Hotels for People Who Are Too Rich for a Normal Vacation

Hotels for People Who Are Too Rich for a Normal Vacation

Listen, we can’t all be content with a lukewarm hot dog by a public pool. Some of you need to “find yourselves” by “mastering ancient arts” while a personal sommelier waits in the wings. If your trust fund is burning a hole in your pocket and you’re tired of merely being privileged, why not learn something while being privileged? Here are some places that will teach you a skill, so you can brag about it at parties nobody invited you to.

1. Fogo Island Inn | Newfoundland, Canada
The Skill: Becoming a tortured artiste without the lifelong poverty part.
Perched on a rock in the middle of nowhere that is somehow also impossibly expensive, this place lets you dabble in painting. The session is limited to four people, so you get all the attention you desperately crave. After you create your masterpiece (a brownish smear you’ll call “Atlantic Angst”), you can retreat to your room and stare dramatically at the ocean, wondering if you’re a true artist or just a person with a very large credit limit.

2. Wharekauhau | North Island, New Zealand
The Skill: Harassing livestock for fun.
This isn’t a hotel; it’s a 5,000-acre sheep farm for people who think “Where’s the lamb?” is a spiritual question. You’ll “reconnect with nature” by learning to shear a sheep, which is mostly just trying not to get headbutted while the sheep gives you a look of profound disappointment. It’s a “hands-on learning experience,” which is a fancy way of saying “you will smell like sheep for days.”

3. Hotel Savoy | Florence, Italy
The Skill: Following a dog around in the woods for a fungus.
Your “truffle concierge” Giulio and his dogs—who are infinitely more talented and better dressed than you—will lead you on a hunt for the world’s most expensive dirt. You’ll root around under trees like a fancy pig, and if you’re lucky, you’ll find a truffle that costs more than your flight. Then you get to eat it, because the only thing better than finding expensive dirt is consuming it.

4. The Peninsula Beverly Hills | Los Angeles, USA
The Skill: Paying someone to tell you that you smell good.
Because off-the-shelf perfume is for peasants. You’ll be chauffeured to a store where a “master perfumer” will help you “craft a personalized scent.” This mostly involves nodding seriously while smelling things and saying, “Yes, I get hints of… yearning.” You’ll leave with a bottle of “One-of-a-Kind Memento” that smells suspiciously like every other expensive perfume, but with a $500 engraving on the bottle.

5. Brach Paris | Paris, France
The Skill: Pretending you could ever replicate this at home.
You can choose to learn “Mediterranean-inspired techniques” (chopping herbs) or “the delicate craft of French desserts” (not burning butter). You’ll spend 90 minutes in a rooftop kitchen garden feeling like a real chef, before returning to your real life where your greatest culinary achievement is successfully microwaving leftovers.

6. Castelfalfi | Tuscany, Italy
The Skill: Basic survival, but make it luxurious.
For when your glamping trip felt a little too “roughing it.” Learn to build a shelter and start a fire with “natural resources” (presumably not the complimentary matches from the front desk). After you’ve successfully proven you might survive one (1) night in a well-manicured park, you can celebrate by retreating to your 11,000-square-foot spa with a salt cave. You know, like the pioneers did.

7. Amanbagh | Rajasthan, India
The Skill: Paying exorbitant amounts of money to breathe deeply.
This four-day yoga retreat begins with a session with an Ayurvedic doctor whose main job is to figure out how much guilt and existential dread you’re carrying from your hedge fund job. Then you’ll do a lot of “mindful movement” (stretching) designed to “restore body and mind” (make you forget how much this cost).

8. Alila Ventana Big Sur | Big Sur, USA
The Skill: Cosplaying as a bee.
“Suit up in protective gear” to “dive into the hive.” Translation: You will wear a comically large hat and nervously side-eye thousands of bees that are moments away from realizing you are a fraud. You’ll “gain a deeper appreciation for their role in our ecosystem” and also a deeper appreciation for the fact you can run away to the cliffside pool afterward.

9. Reid’s Palace, Madeira | Portugal
The Skill: Poking at dead flowers.
Every Saturday, you can arrange dried flowers from the hotel’s garden. It’s the perfect activity for realizing that you have the artistic talent of a startled armadillo while a patient local artist tries to gently steer you away from creating a floral monstrosity. The perfect, one-of-a-kind souvenir to remind you that you’re bad at crafts.

10. The Lodge at Ashford Castle | Ireland
The Skill: Making a bird your new, very judgy best friend.
Go on a “private hawk walk,” where a bird of prey with the eyes of a seasoned assassin will perch on your arm and silently judge life choices. You’ll learn about its “unique eyesight, velocity, and agility,” all of which are traits it uses to silently mock you for your inability to even spot your keys in the morning.

11. Casa de Uco Vineyards | Argentina
The Skill: Getting tipsy and calling it “education.”
“Let your inner winemaker shine!” by blending your own wine. After sampling several varietals (the best part), you’ll create a “wine plan” with a sommelier. This is a fancy way of saying you’ll point at the one you liked most and say, “That one. Make it taste more like that.” You get to take the bottle home, where it will immediately become the most pretentious thing in your kitchen.

12. Palace Hotel Tokyo | Japan
The Skill: Folding paper without having a nervous breakdown.
An origami class where you will attempt to fold a delicate crane and will instead create a paper blob that vaguely resembles your crushed dreams. You’ll get a take-home kit, which will sit in a drawer for years as a monument to your failure, right next to the guitar picks and that one weird screwdriver that doesn’t fit anything.

So there you have it. Now go forth, “upskill,” and make the rest of us feel poor and untalented in whole new ways