Notes From Nancy: Hotel Bel-Air

TLF IC Nancy Novogrod spent 21 years as the Editor in Chief of Travel + Leisure. Notes from Nancy is her collection of memories from a life well traveled and her musings for the future.

If you mention the Hotel Bel-Air, I immediately conjure up the scent of slowly burning avocado wood wafting through the air as I walked to my room at night along a path rimmed by low-lying plants and the subtlest of lights. LA was an important destination for me in those days. I was the Editor in Chief of House & Garden (or HG, as it was then called) and I would fly out there to see houses—all potential stories—from Bel Air and Beverly Hills to Pacific Palisades and Malibu with the editor who covered the region for the magazine. Each night after dinner I would return to sink into the enormous comfort of the hotel—this was long before its boldly inventive redesign by Alexandra Champalimaud, and the look, as I recall, was California light and cozy with a dash of English country house style.

Once a year, during Thanksgiving week, my husband and children would join me at the Bel-Air to visit with our California family, which included cousins close to their age; my mother and my husband’s mother would join us too. Sometimes an old-time celebrity would wander past the table during Thanksgiving dinner in the hotel’s clubby dining room much to the delight particularly of my mother (I would hold my breath hoping she would not exclaim). If I had to use one word above all others to describe this hotel it would be private. It’s a sanctuary—a very special place and no one can or should disturb this and the Bel-Air’s magic spell.