On the private island of Guidecca, one of the world's hottest hotel brands offers romantic grandeur with the spice of La dolce vita sex appeal along the city's infamous canal. Visitors arrive on private motorboats that operate 24-hours a day between San Marcos and inlet islands. Cipriani's reputation is impeccable, offering four full-service restaurants, luxury spa and personal concierge service unrivaled in Italy. Dressed-up visitors in crisp linens and cheery pastels arrive to an opulent reception area that mixes equal elements of Casanova and James Bond. The hotel is surrounded by lavish private gardens as well as a heated pool and private cabana area that make the beach clubs along the nearby Lido look like sewage processing plants. The hotel features a separate palazzo annex, Palazzo Vendramin, contained within the 15th century residence of the Venetian papal authority. Virtually every building in the hotel offers heavenly views of St. Mark's Square. Not for the bling-shy, the crowd varies between buttoned-up businessmen who never loosen their collars (even by the pool) to American starlets with Louis Vuitton trunks and scruffy boyfriends in tow. 

The Room:

With oversize suitcases and their snazziest vacation wardrobes, guests arrive to entry-level guest rooms with a mixture of excitement and sighs. With prices that are the steepest in Europe, rooms are expectedly well-accessorized with high-thread count Frette and luxurious bath products worthy of stowing away into your overnight bag. But once you unpack you discover little room for stowing away the luggage or even enjoying a seated breakfast for two amongst the compact living spaces and interior views that leave the one underwhelmed. To the contrary, junior suites and the adjacent Palazzo Vendramin include spacious upgraded rooms with private butler and spaciousness we expected at these prices. Décor feels drowsily romantic with fluffy upholstered sitting areas, floral print pillows and in-laid marble floors that speak of a different time. While a weekend stay is a marvelous indulgence, especially by the pool during July and September, longer stays make the cumbersome motorboat ride into town and over-the-top décor feel impractical and a bit of a nuisance. Better suited for grandmas in gloves than socialites in their designer best, we hope the Cipriani freshens its look in time for its hot global debut in Miami for 2009.