The Plaza Hotel launches its own fragrance line

by Melanie Nayer on

You’re used to luxury hotels offering up customized amenities like bath salts and slippers, but would you want to smell like your favorite hotel?

New York‘s landmark hotel, The Plaza, introduced its signature scent last month. Appropriately called “The Plaza,” the eau de parfum was created exclusively for the hotel by Krigler, a popular New York City-based fragrance house.

The New York Times blog writes:

“We wanted to create a modern fragrance that appeals to the senses and characteristics that the Plaza Hotel embodies: grace, beauty, elegance and style,” said Kristin Franzese, executive vice president of retail. She also alluded to the hotel’s best selling bath robes and linens as inspiration for the luxurious new souvenir. “People love to leave with a little piece of history.”

The signature scent is a blend of bergamot, grapefruit and iris, with amber and leather undertones. Guests can buy the perfume exclusively at the hotel’s store, Plaza Beauty, for $95 for a 1.7-ounce bottle. It’s also available as a soap ($18) or candle ($65).

Ode to Sidney Pollack: Travel where his movies were made

by Jamie Rhein on

Sidney Pollack died of cancer yesterday. When I heard the news, along with feeling sad about his death, I flashed to a certain restaurant in Hurley, New York that’s one of my favorite “when I go back home for a visit ” eateries,although it’s changed hands since Pollack used it as one of the settings for Tootsie.

The Hurley Mountain Inn where Dustin Hoffman bellied up to the bar with Charles Durning has been serving up family fare for years. My mom always headed here with friends for the spaghetti and meatballs. The last time I was there, my son was happy playing video games without the money to actually have them do anything.

Hurley is near Kingston in the Hudson Valley and the restaurant is worth the drive. Nothing fancy, but you’ll feel like you’re in a place that means something to the people who eat there. Along with Hurley, if you do a Sidney Pollack film tour of the world, you’ll see a lot. Consider these alone and you’ll be busy:

  1. Sketches of Frank Gehry–Pollack followed Frank Gehry around with a camera and captured the architectural genius found in the Vitra Museum in Germany, Maggie’s Centre, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
  2. Out of Africa–The Africa scenes were filmed in the Ngong Hills in Kenya. The Denmark scenes were in Surrey, England.
  3. The Electric Horseman–For the gorgeous scenery seen in the film, head to Zion National Park and other places in Utah. For the rest, head to Las Vegas.
  4. The Way We Were–Bask in a bit of opulence at Ballston Spa, New York and in front of The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

Bathing in milk and cookies at The Plaza Hotel

by Jamie Rhein on

The opulent and famous The Plaza Hotel reopened in New York City on Saturday after a two-year long, pricey renovation. If you have $1,000 dollars to drop, you can stay here for a night. One person who is up on what justifies hotel costs said that the value of The Plaza is the experience. The time spent sleeping must be secondary then, otherwise I’d want the best dreams possible. If I were spending $1,000 a night (I wouldn’t, but let’s assume) I would check in at the first second I could check in, and check out at the last second before another charge kicked in. I don’t think I would sleep–seems like a waste of money to me.

And think about the monetary breakdown. Considering that most hotels don’t give a guest 24-hours in a room, even if you spent 20 hours in your room, that’s $50 per hour. That is cheaper than the hourly rate for most massages or a trip to many general practitioner physicians in the U.S. Still, that would mean you paid for twenty hour-long massages or visited a little less than twenty doctors in order to equal $1,000.

I would be so determined to make my $50 an hour stay worth it that I’d be flustered about what to do to maximize my optimum experience. Hang out in the lobby to be noticed? Walk the halls seeing who else can afford $1,000 a night? Swim? Work out? Can you swim and work out? I couldn’t find a pool listed on the Web site. What can one do at The Plaza without spending another dime? Can you bring in outside snacks and sandwiches? Perhaps, you could buy a knish or a hot dog from a street vendor hanging out near Central Park just before check-in to help with the budget.

According to the news about The Plaza, every guest can take a bubble bath with milk and cookies. At first when I read that detail, I pictured someone taking a bath in milk and cookies. Can’t you picture floating Oreos? There’s something that seems a bit gross and disgusting about the idea, though, since somewhere in Central Park that the hotel overlooks, homeless people are hanging out. But on the other hand, if you could drink the milk and eat the cookies while you are bathing in the tub with its 24-karat gold faucets, this type of bath would save you some money. You could have your bath for breakfast. I wonder if you just get one bath per visit, or could you slip in a few extra? [via AP]