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The Lausanne Palace and Spa
You look wistfully down from Lausanne Palace and Spa, and long for someone to share your bottle
By: Mary Gostelow
Yes, this is a very romantic place, but it is also big-business too. This is headquarter hotel for the Olympics, and regular meeting place for the Rich, Famous and Wannabe-both.
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It only looks like five minutes' walk from Lausanne’s fabulous rail station to Lausanne Palace and Spa, and it is tempting to think there is no easier way to get here from Geneva’s Cointrin airport. Fast trains run every ten minutes or so and take under an hour, speeding along the southern shore of Lac Léman. Arrive at Lausanne and the rail station is spotlessly clean. There are tempting aromas of fresh-baked bread from the cafés within the complex. A good harpist is playing. Only five minutes’ walk, I deduced from the map, ahead of time. Ah ha, rue du Petit-Chêne is cobblestoned, and at an angle of about 40 degrees, and it was a hot day in Lausanne. I had an extremely good aerobic workout, therefore, by the time I arrived at the 146-room hotel, on stately rue du Grand-Chêne.
A doorman in gray, with a scarlet peaked cap that matched the three carpeted entrance steps on which he stood, immediately took my bag, and escorted me into the lobby. To your left, facing ahead, is reception. To your right is the conciergerie, which has a pile of satellited global newssheets on the desk (the British one is headlined ‘PM: we will change the world’, yawn yawn). After checking in, I was given a chic chocolate-brown booklet with details of the hotel’s facilities, and escorted up to Suite 401.
Go into the suite and the toggle on your metal key, inserted into a funnel holder on the wall, activates power. You enter via a sizeable foyer, on to parlor, left to bedroom, back to bathroom. Both main rooms have French windows, allowing fresh air – the wrought iron balcony outside is barely wide enough for a size-zero model – and the bedroom has an additional four-foot oval window in its one curved corner. Carpeting throughout is long-life, looks like seagrass but is soft, mostly sandalwood with dark brown outline but parlor has inset ‘carpet’ with colors reversed. Walls everywhere are darker sandalwood plain fabric. Woodwork is cream, as are full-length drapes. An eight-foot side table in the foyer holds two simple sand-colored pots, and a Nespresso machine. The parlor has simple, stark-lines dark wood furniture, slightly Arts & Craft Movement style: the big-box armoire has four big, square gold handles. The square table has four saffron-suede-seat dining chairs, and cushions on the deep chocolate suede easy chairs and three-seat sofa are saffron or deep chocolate. Three abstract watercolors above the sofa are, well, blobs of pastel colors on white. There is an eight-foot tall dead tree in a wood pot, and a white vase holds a three-foot array of white roses. A tall white orchid stands in front of the gilt-edged mirror above the decorative marble-mantel fireplace.
There is a back-to-back decorative fireplace in the bedroom, with an abstract painting over. The bed is made up with all-natural fibers, according to a 12-inch tall clear Lucite tube, holding feathers, that bears details of this healthy product: it has a six-foot tall dark wood headboard, matching the bank of closet doors, which have the same prominent gold handles as the armoire. The side table for the Phillips television and iPod station, the low round table and the big desk, all match the other wood pieces. The desk has a broadband wire, and details for wireless connection (both are complimentary). The leather-bound guide to services, which has clear opening hours, has information in Arabic, English, French, German and Russian: another leather binder holds silk-smooth stationery, and A5-size Conqueror envelopes. Here we have another white orchid, and a foot-high pot of sunflower roses, and here seating is covered in a fabric that has burgundy, seaweed and saffron disk-shapes on cream. The main bathroom is all light cream marble. The shower is above the tub, which has a swing-back glass door. There are two sinks, and the toilet is shielded by a jutting-out wall. There is an electric towel rail. Toiletries are tubes of Le Jardin des Alpes.
I head down, two floors below the lobby, to Centre de Bien-être, generally known as CBE Concept Spa. Run by Emeline Gauer, a Brazilian firecracker – in the nicest sense of the word - this is a fabulous area, both exotic and airy, professional and welcoming. Staff bustle silently around in loose white outfits: you discover displays of Aveda and other products, a boutique with vaguely-Indian garments, sitting areas that remind you of Morocco, a Yogi Booster Spa Bar and
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Lounge, with a tempting array of vegetarian pâtés and exotic juices. I was escorted to an all-white cabine with lots of daylight, lay down for a 50-minute back and leg massage and promptly fell asleep during the whole rigmarole.
The gym looks out over the lake – it has masses of the latest Technogym equipment, and Pilates balls. Next came the pool, about 40 ft long, and amply wide for three to swim laps at once. This was a delight as the main long wall has two inset trompe l’oeil frescoes of crumbling Italian villas (I am sure no ancient villa in Switzerland ever crumbled like this!). Overhead, a wavy blue ceiling was inset with thousand of fiber optic lights. And next, in this saga of keeping fit, came a visit to the ladies’ only spa, for the vitality pool, hammam and log cabin-look sauna.
Lausanne is all about keeping fit, by the way. There are at least 27 global sporting headquarters in the area, including the International Olympic Committee IOC. Lausanne Palace is the official IOC hotel, and delegations and meetings always use it: at the final presentation of the 2016 Olympics bids, all four final contenders were allocated the same number of rooms, the same meeting space (the nations all brought in at least 220 supporters so other hotels benefited too). Lausanne Palace and Spa, which dates back to 1915, has for the last 20 years been owned by the Funke family. GM Jean-Jacques Gauer arrived in 1996, and he has made it a really lively place. On November 6th, 2009, the gastronomic Les Tables d’Hôtes re-opened, as an intimate 50-seat dining place with interactive kitchen. You also have the choice of eating, day and evening long, at the street-side Parisian-style Brasserie du Grand-Chêne, or traditional Japanese at Palace Sushi-Zen: in Summer you can dine on the terrace of Côté Jardin and on the bar front you have Le Cellier, the Habana cigar bar, LP’s live-music bar, Red Club for night owls and La Grappa.
But, says our good friend Jean-Jacques Gauer, let’s go out for dinner, namely down to the Ouchy area of Lausanne, by the lake. Here in December 2008, he and his team re-opened the incredibly trendy 50-room Château d’Ouchy boutique hotel, modern-architecture magnificently juxtaposed into the existing 1604-vintage mini-castle. First, a quick tour of the hotel, with medieval towers juxtaposed with modern glass-walled walkways and extensions, and two striking sculptures by Igor Ustinov, son of Peter. The casual dining room here is a glass conservatory, with cream leather semi-circular bankettes and cream linens, and plain white Limoges. We drink local wines, a glass of white L’Yvorne Dme de l’Ovaille 2008 Deladoey & Fils and, for red, Guido Brivio Dogaia 2006, a Merlot blend from Ticino. I also dine local, freshest tomatoes with buffalo mozzarella, followed by fritto misto of lake-caught fish. And oh the breads! They all come from Philippe Rochat, who has three Michelin stars for Restaurant de l’Hôtel de Ville in Crissier, which he took over from Fredy Girardet. Before driving back, we look at the Château d’Ouchy’s lovely outdoor pool and terrace, and I hear about its 35-ft 1928 slipper launch, sponsored by Blancpain.
In the morning, I wake and look across at the lights of Evian (can I see Evian Royal Resort over there?). I take a run, down down the slope that is Lausanne, all the way back down to the lake and, puff puff, up again (50 minutes round trip). I head for the Pilates ball in the gym, then shower, and breakfast in the inside room of Côte Jardin. Places are attractively set with wood mats on the blue glass table tops. I enjoy the exquisite buffet, with more tasty real-flour breads from Philippe Rochat and yogurts from Spasseff, jams from Andresy. The juice is just-squeezed, the coffee is individually filtered. Everything is perfect, except that it is time to go. I get into the Mercedes Hybrid S-400 and a charming young man from Ethiopia drives me to Geneva airport.
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