Cheryl Shops

I just got back from a whirlwind weekend in Miami with some girlfriends and our husbands. We stayed at the Delano, which is one of my favorite hotels in the world. Not only is it incredibly whimsical and glamorous, (the decor is inspired by Alice in Wonderland), but you feel incredibly pampered and the staff is super gracious—one of my favorite parts is whenever you walk in the door, the doorman says, "Welcome back." My other favorite thing is that the hotel smells amazing wherever you go: the lobby, the hallways, and so on. On the second day, while buying sun hats in the gift shop, we discovered the hotel's signature scent is a fragrance called Sand, made especially for the Lincoln Road boutique Base, which happens to run the Delano's gift shop as well. And while the gift shop probably deserves its own post (it has Comme des Garçons wallets, Kidrobot toys, and Clarins sunscreen, among other temptations), I'll focus on Sand for now. A mixture of bergamot, orange, musk, lavender, and patchouli, it's a unisex scent that smells not exactly like sand but more like  your skin after a day at the beach. It's delicious, and all six of us, wives and husbands, were intoxicated by it. Luckily for us, we all discovered a perfume-oil rollerball and candle in our Shop Box, the ingenious in-room version of Base (it also contains necessities like socks, condoms, and asprin, all reasonably priced). At $28 and $19.50 respectively, we deemed them bargains and tacked them onto our hotel bill. I'm wearing the perfume oil today, and I can report more than 12 hours after I applied it, it's still going strong. And now that I've discovered there's lotion, shower gel, and a spray perfume, all of which can be ordered online from Base, I don't even need to go back to South Beach to refill my supply. Although the Delano is so irresistible, I'm sure we won't stay away for long.