A tale of two luxuries

Every visit to Israel is a form of self-discovery. Most people who have
been there will confirm this. A visit to this tiny, remarkable land
tends to be memorable for both the veteran and the novice traveller.

As a frequent visitor to Israel, I can confirm this.

On a recent trip there, I discovered how overwhelmingly enjoyable and remarkably serene an experience it is to be a guest at a luxury hotel.

In fact, The CJN was invited to be a guest at two stun-ningly luxurious hotels. In the result, therefore, the discov-ery – and the feelings of enjoyment and serenity, of course – were double.

As with all visits to Israel, I was prepared to feel thefamiliar, broad rush of radiating happiness that happens simply from being there. But I was not quite prepared to feel, as well, the exceptionally calming tranquillity of our all-too-brief stays in the Mamilla Hotel in Jerusalem and Mitzpe Hayamim in the Galilee.

This is a tale of two luxuries.

* * *

An overnight stay in the Mamilla Hotel, in its essence, is an esthetic experience as much as it is a hotel one.

Esthetics – as both form and substance, means and ends – is the governing ethos of the Mamilla Hotel. Every aspect of the guest’s experience in the hotel is an encounter with tasteful elegance.

The architecture and interior design of the hotel are the combined product of internationally renowned architects Moshe Safdie and Piero Lissoni. Safdie has created a downtown structure of Jerusalem stone that attaches naturally and his-torically to the neighbourhood merely metres from the storied walls of the Old City.

Lissoni’s interiors emphasize quiet and evoke calm. The inter-actions between the details of the hotel’s furnishings, decorative appointments and finishings and the hotel’s guests’ experience are aimed at achieving a spa-like feeling of serenity wherever one sits in the spacious building.

Low-volume music wafts in the hallways. The lighting is always softly muted and the colours throughout the hotel on walls, floors and ceilings and design accents are the colours of Jerusalem’s stones and the beiges, creams, oranges and browns of the desert so close by.

Jerusalem, of course, is the hotel’s crowning esthetic. It’s also the physical context that gives the hotel its very name and the emotional context that gives a stay at the Mamilla a sense of pur-poseful occasion. The hotel’s doors open onto a tiny stairway that takes the guest to the Alrov Mamilla Avenue, the new pedestrian mall lined by coffee shops and upscale stores that connects the hotel to the Jaffa Gate. It is a bridge from the new to the old and, of course, from the Old City to the New City.

But it is more than that, too. It is a hope for the future coex-istence of two peoples.

Inside the hotel, thoughtful, good-natured, helpful, so-licitous service is the hallmark of the staff. They refer to themselves as hosts.

Jerusalem’s newest hotel, the Mamilla has 194 guest rooms of five different varieties. The Lissoni appointments ensure a minimalist, contemporary approach to design and decoration, and are a superbly rich experience in function, comfort and delight.

One of the innovative and quite interesting features of the rooms is the fact that the glass walls that separate the bathroom from the bedroom are made of special light-conducting crystals that allow the walls to become opaque or transparent.

The culinary experience in the various restaurants and dining halls in the hotel were unsurpassingly high. Typically, each meal offered a cornucopia of quantity, quality, variety and vast offer-ings of selection. For example, the salads, of which there were always more than a dozen different kinds at each meal, were a nutritionist’s aspiration. Main courses were a gourmet’s delight. And the desserts were a gourmand’s seduction.

In the very heart of Jerusalem where old and new blend, the Mamilla guest, with coffee in hand, can look from the hotel rooftop upon this most precious space on earth and marvel at the exceptionally good turn of events that have brought him to this magical vista. The coffee is excellent. And the view breathes life, spirit and hope into the soul of the visitor.

* * *

Some 135 kilometres to the north, on the road up the moun-tain almost halfway between Rosh Pina and Tzfat in the lushly green and fertile hills of the Galilee, is Hotel Mitzpe Hayamim. (The name translates somewhat roughly in English as The Lookout upon the Lakes Hotel.)

The word “mitzpe” (lookout) is part of the name because of the relatively high elevation of the place, some 570 metres above sea level.

 

The reason for the word “yamim” (lakes) is because from any balcony of the hotel, after the mist of the morning lifts, one can see the Sea of Galilee hard to the south and the Hula Valley gently to the north.

The word “hotel” in the name hardly captures the essence of the establishment. For hotel is merely the beginning, the intro-duction, so to speak, of the essential threefold nature of Mitzpe Hayamim. To be sure, the place is a hotel. But it is also a spa and an organic farm. All three components are integrated seam-lessly into one enveloping holistic experience of sun, earth, touch, smell, taste and quiet.

The hotel is a member of the Relais & Chateaux Associa-tion that affirms Mitzpe Hayamim conforms to and achieves the association’s high-standard “5c” philosophy: character, charm, cuisine, calm and courtesy.

The hotel’s organic gardens and farm comprise 28 acres. It is the source of the fruit, vegetables, spices, herbs, eggs and dairy products that find their way into the the hotel’s two restau-rants, one of which is vegetarian, neither of which, however, is under kosher supervision.

Bread, jams, chocolates, cheeses are prepared on the premises by expert chefs. Experienced horticulturalists and farmers tend to the farm. It operates as a self-sufficient unit and is worked ac-cording to biblical methods, which we were told is also known as Demeter agriculture.

The hotel is situated on a promontory that is breathtaking. One touches the hills and the gardens and feels the view, the air and even the water.

The sheer beauty of the Mitzpe promontory and the sense of close-at-hand calm that it evokes flow through all the ac-tivities and guests’ services at the hotel, including the spa, the studios and artists’ galleries.

It is not long after one sets down one’s luggage, settles into the room, absorbs the magnificent view, reflects on the geography, eats, drinks, walks, reads, swims, sits, or simply “does” nothing that a feeling of total belonging, internal balance and, one might say, harmony sets in. It is a very good, restorative feeling.

* * *

Israel – the land, the country and the people – offers the visitor experiences that can stir the soul or tingle the senses, inform the mind or challenge the body, inspire the heart or calm concerns. At the Mamilla Hotel in Jerusalem and Mitzpe Hayamim Hotel in the Galilee, this visitor experienced them all.