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License to Luxe
Indulge your Bond fantasies from London to Bohemia.
Fasten your seatbelts: we’re about to enter 007 overdrive. Filming of the latest globe-trotting installment (hitting screens in November) moved to Austria this week — after wrapping in Panama, Mexico, Chile and Italy. Meanwhile, a new Bond novel is about to drop May 28 — exactly 100 years after the birth of original author Ian Fleming. So it’s little wonder that any place where James Bond even sneezed is trying to cash in on the hype. Not to mention your secret agent fantasies.
Whether you fancy yourself like the dapper spy himself or one of his seductive sirens (really, we don’t want to know), the Dukes Hotel in London has a new “Bond About Town” package that, if nothing else, channels a glamorous 007 lifestyle. Men get a wet shave at upper-crust “groomer” Truefitt & Hill and women a “Miss Moneypenny manicure.” Dolled up, you can move on to dinner and a martini master-class where you’ll learn to make a Vesper. After all, the Dukes — now part of Gordon Campbell Gray’s small stable of exclusive hotels — claims to be the spot where Fleming invented Bond’s “shaken, not stirred” bit.
But where’s the requisite danger? For a dash of pistols and poker you have to head to Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad), the quintessential Czech spa town, which stood in for Montenegro in Casino Royale. Daniel Craig’s Bond stays in the “Hotel Splendide,” but really it’s the Grand Hotel Pupp (unfortunately pronounced “poop”), a soaring Neo-Baroque bolthole with an in-house casino. Their new package, “In the Track of Agent 007,” includes free entry to the casino club; a few rounds at the local shooting range; and a day at a nearby “beer spa.” OK, so Bond’s a martini man — but we understand his girl likes a little lager.
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