Still looking for a dreamy getaway for Valentine’s Day? If you can’t get to a 16th century villa in Tuscany and are looking to stay closer to home, make like a Hollywood A-lister and head to the romantic Hotel Bel-Air (on Tablet Hotel’s Best Romantic Getaways of All Time list), with its rose-colored bungalows hidden by bougainvillea, ficus, orange blossom, and fern, on eighteen acres right in the middle of LA’s most exclusive neighborhood.
Ironically, the Bel-Air began by blackballing movie folk, but it was they—and their scandalous behavior—who made it famous. Elizabeth Taylor honeymooned here with her first husband, Marilyn Monroe spent a lot of time hopping between rooms 133 and 33, and urban legend has it that Lauren Bacall flooded the hotel during the Academy Awards. Although the hotel has undergone extensive renovations, it still feels like a Hollywood hideaway from the golden years. Therefore, think of the swan-shaped pats of butter as romantic rather than kitsch. Ditto the Tuscan-inspired rooms, the floral curtains and the stone Poseidon heads spewing water into the fountain.
The staff is legendary for their ability to do anything (like set up a seventeen minute wedding between Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patti and her yoga instructor). They are also discreet; you have to be, in what one employee has called the “biggest shack-up business in town.”
When you’re not holed up in your room or wandering the aromatic grounds, dine on lemon pancakes and tortilla soup at the restaurant (hot water pipes underneath the terracotta floor keep your feet toasty) or curl up in front of the avocado wood burning in the fireplace at the bar. Yummy!!
