Hang out your “Do Not Disturb” sign and get set to curl up with 35 of the most seductive suites, courtesy of “Mr and Mrs Smith Presents The World’s Sexiest Bedrooms” (Thames & Hudson, $40, 296 pages). With snappy text by Sarah Jappy and peek-a-boo images by art photographer Polly Brown, the travel club Mr & Mrs Smith — no periods, please — takes hotel lovers on a tour of beds and baths where they can commune with their significant others or just themselves.
The settings are luxe and fabled. At the Aman Venice on the Grand Canal Perch, the white linens are crisp, the chandeliers gilded, the ceiling reliefs rococo. You half expect Casanova to saunter in, or George and Amal, who had their wedding there.
At Keemala in Phuket, Thailand, a bed swathed in gauze curtains spills out through open floor-to-ceiling panels and gathered drapes unto a deck and then a pool that seems to alight on nature’s leafy canopy. Talk about your tree houses.
At Cliveden in bucolic Berkshire, England — once the home of the Duke of Buckingham’s married mistress, the Countess of Shrewsbury, and the place where politician John Profumo fell in lust with model Christine Keeler — the red and green tapestried living room off the Prince of Wales suite will make you feel as if you’re about to encounter Lady Mary or her dishy hubby, Matthew Crawley. Two pair of feet peek out from under the covers. Bare arms mimic the nymph who sits atop a table clock — and shields the imitator’s bare bosom.
Clearly, there’s plenty of time for nooky here as light dapples a breakfast tray in Monteverdi in Tuscany, Italy; or twin claw-foot tubs brim with azure bathwater at Coqui Coqui Mérida Residence & Spa in Yucatán, Mexico; or a rumpled bed meets the water’s edge at Soneva Jani in Medhufaru, Maldives.
But all play and no sightseeing makes Jack and Jill dull boys and girls, so each selection contains a “Worth Getting Out of Bed for” entry, along with those on “Bedtime,” “Food and Drink” and, for fashionistos, “Dress Code.” (We love the “Dress Code” entry for Palazzo Margherita in Basilicata, Italy — “Don Corleone gone a-courting: crisp white shirts, cashmere and Italian shoes for the Mr; siren-sexy frocks and arched Italianate eyebrows for the Mrs.)
Not all of the selections are to our liking. Some of the hotels — modern, brick, rectangular — resemble desert motels or prison camps. But as with love, to each his own.
For more, visit thamesandhudsonusa.com.
