What is luxury?

I don’t know about you but just thinking about the word is a pleasant feeling.  Let’s start with some definitions:

• “a state of great comfort or elegance, especially when involving great expense”
• “indulgence in and enjoyment of rich, comfortable and sumptuous living

There are some really good words in there – “comfort”, “elegance”, “indulgence”, “enjoyment”, “sumptuous” … what wonderful images they conjure up!  And while on wonderful images, when “luxury” is typed into Google, and “images” selected, you see wonderful pictures of sports cars (and the occasional Rolls Royce), private jets, ridiculously expensive-looking yachts, champagne, jewellery, diamonds.

What you see most of, though, are beautiful hotels, beaches, palm trees, infinity pools, and the like.  In almost every picture you are drawn to the place and imagine yourself there, lying in the sun, with the gentle sound of the waves lapping against the warm sand, pina colada in hand, as you doze off in a state of bliss …

Of course, when we think of hotels in the context of luxury, it’s not just where they are but what’s inside them – you start to think how wonderful it would be to stay there.

And there’s another thing.  I’m not knocking the gentle sound of waves lapping against warm sand, or lying in the sun, and I’m certainly not knocking pina coladas, but you don’t have to fly to the Greek islands or the Amalfi coast or the Indian ocean to experience luxury – it’s right here, in abundance, all around us.

By the way, do you find it remarkable how often water (rivers, or the sea) figure in our images and thoughts of luxury?  I wonder why that is …

Fine Individual Hotels, a collection of some of the finest independent luxury family hotels and boutique accommodation in the country, can help you find the perfect place to stay without having to remember to pack your passport.  From the grandeur of the Lakes, to the beauty of Yorkshire, to the wonderful coastline of Cornwall, to the rugged highlands of Scotland – and plenty of places in between – our hand-picked, privately owned, and individually run luxury hotels will all offer you that certain

je ne sais quoi

To make your stay a very special one.
Until our next article, having mentioned the Lakes, we thought we ought to give you a quote from Wordsworth:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

Brilliant, isn’t it?  Enjoy …

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