not in the least dark, the bright Castilian sun flooded in even through that small window. The public rooms as well tend toward military rigor and simplicity. There's a stunning 360 degree panorama from the terrace, far below the river Jucar winds its way through the fertile Castillian plain. The land, which had been fatally overgrazed by the immense sheep herds which the Spanish grandees kept in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in order to keep up with the demand for wool in the Netherlands has now been irigated and partially reforested. One feels very grand staying here. Unfortunately the splendor doesn't come cheap, Alarcon is among the most expensive of the paradors.

The El Saler parador is a complete change of pace from Alarcon. It's a newbuild, situated on the Mediterranean coast just south of Valencia. Many of the bedrooms have a view of the sea, there's a sandy beach backed by dunes on which one can take long, leisurly strolls, there's an outdoor pool and, best of all, an eighteen hole golf course, reputedly one of the best in Spain, with reduced greens fees for parador guests. All of this makes the parador a candidate for an extended stay in summer. The city of Valencia, the third largest in Spain, is just twenty minutes away bt car. It has the usual Gothic quarter, but even more interesting is the recently constructed City of Arts and Sciences. Many of the buildings were designed by Santiago Calatrava, in my mind the most gifted contemporary architect. (In this country the Milwaukee Art Museum was done by him). There is a fabulous Science Museum and a truly wonderful aquarium, with both indoor and outdoor exhibits of a vast spectrum of marine life. The Pottery Museum contains the most comprehensive exhibition of Spanish pottery, from Phoenecian times to the present, anywhere in the world.