travelwithattitude.com

What impresses most about '22' is the extraordinary level of attention to detail. Suites manage to be both elegant and supremely functional with a dining table for 4, a good working desk, and lighting which adjusts from reading to romance. There's delectable fruit (where do the others find those inedible apples?), a choice of morning paper, and at 5:00 o'clock ice with cocktail fixings. The luxurious bathrobes, slippers, towels and bed linens carry the '22' monogram. A single red rose reflects the calm and beauty of the polished granite bath. There are Molten Brown amenities (my favorite-how did they know?), '22' umbrellas, and '22' bread crumbs--to feed the ducks at St James, of course.

Hartwell House is a compilation of many centuries of architectural style, from Georgian to Jacobean; the house is an eclectic and successful mingling of pomp and circumstance. My room, the "Persian Suite" was merely a continuation of theme of refined decadence that defines Hartwell.

Later that night I was visited by the manager of the hotel. He asked me if I wanted to be told the ghost story of the castle where it actually happened. "Yes." I answered. With that I was led back through the doorway, and into the spiral staircase. In his hand he held a candle to shine the way.

Arriving in London after a sleepless ten-hour flight of entertaining games and music videos on Richard Branson’s rock airlines Virgin Atlantic, I desperately needed something to calm my nerves. A brandy might have been nice if I was the drinking kind, but then I would be paying harshly the next morning, better skip the brandy.

What I was deeply craving was a workout. I wanted a hard sweaty workout followed by a hot bath. That, would put me in a London Rhythm quicker and truer than any alcoholic beverage.

The Scillies are 28 miles west-south-west of England’s big toe. The Atlantic gales blast unimpeded all the way from America to slam these bits of English rock. The Gulf Stream flows over and up from the Gulf of Mexico to warm them. I, on the other hand, have come from Wales on the small cruise ship, the Clipper Adventurer. We’re on a voyage of discovery, in pursuit of the fine castles and gardens in the Celtic fringe of Ireland, Wales, England and Brittany. 

David charges around the Clipper Adventurer’s lounge unraveling a roll of toilet paper. He seriously wants us to grasp our insignificance. Starting 600,000,000 years ago at the baby grand piano, David unrolls his way past the sofa which curves around the room beneath the windows. Aft, near the appetizers—genuine Cornish pasties and shrimp cocktail—he makes it into the Paleozoic period. People swivel around in their club chairs to watch him encircle a leather-wrapped pillar somewhere in the Mesozoic period. Forward, at the mahogany bar, the dinosaurs appear. Five steps across the dance floor and he’s hard by the baby grand when mankind shows up. We’re the last half of the last piece of toilet paper on the roll. I think I’ll have another pasty.

I dive into the Oyster’s Rockefeller - tonight’s cocktail hour offering - after all, I haven’t had a thing since lunch. Spartan-like I’d abstained from the warm-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies which materialize in the lounge every afternoon. Okay, so I was napping.

A young Virgin (employee) escorts me from the check-in counter to Virgin’s swanky first- class San Francisco clubhouse. The chaos of the airport fades as I enter a peacock-blue and frosted glass world sporting smashing views of San Francisco. Large red easy chairs complete with data ports are peopled with chatters, workers and callers-home. One couple sits at the bar sipping martinis. At the room’s far end, one person sleeps on a day bed and another dreamily watches a five-screen video, all showing the same tape of rushing water - curiously calming. 

From Prime Ministers to paupers, Queens to starlets, businessmen to confidence men, soldiers to war brides, not to mention mail, Magna Cartas and stowaways - Cunard has carried them all. Cunard's history is the history of steam navigation on the North Atlantic. It also mirrors that of Northern European emigration to America.