When I used to come to New York, we would go out in the evening and watch shows and see all the restaurants. Now we spend a lot more time going to parks. We went to Central Park two days ago for a good couple of hours. We found this playground with a nice sand pit with climbing things and slides. It was great. No one recognized me there.
You must spend so much of your life staying in hotels. Why did you want to own one of your own?
We’ve got a little bit of family history to the hotel. My brother got married there, and my gran and grandfather had their 40th wedding anniversary there. It was about a year or 18 months after my brother got married when my mom called me and said the hotel is on the market, the business is gone, it needs a lot of renovation and work.
It was one of those “should we, should we not” things. I spoke to a couple of people who I work with who said it was going to be really tough, a big investment and quite a big risk. But I thought it could be really cool and something that is really important to me. I’m really happy we did it at the end. It’s done really well, and I get to visit a few times a year and enjoy it.
What recommendations do you have for visitors coming there?
The scenery in that part of Scotland is great. You can go for walks and hikes. A lot of people come to visit because there are really great golf courses around there as well. I personally don’t hike because of my hip, but when we were kids, when we lived there we always grew up with a dog, and we used to walk dogs around there.
This summer you’ve started using Instagram more on your travels, posting personal snapshots of you riding roller coasters at Kings Island, amusement park in Mason, Ohio, and visiting the United Nations in New York City. Why do you feel so comfortable sharing on Instagram?
I used to do Twitter a lot more, and Twitter is quite a brutal place to be sometimes. You have to be careful on Twitter, but I enjoy Instagram a lot. It’s fun; I’m quite a visual personal myself. I’m not a huge reader; I like watching documentaries and movies. I also learn visually, so it’s nice.
It’s interesting because the more that I post stuff, the more people come up to me and say, “I follow your Instagram.” The last three or four weeks, people have come up to me and said, “We enjoy it; you have to keep doing it.”
