"The experience (booked via tour operator Red Savannah) was a fitting introduction to my stay at Six Senses Kyoto, which opened this April in the city’s temple-dotted Higashiyama ward. Given the brand’s affinity for sprawling resorts embedded into nature, the urban setting of its Japanese debut—a low-slung building along a busy thoroughfare, and not, like many of its five-star peers, on the forest-covered hills on the outskirts of town—took me by surprise. But from the moment I stepped into the stone-floored lobby, the din of the city had all but disappeared." - Chris Schalkx