Best Places to Stay: 44 Extraordinary Hotels - Softcover

Grant Sheehan is a photographer and publisher based in New Zealand.

Shelley-Maree Cassidy is the author of The Hotel Book: Great Escapes Europe and Africa. She lives in New Zealand.

Introduction

There are so many places to go and so many hotels to choose from that deciding where to stay is not easy.

The hotels in this book are chosen for their style and interest and for where they are, not how much they cost for a night. It is an eclectic mix, each quite different from the other, in a variety of destinations, spanning city life to wildlife and landscapes in between. The photographs illustrate the hotel and its setting; to know what it looks like is the next best thing to going there.

While a holiday away from the habitual is revitalizing, we are affected in some way by everywhere we travel, to a lesser and greater degree. Many places have the power to change our views, challenge our beliefs and add an edge of the unexpected. It might be a "soft adventure" compared to scaling Mount Everest or kayaking in Antarctica, but it can be thought-provoking, stimulating and even life-changing all the same.

Travel hopefully, arrive with a positive attitude and appreciate the differences; and most of all just enjoy being somewhere else. This book is essentially about homes away from home for the traveler, about places to stay -- the accommodation and the destinations. Hotels have always played a major part in travel, whether the purpose is business or pleasure. Often scenes of great events, mystery, intrigue and romance are contained within their walls, as may be history, both individual and international. The hotels featured here all distinguish themselves as fascinating places to stay, although each is as disparate and distinct as its guests.

In the era of the 747 no journey is so long that it is still much of an adventure reaching your destination. Negotiating airports and fellow passengers are often the most arduous elements. A click of the mouse now brings instant virtual access to the world and its cultures; actually being there seems to matter less and less. So, does travel still serve to broaden the mind? The desire to see for oneself is unchecked More and more people are traveling, and tourism is the leading global industry.

Even in this age of instant information transfer, traveling involves mundane processes -- booking tickets, packing and labeling luggage, and obtaining travel documents. The journey itself may be a smooth, uncomplicated passage or one with frustrating delays, bad service, lost luggage and expensive transfers. It is with a sense of relief that the traveler arrives at their destination. You reach your hotel, and whether modest or grand, old or new, it will serve as your temporary home away from home.