Check in with Ivo Weyel

There are two things he likes best: to travel and to be pampered. Ivo knows better than anyone else where to book a room or suite.

NORTHERN FJORDEN

The great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein loved the Norwegian fjords. As a twenty-something, he settled down there to sit down and think for a while, which would become the seed for his later philosophical reasoning. He was inspired by the "seriousness of the landscape" (his words): "I spend my days walking, whistling, thinking logically and illogically, being depressed and suffering. He stayed there by choice in a simple hut, although his family was one of the richest in early 20th century Austria. I am not a philosopher and do not like simplicity, so I travel the Norwegian fjords partly by cruise (on Holland America Line's Koningsdam), train and rental car. I don't get depressed but I do get humbled by so much nature and so little me. Especially when you sail soundlessly between the huge mountain walls rising straight up from the water, in my case - how beautiful is winter! - under a layer of powdery snow. I spend the night in Bergen at Hotel Opus XVI, owned and run by the second cousin of Edvard Grieg (also not known for his cheerful music) and take The Flam Railway (the world's most beautiful train ride according to Lonely Planet) right through mountain and valley, where Ingmar Bergman visualized his gloom and the writer Karl Ove Knausgaard finds his greatest happiness when he sees "the cherry blossoms blooming against a backdrop of gleaming white glaciers under a bright blue sky. I shudder at the sight of Edvard Munch's hand-signed screams at the beautiful Vestlia Resort Hotel in Geilo, where the collecting owner has hung many of this neither life lightly absorbing Norwegian painter. Sure, there's great skiing (cross country note) and bobsledding in winter, and there are zero lines for the elevators even in high season, but I'd rather look than climb, read than converse, and listen to silence than Grieg's piano concerto in a minor (he was too dejected for major). The Koningsdam's daily schedule states that there is Happy Hour at 4 p.m. in the Ocean Bar (second drink free, yeah!), seamlessly followed at 4:30 p.m. by an AA gathering in the adjacent Hudson Bar. Wittgenstein wrote it, "Life is only logical when it is illogical. And who again said, "Nature is beautiful, but you have to have something to drink with it?

Opus16.no | Vestlia.no

EXPENSIVE, MORE EXPENSIVE, MOST EXPENSIVE

I am not of the hands on variety. Au contraire. Money is for doing good with or enjoying. Travel is my favorite hole in the hand with that. But there are limits. Okay, nice hotels are expensive, and rightly so, because often you have something. But there is a trend of hysterically enlarging stairs. I noticed this last year in Paris, where new hotels like Le Cheval Blanc, Le Grand Contrôle, Bulgari and so on are charging a mere two thousand euros for an instap room. Of course, those are world brands, so if you find that too expensive then just a smaller boutique hotel, somewhere in a distant neighborhood, you'll have value for money. So I thought I'd check out L'Hôtel Particulier, a new, small-scale hotel way up in Montmartre, so far from everything that you don't really want to stay there, but housed in a not-too-big house that once belonged to the Hermès family, at the end of a cul-de-sac. Looks nice, small garden, only five rooms, nice bathroom with mosaic, bit of retro art deco, no-nonsense white linens. Starts right at booking: one night is not a night, so two nights is the minimum stay. Irritating. And then the price. Costs 1,500 euros in low season. Not including breakfast. Really, a little luxury travel is slowly becoming hard to afford even for wealthy people. Ditto in New York. There, the newest branch of the Aman chain recently opened at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. The Aman hotels are renowned for their high zen factor and cutting-edge staff and so many turndown services in a day that there is always someone busy in your room. I stayed there frequently over the past decades, anywhere in the world, all beautiful and yes, all expensive, around a thousand euros. So I thought: come, I'll treat myself to a night at Aman NY. So I didn't. At the time I wanted to stay there, four (FOUR!!) nights was the minimum stay. For the price of a white gold/diamond Rolex (which I don't want), because €18,000! Excluding breakfast (€55) and tax (€100 p.p. per day). I check out.

Hotelparticulier.com | Aman.com

COMO

I am a fan of Lake Como. The hotels, the villas, the color of the water, the sunrises and sunsets, the smell of oleanders, the George Clooney's. This year, the queen of Como hotels, the Villa d'Este, celebrates 150 seasons. If it used to be the hotel to stay at, now there is exuberant competition, such as the Grand Hotel Tremezzo, gorgeous, luxurious, Italian in the best sense. En famille you can recently rent a separate hotel villa there, La Sola Cabiati, once owned by an Italian count, and exactly everything you would expect from such an antique villa, right down to the gilded gates and coats of arms above the doors, plus a Riva in front of the water door. And then the newest birthing: Villa Passalacqua, from the same family/owners as the Tremezzo, but on a smaller scale. Spouting fountains in the park, Venetian chandeliers galore, antique murals and those open garden doors with curtains blowing in the warm breeze and classically dressed waiters bringing Bellinis and olives that are really bigger and tastier than anywhere else. And it costs (especially in light of the above bit) not a dime: from a paltry 1,000 euros a night.

Grandhoteltremezzo.com | Passalacqua.it|Villadeste.com