Travel Notes: nice and rosé and comfy cosy are we at the River Lee

— and check out the winter wonderland at Center Parcs

Lead image River LeeIMG_6051 edit.jpg

Irish hotels are reinventing themselves like never before. Whether it's with Christmas hampers, dining credits, or hotel experiences, the hospitality industry has been pivoting to woo business in a whole new fashion. But one of Cork City’s most popular hotels is offering guests a more novel incentive to check-in: rosé wine! The River Lee has a new self-care package based on the variant. So with my annual mulled-wine pilgrimages on ice, I made the short drive city Leeside to enjoy an unlikely winter package. A brosé weekend for one.

I arrived at the River Lee on a wonderfully crisp eve, the glassy weather not deterring some hardy kayakers from making their way downstream beneath me. One of the hotel’s top-floor executive rooms, reachable by the hotel’s swish glass elevators, was my base. It’s my first visit to the River Lee and impressions are strong: rooms feature retro Scandi design nuances with a four-star penthouse apartment feel — the bathroom albeit a little more basic. All eyes are on that modernist bay window seating area however, which delivers city views from Shandon to Sunday’s Well. And welcoming me just alongside it, glistening out of its ice bucket, is that very said bottle of pink.