At the tail end of winter, I had one of those magical hotel stays that are among the great blessings of this job. The place was the Fife Arms, the 19th-century coaching house in the Scottish Highlands transformed six years ago into a whimsical temple of art, food, whisky, and heritage by Manuela and Iwan Wirth of the powerhouse gallery Hauser & Wirth. The hotel, part of the couple’s fast-growing Artfarm collection of hospitality ventures (which includes the charming nearby restaurant Fish Shop), was on the Hot List, our annual compendium of the world’s best hotels, cruises, and restaurants, the year it opened. It has also 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 everyone thinks it’s pretty special.
While there, I found myself thinking, as I often do, about the idea of the hotel as a sanctuary. Lord knows I needed one; it had been a long winter, for me personally and for the world. And a sanctuary is what the Fife Arms gave me: Sitting with a book beneath a late Picasso in the highly curated but also utterly easygoing drawing room, drinking an Elsa Schiaparelli–inspired cocktail or a cup of tea; eating fish and chips and crushed peas in the taxidermy-mad pub the Flying Stag; learning about the history of Scotch whisky amid the warm glow of hundreds of bottles in Bertie’s Whisky Bar (“jewel box” is one of those travel-writing clichés, but this room certainly is one), I felt my quotidian struggles recede. Possibly even more restorative was the experience of hill walking in the surrounding Cairngorms mountains, which I did each day among the pinewoods and peat bogs and heather, encountering golden eagles and red squirrels and adorable little frogs as I went. Inside the Fife Arms and out, I found a much-needed sort of peace.
In a sense the jobs of a hotelier and a travel editor are not so different. We both seek to package up beauty, joy, and storytelling in ways that make people happy and offer them ideas about how to live a fuller life. In times as confusing as these, I think that’s a truly vital mission.
This article appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
