The gravel is raked into long waves that stop at a wooden gate. Behind it, a tiled hall and a few pines. Nobody is performing the garden for a camera. I would start here for that reason alone. Tokyo, a few days later, feels almost rude, and that is useful too.
One or two of these cities is a trip. All nine is a year. Rome, then Paris, then Venice worked because each city changed the next. Same idea. Pick the route up wherever you already are.
Kyoto
Tawaraya, the inn on Fuyacho in Nakagyo, never joined the big booking sites. Its own page shows the rooms and takes a card. Inside three days of arrival you telephone the desk, between nine and seven, Japan time. I like that they make you do it. You have already agreed to move at their speed, which is how this city works when it works at all.
If the inn is full, Park Hyatt Kyoto has been on the slope beside Kodai-ji since 30 October 2019: seventy rooms, kept low, Tony Chi with Takenaka. You can walk to Kiyomizu-dera before the buses. Kyoyamato, the old restaurant in the hotel's garden, reopened the same day. Yoshihiro Murata is still cooking at Kikunoi Honten in Higashiyama, three stars again in the Michelin Guide Kyoto Osaka 2026, the seventeenth year, and he takes his own reservations as well. The lunch is written out in Lunch at Kikunoi Honten. A full week is a different commitment: You Need a Week in Kyoto.
Tokyo
Kerry Hill put Aman Tokyo on top of the Otemachi Tower, and it opened on 22 December 2014. Levels 33 to 38, eighty-four suites, a lobby that is mostly one tall washi lantern. The Imperial Palace gardens sit below. On a clear morning Fuji is past them, and the financial district turns into a rumour. You will either want exactly that, or find it faintly silly. I have felt both before lunch.
Then you have to eat, and Tokyo stops being so polite about it. A counter in Ginza or Nishi-Azabu will have fewer seats than your party hoped, and the fish will decide the evening. Lose that argument and the basement at Mitsukoshi Nihombashi will still show you the season, with no reservation at all. For spectacle I would go once to teamLab Borderless at Azabudai Hills, open since 9 February 2024, a museum with timed tickets and no map. I would not go back. The counters are in The Banquet Guide to Tokyo.
Seoul
What I keep turning over is a lane in Bukchon, and a rule the avenue in the photograph never mentions. Along Bukchon-ro 11-gil, tourists may be in the lanes from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. After that the fine is 100,000 won, and it has been collected since March 2025. Shoppers and people cutting through are left alone. A resident is someone whose address is inside the zone. Three nights in a hanok leaves you a tourist, so go in the afternoon and keep your voice down. The lane got tired of being a set.
Signiel will still put you in the sky if Jamsil is the base: floors 76 to 101 of Lotte World Tower, 300 Olympic-ro, Songpa, Wilson Associates, the Han somewhere under the cloud. It is a good bed and a poor way to learn the city. The new patisseries are east of the river in Seongsu-dong. The Banquet Guide to Seoul is the map for that.
Hong Kong
I would plan the day around lunch and let this view happen inside it. Lung King Heen is on the fourth floor of the Four Seasons at 8 Finance Street, the harbour is in the window, and the Hong Kong Michelin Guide 2026 has the room at two stars after years at three. Dim sum, if your family measures a trip in steamers. Dinner, if you want the sommelier to have something to do. Lunch at Lung King Heen follows the meal through.
The bed worth chasing is The Jervois, forty-nine suites by Christian Liaigre at 89 Jervois Street, above Sheung Wan. Hong Kong, Turned Down is that side of the island. Tea is easier to get wrong than the hotel. LockCha's flagship is the K.S. Lo Gallery in Hong Kong Park, on Cotton Tree Drive in Admiralty, and there is another house at Tai Kwun on Hollywood Road. The Star Ferry from Central to Tsim Sha Tsui is worth one crossing. The Peak Tram can look after itself.
Singapore
The tour groups know this photograph. On St Andrew's Road, Odette and the National Gallery share a door, and Julien Royer's room kept three stars in the Singapore Michelin Guide 2026. Ask the way you would ask for a timed ticket, early. Then eat at Maxwell at noon. A lot of people here do both on the same day and do not apologise for it.
The Singapore EDITION has been open since 9 November 2023 at 38 Cuscaden Road, 204 rooms, where Orchard runs out toward the Botanic Gardens. Raffles has been back since 1 August 2019. I lean to the EDITION unless someone in the party has been picturing that Raffles courtyard for years, in which case let them have it. The gardens, on the UNESCO list since 2015, are the better walk from Cuscaden. Midday under the Supertrees can wait. Newer rooms than these are in Singapore's Hotels Finally Have a Point of View.
Bangkok
The prang takes the last light and the barges keep moving anyway. Mandarin Oriental Bangkok, at 48 Oriental Avenue, began as The Oriental in 1876, and the Authors' Wing still looks at that water. Le Normandie has been the French room in the house since 1958. Have the Thai meal first. The jacket and the long view can have the second night. Three Nights on the Chao Phraya stays with the hotel.
Jim Thompson's house, off Rama I near National Stadium, is teak and silk and about an hour. If the heat has made you simple, skip the compound and go to Or Tor Kor, the market opposite Chatuchak on Kamphaeng Phet Road. Mango, durian, no menu to decode.
Jaipur
Go while Amer still looks like this. By mid-morning the coaches are in the courtyards and Maota Lake is doing all the work alone. If you are buying anything, do it first, on MI Road. The Gem Palace has been the Kasliwal family's shop since 1852, court jewellers before the haveli had a street door. Ask what the stone is. A speech is an answer you can leave. The Gem Palace and the Education of Stones is that room at the length it deserves.
Rambagh Palace, the Taj hotel on Bhawani Singh Road, is lawns and a great deal of scale and the usual peacocks. Three Nights at Rambagh Palace. On a second day the block-print workshops in Sanganer still expect you to come in person.
Mumbai
The Taj Mahal Palace has faced the Gateway of India, the arch at the top of this piece, since 1903. Sea-facing rooms, a corridor that can hold a wedding and an ordinary Tuesday in the same afternoon, staff who will sit through a family argument and take no side. Dawn, before the ferries, is when the arch looks like that photograph. Three Nights Facing the Gateway is the Colaba stay.
Indian Accent's Mumbai room opened in 2023, on the ground floor of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in BKC. Same kitchen idea as Delhi and New York, more of the coast on the plate, and far enough from Colaba that the taxi ride is part of the decision. Dinner at Indian Accent, Mumbai. Galleries in Mahalaxmi and Lower Parel want an appointment. Try to wander in and the door will be shut.
Shanghai
The Fairmont Peace Hotel is still the Fairmont. That sentence goes out of date in 2027, which is the useful thing about Shanghai right now. Accor and Jinjiang have said the English name becomes Raffles Peace Hotel Shanghai once the renovation is done. The Chinese name stays. The doors at 20 Nanjing Road East stay open while the work happens. If you care what the confirmation says, ask which year you are buying.
The photograph is the other bank: Lujiazui, the Oriental Pearl dead centre. I would sleep in the lanes. Capella Shanghai at Jian Ye Li, in the former French Concession, is restored shikumen villas around a courtyard, and the plane trees are the walk. The Power Station of Art, the old power station on the Huangpu, is large enough to hold its own against those towers. Shanghainese, in a house, is Fu 1039 on Yuyuan Road. Anything past that is in The Banquet Guide to Shanghai.
I would still measure the others against that gravel. Stars, hours, and the name on the Peace Hotel's door will move before you travel. Ask again before you pay.
