Word: sumptuous
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...Warsaw uprising and rebuilt from scratch in the 1950s. A pastel-tinted masterpiece of reconstruction, the townscape fools most visitors and provides a gorgeous backdrop for the square's many outdoor cafes, art galleries and shops. The square is home to Fukier, the city's finest restaurant, whose sumptuous decor and attentive staff have been enjoyed by Presidents George Bush and Jacques Chirac--not, mind you, at the same time. Traditional Polish sour soup and a sausage cost $8; Polish-style duck and sour green apple, $32. Not far away, on Ulica (Polish for street) Belwederska, the Restauracja Polska-Tradycja...
That's evident in the first-class boutique hotels recently built in the city's large stock of grand old buildings. The most sumptuous is the Hotel Le St-James (514-841-3111), which was fashioned out of a 130-year-old merchant-bank building in the Old Montreal district. Travelers looking for suites with antique furniture and plasma-screen-TV-equipped, marble-encased bathrooms can alight here for $300 to $3,750 a night. A bit pricey, non? "Our guests don't ask the price, they ask for the square footage," sniffs the hotel's directeur-general Guy Luzy...
Once ensconced, set out to sample the food in one of North America's great dining capitals. In the preen-and-be-seen category is downtown's Cavalli (514-843-5100), where sumptuous nouvelle cuisine Italienne is served in a hot-pink and wasabi-colored decor best described as Felliniesque. You can lounge in a fishbowl setting, supping on the likes of macaroni with fontina and cheddar, black truffle puree, brioche bread crumbs and black pepper. Of course, this is a French town, and you can't go wrong at Toque! (514-499-2084) for fresh, local gastronomic creations...
...climb and re-climb the three flights of stairs to the museum's public gallery; crisscross Sydney to poke through storerooms; mount ladders to fetch preserving jars from high shelves; lie on floors to photograph specimens too fragile to be moved more than a meter from their cases. The sumptuous result, Museum (Cambridge University Press), provides the armchair-dwelling naturalist with a lift, a key to the storerooms, and a magnifying lens...
...month of Ramadan is flying by. Many feel that their main priority in the coming period is to focus on the spiritual rituals; reading and reciting the Koran, late nights spent in prayer at home or at the local mosque, daytime hours spent in fasting - a period bookended by sumptuous pre-dawn and sundown meals. The combination of piety and celebration turns the Arab World into a juggling act as people keep up religious rituals along with the TV marathon of soap operas and entertaining family and friends. Ramadan just isn't the right time for business...