543. Macau | St. Regis Hotel

During our short visit to Macau, we had the pleasure of staying at the beautiful St. Regis Hotel Macao. St. Regis' slogan is "Experiences Beyond Expectation"; our stay certainly had exceeded my expectations! I have stayed at many luxury hotels throughout my travels, but the overall experience at this hotel was my favourite and it was nice to be able to share it with my mom. We had the full experience here: limo transfers to and from the port, an amazing dinner, evening at the bar, Iridium Spa treatment, in-room breakfast as well as the restaurant breakfast, and even a personal tour of the hotel. We also experienced their signature butler service, which is available 24 hours for all the guests of the hotel.

There will be 3 posts in this series (including the restaurant/bar and spa experience). This post will be a general review!


The first St. Regis Hotel to open was the one on Fifth Avenue in New York City (which I visited once back in 2013!), built by John Jacob Astor IV more than 100 years ago. He wanted to create the world's most luxurious hotel with the most advanced technological features of the day. For example, St. Regis in New York was the first hotel to have air conditioning.

He passed away 8 years later, as one of the passengers on the Titanic. His hotel and legacy lived on and today, St. Regis has almost 60 hotels and resorts around the world still known as one of the top luxury hospitality brands.




Arrival and Check-In: We arrived by ferry from Hong Kong. Our butler that evening, Troy, greeted us at the port and took us to where the hotel driver/limo was waiting. They were very friendly and chatted with us on the way back, providing some interesting facts about Macau and buildings as we drove by.

When we arrived at the hotel, we were greeted by Mark, the supervisor of the butler service and a bellboy who promptly took our bags. They gave us a very warm welcome and led us into the hotel and straight up to our room where we would do the check in. We were brought chamomile tea as well as they noticed my mom had a sore throat.

After the initial check in, they took my passport and credit card (for the safety deposit) back downstairs to process while we stayed in the room. When they brought it back up for me, it was in a St. Regis envelope which I thought was a nice touch.







First impressions of the room: very spacious, clean, beautiful bathroom, very well-stocked with all the amenities we needed and more..& amazing view!! As you may know, my favourite city in the world is Paris, so I got particularly excited to see this:



View of the pool from our room


I also LOVE this "Handy" phone, which all the guests receive during their stay in Macau. It's a cell phone that has all the important St. Regis contacts stored, guide of the hotel, guide of the city, and a WiFi hotspot! I was very happy I didn't have to use my over-priced roaming data plan while exploring the city.

That night, we had a dinner reservation at the hotel's restaurant: The Manor. I'm going to make a separate post for that tomorrow.

A few minutes before our reserved time, we headed out and it turns out Troy, the butler, was waiting in the hallway to escort us to the restaurant. He brought us a map and guidebook of Macau, along with a card with all the top attractions listed (in checkbox format) so that we could show the taxi driver where we wanted to go if we had trouble communicating. Very helpful!

After our dinner we went to the bar for a couple hours where I did some work on my laptop and had a cocktail. It was a very nice experience. I will post about it tomorrow as well.


When we got back to the room, they already did turndown service and brought out the most comfy slippers I ever had at a hotel. They also gave us 8 (!) extra bottles of water because they knew my mom had a sore throat.


The first morning, we had in-room breakfast. I've had this a few times in other hotels in the past and it was always just a tray but this time it was more extravagant. The night before, we chose what we wanted. I went for the English style breakfast while my mom chose the Chinese style.


This was everything! There was soooo much food (& we didn't even choose all the options per category). The butler laid it all out for us and when we finished, we had to call them back up to collect everything. Such a delicious breakfast with a wonderful view..definitely my favourite breakfast from the whole Asia trip.


Here are some photos I took during our tour of the hotel. The largest Presidential Suite there was over 4000 square feet! My favourite feature in all the rooms were the bathrooms..they were all very beautiful.





Overall we were extremely happy with our stay at the St. Regis Hotel in Macau. The level of service and attention to detail was exceptional. I was very impressed with the staff's communication as everything we experienced was very well co-ordinated. They were all super professional and friendly/conversational at the same time. I was always greeted by name (even if it was our first time meeting; they always knew it before I introduced myself). St. Regis Hotels are known to provide all guests with personalized, anticipatory service which I felt was very true. It seemed like they really wanted to make our stay memorable and the most enjoyable possible.

Everything about the stay was flawless and I would definitely recommend it if you are going to Macau. They are very centrally located, right on the Cotai Strip and quite close to the Taipa ferry port as well as Macau International Airport.

& I will end this with a photo of my favourite spot at night:



Other St. Regis Posts:
The Manor - Restaurant Review
Iridium Spa - Spa Review


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493. Capri | Casa Morgano

The other hotel I stayed at in Capri was Casa Morgano. It's another 5 star hotel located along Via Tragara, but closer to the beginning of the street rather than the very end like my other hotel (Punta Tragara Hotel, which I reviewed in that post!). The design of this hotel was quite different from my first. This one seemed like a quintessential Capri-style villa with beautiful tiled floors throughout, of hand-painted majolica. The suites are furnished with antique furniture with floor to ceiling windows and large sea-view terraces. I stayed in a "Junior Suite with Sea View". It was incredibly spacious with a huge terrace (consisting of a table and two lounge chairs), a sitting area, king sized bed and a large bathroom (which was my favourite part of my stay! You'll see why later). The bathroom had a shower and a jacuzzi bathtub which I spent hours in every night.

Casa Morgano is the newest hotel in the collection of luxury hotels owned by the Morgano family of Capri. Their other hotels include La Scalinatella, Hotel Flora, and Grand Hotel Qvisisana. The family has welcoming guests into their hotels since 1880; providing everyone with warm island hospitality.


Check-In: My check-in was extremely quick. I was going to Pompeii that day so I had to do the changeover from Punta Tragara to Casa Morgano early in the morning, to then leave in time to meet our guide in Pompeii. Punta Tragara gave them a call for me to let them know that I was on my way and to arrange my luggage transfer from one hotel to the next. I didn't expect my room to be ready already so early in the morning, but it was. I arrived (it was about a 5 minute walk away) and they checked me in very quickly, brought me to my suite, showed me around, etc. They knew I was heading to Pompeii right after so they provided me with some details on how to get there and back. Pompeii was amazing by the way! I will dedicate a full post to it next time.

The staff here were extremely nice and friendly. They were easy to talk to and made me feel very comfortable and welcomed. They all greeted me by name when I came and left, and always ensured I was having a good time at the hotel and on my trip overall. For example, the next morning after I visited Pompeii, they asked if I had a good time there (when it wasn't even the same people at front desk who I had told the day before that I was going). They were also very helpful and told me to give the hotel a call if I was out, and ever needed assistance with anything.





I had said the bathroom was my favourite part about staying here..and here's why!! I don't know if you can tell from the photos, but this jacuzzi was huge. It took a long time to fill up but was so worth it. The water pressure was really good too in both the jets and shower head, which usually isn't the case in old buildings such as this. So I was very happy with that.












Check Out: I think I already talked about this in a previous post, but the morning I was to check out was extremely hectic and stressful. Well, thanks to the hotel staff who assisted me, my stress levels had lessened a bit lol.

That morning, I was supposed to leave Capri to go to Rome. I had already booked my boat to take me from Capri to Naples, then at the train station there I'd go to Rome.

The night before, I had everything planned out with the hotel. They sorted out a schedule for me as to what time my wake up call would be, what time they would come get my luggage, what time I should be having breakfast, what time I needed to leave to get to the port on time, etc.

That morning, a storm was coming so there was a lot of wind and the sea was rough. All the high speed boats (which is what I had booked) were cancelled because of this and the only boat leaving Capri all of that morning and afternoon was a ferry, scheduled to leave earlier than my originally planned departure time (with the other boat). I only found out about this when front desk called me early in the morning, while I was still sleeping, to let me know. I panicked of course, but they kept me calm and helped me figure out a Plan B to get on the ferry and still make it on time. I was still a bit rushed (as you can see in the photo above, I didn't have time for much of a breakfast...)

In the end everything worked out and I am so grateful for the hotel for helping me and letting me know about the boat cancellation. If they didn't inform me, I don't think I would've known. & most likely would not have made it to Rome that day.




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Make Up For Ever Pro Sculpting Brow Pencil

A few weeks ago, I received the new Make Up For Ever Pro Sculpting Brow Pencil. It is part of Make Up For Ever's new Pro Sculpting Collection. This range takes contouring to the next level with easy to use pro tools and techniques, to shape your face with lights and shadows. The collection includes four pro sculpting face palettes, five pro sculpting brow pencils and four pro sculpting lip tools. Each product is designed to define and enhance your natural beauty. They kindly offered to send me something from the collection to try. I chose the 3-in-1 brow pencil since I never used to do my brows and had been wanting to start. I received #30/Brown.

The brow pencil is a 3-in-1 tool that works to define, contour and highlight your brows for a perfectly sculpted and transformed look using 3 easy steps:

1. Slanted edge - use to colour in and define the brows
2. Brush - use to comb and sculpt the brows
3. Sponge tip - use to highlight and add natural light for perfectly sculpted brows

It is my first brow pencil and I'm very happy with it. It is very easy to use and I love that it still keeps my brows natural looking. It has the glide-on precision of a pencil, with the natural looking effect of a powder so it will not give your brows the very unnatural look.

Purchase it at Sephora: Make Up For Ever Pro Sculpting Brow Pencil ($32)






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469. Quebec 2016 | Aux Chantignoles at Chateau Montebello

Here was my breakfast at Le Chateau Montebello! I've mentioned this in the past that I LOVE hotel breakfasts (buffet style or even delivered to the room). Not because the food tastes good (I mean it does..) but I love the experience of it. I'm not quite sure how to explain it but you probably know what I mean. The breakfast we had here was delicious. There was a wide selection of food including the usual continental style items like bread, sausages, eggs, potatoes, beans etc as well as crepes, an omelette station, delicious oatmeal..and more.

The hotel's main restaurant is Aux Chantignoles where we had breakfast and dinner. It's pretty big in there, with several dining areas and very beautifully decorated throughout.

I'll start with breakfast:




I loved their oatmeal!

Here's a view of the restaurant. This is the part where you walk in but on the sides there were individual rooms as well. So we came for dinner that night shortly after checking in (which I posted about yesterday). We hadn't really planned to eat there at first but since there were no other options for food that night, we decided to have our dinner there. The restaurant/food really exceeded my expectations. I didn't think much of it at first (since I usually prefer going to actual non-hotel restaurants when travelling) but this one was really good.

There were a lot of unique things on the menu. It was one of those restaurants where you knew that whatever you ordered, it would most likely be good and nicely presented. So I had a really hard time choosing what I wanted since I wanted to try almost everything on there! By the way, here is the menu. A lot of different meats and French-Canadian dishes.


An amuse bouche to start.

I went for the Monk Fish and Shrimp Medallion appetizer (with parsley sponge, lobster sauce, ocean paper, and shellfish oil). This was delicious. I just didn't like the parsley sponge that much..it didn't have a strong taste to it but if you don't eat it first it gets all soggy by the end and tastes like wet bread lol. It makes it look cool though. I really liked the shrimp medallions.

My bf got the Wild Game Parmentier (with four spice sauce and fingerling potato chips). I had a taste of it and it was really good as well. It's a mixture of a lot of different meats, finely chopped up.


Then we had this sorbet. I think the term is Intermezzo..?

For the main course I had the Pappardelle Paste with Milk-Fed Veal (with sage and lemon cream sauce, spinach, asparagus and sun-dried tomatoes). I don't think I ever ordered veal before. This was really good. I loved the sauce and the veal was tender and juicy. It was so filling though.

The Deer Wellington (with Saskatoonberry sauce, Jerusalem artichoke puree, and honey mushroom). I tried a bite of the deer as well. It was my first time eating deer. It tasted kind of like beef. I usually don't like gamey meat but this was really good.

The dessert was buffet-style so we had a bit of everything. I wish they did actual dessert though. The options they had were just cakes, jello, pudding, fruits, etc.

It was overall a really nice and memorable meal/evening. I definitely recommend having dinner at the restaurant, even if you're not staying at the hotel!


Other Posts from this Trip:

Au Chalet en Bois Rond - Cabin Review
Dog Sledding
Snowmobiling & Trails
Le Chateau Montebello - Hotel Review
Quebec City


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