Online - March 26, 2005

Devil in the Details II

More Excellent Hotel Perks

Memo to hotels: You should sweat the small stuff. Because that’s pretty much all we’ll talk about when we get home. Especially when the small stuff is so grand.

Make Like a Maharaja
A horse-drawn carriage and trumpets announce your arrival at the insanely opulent Rambagh Palace in Jaipur. The elegant maharani (she’s like the queen of India) lives right next door.

Most Accommodating Kitchen
You catch it, they cook it at the charming Vanessa Noel Hotel on Nantucket Island. (Yes, the shoe designer.) And we don’t mean just fish. The chef will even bake your just-picked blueberries into a pie.

Cutest Hiking Buddy
Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch, on Colorado’s Beaver Creek Mountain, will let you borrow Bachelor, the yellow lab-in-residence. He’ll come along when you snowshoe, too.

As Lazy as You Wanna Be
Your on-floor butler will unpack, press, and repack your stuff at London’s swank Baglioni. For free.

Best-Dressed Bellboys
Those are mighty sexy cowboys carrying your bags at the Inn of the Anasazi in Santa Fe.

You Can Take It with You
Desperately sad to leave the Côte d’Azur? The Hotel Metropole Monte-Carlo sells grow-your-own-palm-tree seeds. From their own Chamaerops Humilis.

Most High-Concept (or Just Weirdest) Rooms
Your room is the artwork at the Propeller Island City Lodge in Berlin. Flying beds, tilted walls, gnomes, coffins, furniture that hangs from the ceiling — clicking through the website is its own trip.