Grand Hotel Bellevue - Gstaad, Switzerland
Adventure thrill-seekers, spa enthusiasts, and nature lovers know that the Swiss Alps aren’t limited to a winter sojourn.
The fragrant Alpine meadows and majestic mountains allow for oodles of leisure activities in the summertime as well. Rock climbing, bike rides, hikes- the sky’s the limit.
And the best place to appreciate those gorgeous panoramas is the Grand Hotel Bellevue, the luxurious design hotel located in charming, traffic-free Gstaad on the language border of the German and French speaking part of Switzerland.
Read more
Antique Shopping in Brussels
Poor Brussels. The attention it gets as capital of the European Union and home base of NATO suggests a city of functionaries and bureaucrats: stolid, good for business (and breweries), but hardly the center of style. That moniker belongs to Paris, of course—except among the cognoscenti, who know that Brussels, the 1,000-year-old city of a million-plus, can be more radical in fashion, more adventuresome in cuisine, and much more fun to plunder for antiques.
To go antiquing in Brussels is to bask in civility and ease—especially if you’ve ever suffered the apathy of the 2,500 dealers at Paris’s legendary Marché St.-Ouen. Stay hard by the Gothic, gilded Grand Place—a square called one of the most beautiful in the world by no less than Victor Hugo;
At the Hotel Amigo (1–3 Rue de l’Amigo, 32-2/547-4747; hotelamigo.com; doubles from $335), you’re barely a half-mile walk from the best dealers in and around the Place du Grand Sablon, also a cobbled and gabled but far more sweeping square.
Read more
