At the tail finish of winter, I had a type of magical resort stays which might be amongst the nice blessings of this job. The place was the Fife Arms, the Nineteenth-century teaching home in the Scottish Highlands remodeled six years in the past right into a whimsical temple of artwork, meals, whisky, and heritage by Manuela and Iwan Wirth of the powerhouse gallery Hauser & Wirth. The resort, a part of the couple’s fast-growing Artfarm assortment of hospitality ventures (which incorporates the charming close by restaurant Fish Shop), was on the Hot List, our annual compendium of the world’s greatest inns, cruises, and eating places, the yr it opened. It has additionally made the Gold List, our yearly roundup of editors’ favorites, twice, and been honored by you in the Readers’ Choice Awards for six years in a row. Obviously everybody thinks it is fairly particular.
While there, I discovered myself considering, as I usually do, about the thought of the resort as a sanctuary. Lord is aware of I wanted one; it had been an extended winter, for me personally and for the world. And a sanctuary is what the Fife Arms gave me: Sitting with a guide beneath a late Picasso in the extremely curated but additionally totally easygoing drawing room, ingesting an Elsa Schiaparelli–impressed cocktail or a cup of tea; consuming fish and chips and crushed peas in the taxidermy-mad pub the Flying Stag; studying about the historical past of Scotch whisky amid the heat glow of a whole lot of bottles in Bertie’s Whisky Bar (“jewel box” is a type of travel-writing clichés, however this room definitely is one), I felt my quotidian struggles recede. Possibly much more restorative was the expertise of hill strolling in the surrounding Cairngorms mountains, which I did every day amongst the pinewoods and peat bogs and heather, encountering golden eagles and pink squirrels and lovely little frogs as I went. Inside the Fife Arms and out, I discovered a much-needed kind of peace.
In a way the jobs of a hotelier and a journey editor will not be so totally different. We each search to package deal up magnificence, pleasure, and storytelling in ways in which make folks glad and provide them concepts about the best way to reside a fuller life. In instances as complicated as these, I feel that is a very very important mission.
This article appeared in the May/June 2025 subject of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the journal here.