When we visited Chinzombo it had just reopened in June 2013, after many years of closure, as a luxury bush camp with six riverfront tents. Meals, beverages and safari activities were included in the daily fees. Geared toward those just dipping their toes into the world of safari and not quite ready to commit to a more remote bush camp experience, the luxury camp offered many of the perks of exclusive accommodations alongside optimal game viewing next to the Luangwa River in Zambia.
Nestled in a grove of evergreen mahogany trees on the bank of Zambia’s majestic Zambezi River, Chiawa Camp seemed more remote to us than other safari camps we had visited. To get there we had to fly to the Royal Airstrip, drive 20 minutes to the Zambezi River and take a 20-minute ride in a small motorboat while watching a gorgeous sunset against the backdrop of mountains and green trees along the riverbed. Situated in the Lower Zambezi National Park, Chiawa Camp offered luxurious tent accommodations in an iconic riverside setting with impeccable service and good game viewing. We saw three of the Big Five.
In the early 1850s, France’s newly minted Emperor Napoleon III commissioned Baron Charles-Eugene Haussmann to undertake an ambitious urban modernization program throughout Paris. Entire popular neighborhoods of medieval alleyways were razed to make way for the broad boulevards and airy streets lined with harmonious residential and public buildings that we know today. In the center of the Right Bank, the ninth arrondissement flourished as a center of artistic and intellectual life. Most of the Romantic elite, Edgar Degas, Eugene Delacroix, George Bizet, Hector Berlioz, Frederic Chopin and George Sand among them, made their home there at some point. To this day, this tony neighborhood off the familiar tourist circuits has retained virtually intact its harmonious 19th century architecture, tranquil courtyards and Belle Epoque charm. But it was notably lacking luxury hotel accommodations; until the recent opening of the exquisite boutique Hotel de Nell.
Widely recognized for over a century as one of the crown jewels of the much-vaunted Amalfi coast, the Santa Caterina Hotel has consistently garnered so many accolades from the travel press, industry rating organization and its own delighted guests that I approached it with the highest of expectations. All of which were surpassed by the time I was ushered into my suite.
The employee wearing a rubber apron and processing shellfish at the entrance and the bistro style ground floor dining area belied the refined ambiance we found once we climbed a narrow staircase to the first floor of Rech, long known for its seafood in a city preoccupied with eatable treasures from the seas. As the first to arrive for lunch we were thrilled to have the dining room to ourselves for a few minutes until the next guests appeared.
