This trendy hotel, part of the large Sol Meliá chain, was located in a 37 story tower building. Its target audience were luxury oriented travelers, especially celebrities and those with a penchant for music, design and gourmet meals. It had a penthouse VIP lounge (a favorite) for Level upper floor guests, meeting space, two restaurants, nightclub, pool area, fitness center and spa. The name Me was designed to convey that Me equals you “because Me becomes you.”
One of the major reasons I decided to travel to Barcelona this spring was the possibility of flying directly and non stop from Miami to Barcelona in Iberia’s newly inaugurated luxury service with fully horizontal seats. Not sure of what to expected at the sometimes overcrowded airport in South Florida’s largest city I arrived at the Iberia counter three hours early. Check-in was speedy and I was pleased to discover I had been assigned an aisle seat as I had requested.
This striking music hall, built between 1905 and 1908 as the headquarters of the Orfeó Català, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of Catalan culture, had more than a century of history when I first attended a sold out concert there on a cool spring evening during a week long visit to Barcelona. It was love at first sight.
When I first heard the name Via Veneto I thought of the famous shopping street in Rome, Italy and wondered what kind of cuisine the restaurant served. Soon I discovered the restaurant offered a contemporary interpretation of Catalan dishes within a nostalgic setting designed during the Italian Dolce Vita era.
Named for Charles-Augustin Meurice the hotel’s history began in 1771 in Calais, where upper-class British travelers on their way to Paris would arrive after crossing the Straits of Dover. There, an enterprising regional postmaster, Meurice (1739-1820), welcomed them to French shores at his Calais coaching inn and arranging rides to Paris aboard his coach service. It was a 36-hour trip, and Meurice built a second coaching inn in Paris in 1817 to welcome the weary travelers on their arrival. The Hotel Le Meurice moved in 1835 to its present site, one of the most fashionable locales in the city, overlooking the historic Tuileries Garden.
Stepping through the pillared entrance of the Grand Hotel Wien was a journey back to the glittering days of Austria’s 19 th century imperial splendor. Designed by Karl Tietz, one of the most celebrated architects of his time, it was, when it opened its doors in 1870, the first luxury hotel in the city. With the new Imperial Opera House (now the Vienna State Opera) opened the previous year just one block away, and the nearby Musikverein concert hall (now home to the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra) also inaugurated in 1870, it quickly became a hit with the aristocracy. It retained its status as a place to be seen until the Second World War. Although its fortunes waned during the second half of the 20 th century, it re-opened in 1994 after four years and 100 million euros of renovations to quickly become once again a pinnacle of Viennese social life, and to welcome amongst its guests many international celebrities, political figures and business leaders.