the g Hotel & Spa

"Sometimes a hotel tells the story of a city, region or a country’s evolution better than any palace, public monument. This is surely the case with the glamorous new G Hotel on the edge of Galway, which is a stunning surprise for anyone who’s known this arty West Country Irish port town, formerly given to candlewick bedspreads and pastel color schemes when it came to lodgings. The G’s glamour is completely local, though, since the design director of this purring 101 room beauty is none other than one of the world’s most famous mad hatter, hometown boy Philip Treacy. What Treacy’s channeled is a certain Anglo fifties chic—think Elizabeth David and Princess Margaret with just a teaspoon of Sputnik, which is to say postwar whimsy with strong classical roots. Though the hotel overlooks a busy access road leading into one of Europe’s fastest growing cities, all is forgiven once you’re actually inside and a succession of funky public rooms strung together on the ground floor create a powerful frisson of visual excitement—one salon is all cotton-candy pink, while the main one is taupe with a ceiling dense with Tom Dixon lamps and peat bricks burning in the grate. The G isn’t just eye candy, though, since the wall-to-wall carpeted rooms are wonderfully comfortable and chic little nests in which to hole up over a rainy weekend, especially since they come with Philip Treacy for Frette designed linens, CD/DVD players and butler service, including an extensive room service menu from Santini, the excellent Italian-Irish restaurant downstairs. Though the new ESPA spa is the largest is Ireland and there’s a 10 screen cinema in the shopping complex next door, Galway itself, a wonderfully friendly and Bohemian little city, is only a fifteen-minute walk away"