For its third maison, Cheval Blanc transformed the 40-key Hotel Saint-Barth Isle de France to Cheval Blanc St-Barth Isle de France: rooms, suites, and villas individually decorated in easy-but-elegant West Indies style with a distinctive French flair.
This is it, the sailing life: sitting on the perch of a 70-foot catamaran in the Atlantic surrounding St. Barths and St. Maarten.
Love him or loathe him, philosopher Alain de Botton has gotten a couple of things quite right. “There is psychological pleasure [during] takeoff,” he writes in The Art of Travel. “For the swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation.”
There’s an undeniable aura of exclusivity surrounding the tiny isle of Saint Barthélemy. It’s in the emerald-blue harbour teeming with yachts, and in the distinctively French flair that pervades the island’s way of life.
