Conservatorium

It is much like any other weekend. Architect Mr Smith is on all fours, studying the plumbing with the intensity of a hawk. I am standing stricken before a wardrobe in which nothing looks ‘right’. Unusually though, there’s no swearing at taps, or cursing at clothes – because we are in room 101: not, it turns out, an Orwellian torture chamber, but a frankly disgustingly good-looking suite at stylish Amsterdam city hotel, Conservatorium.

Cavernous enough to have ‘zones’, the wardrobe interior is as slickly backlit as a Prada showroom. The bathroom has two types of travertine, a Japanese shower stool, and a freestanding bath with a view of Amsterdam’s rooftops. This is a bathroom designed for tall people: the loo is so high up your feet may very well dangle off the floor. The bespoke high-gloss doors and smoked-glass mirrors concealing all the functional stuff are so seamlessly fitted that you have to feel your way around, arms outstretched like a blind zombie, to locate the bathroom or reveal the minibar. Even with the lights on.

Damn the Dutch. Everything is perfect. This is a nightmare. Mr Smith is already texting his contractor to source special invisible door hinges, hang the floating toilet higher up and do other things I don’t understand. Now, since you don’t know me, let me just say: my inner monologue usually runs the gamut of hypercritical pickiness from ‘Meh’ to ‘Wah this free bar of gold is too heavy’, but this glamorous getaway is not going to let me find fault with anything. Bugger.

The other major life skills in my arsenal – planning and research – are also being neglected, thanks to Peter. Peter the Great. Architectural historian and Guest Experience Manager. Knower of things. Getter of tables. Within 20 minutes of our arrival, he’s given us a tour of this former 19th-century bank and music academy’s Neo-Gothic structure, Art Nouveau tiles, and contemporary steel staircases; explained our bedroom’s 67 touch-sensitive lighting options and bespoke Totem media hub; arranged tickets to the newly revamped Rijksmuseum, and booked us into hot local brasserie Willems for dinner. We haven’t even made it to the other end of our hi-tech, high-spec suite yet.

Downstairs, the perfection continues. The overarching modern minimalism is softened with a judicious measure of Eastern aestheticism and tactile textures. It plays with scale, and different surfaces. Architect-designer Piero Lissoni daintily doffs his cap to the Dutch Golden Age, with references to Holland’s trading heritage. The full-height atrium space is a thrilling mix of original brickwork and soaring glass; and the contemporary design classics, mid-century pieces and antique objets aren’t so much ‘on display’ here as ‘at home’ – it is in no way try-hard, and the gob-smacking scale of the place never overwhelms. In short, it’s bloody clever.

This is potentially life-ruining, because we quickly rack up a list of all the things we need to replace or buy when we get home. I will need some wrist-deep velvety area rugs, Porro chairs, some of those mouth-blown double-wall latté glasses, nu-Delft dinner plates, a helluva lot of matt black panelling, a couple of Henk Helmantel still lifes… and some new thumbs, if I ever want to use Instagram again.

Now, it’s OK to play on your hotel’s history as a one-time music academy (there’s a grand piano in the atrium, a glossy installation of vintage violins and a suite dubbed the Concerto, for starters), but if you’re going to call your restaurant Tunes, you’re going to have to put up with punny reviews and facile similes. We fully expect chef Schilo van Coevorden to dish up a harmony of this and a rhapsody of that, but what’s delivered is a symphony – nay, a veritable jazz syncopation – of flavours, crescendoing through several seafood-themed tasting courses up to the Wagyu beef. ‘Mmm-nomwow!’ we chorus, washing it down with satiny glasses of Spanish tempranillo-shiraz. High notes (sorry) include the lobster cappuccino with tomato foam – Mr Smith is mid-moan about pretentious foams when he tries it, and rapidly revises his opinion – and Schilo’s signature ‘Textures of Chocolate’ dessert, with baffling powders of panna cotta and praline.

I confess, by the end, we were so full of fine food and posh booze, I would have paid to make the courses stop coming: we are just way too greedy to leave even a crumb of that delicious meal unfinished. And so, waddling like fattened geese, we stagger into Conservatorium’s bar, a temple to fine drinking. No respite there: our gin and tonics – served in massive bowls lined with cucumber stripes of school-ruler proportions – could have felled Oliver Reed. And – bliss for naughty parents who enjoy the occasional social smoke – there’s a post-prandial cigar lounge on the upper floor, with a view of the DJ booth and the well-groomed crowd. There isn’t a single person in here who doesn’t look as though they share genetic code with Rutger Hauer, Karen Mulder or Lara Stone.

This sea of beauty prompts us to get ourselves into the hotel’s hammam-toting Akasha spa first thing the next day, just to see if there’s something in the Watsu pool that turns you tall and lissom. Mr Smith plops in and paddles to the other side at the speed of Continental drift. I torpedo through several dozen lengths with the efficiency of a Shaolin wahoo, admiring the vertical garden and space-agey staircase on my way. (Don’t tell Mr Smith I wrote that. One of those statements might not be 100 per cent true). We colonise the state-of-the-art whirlpool for as long as we dare (it’s big enough for a rugby team, but everyone’s too polite to share). A lengthy tenure seems only fair, since it took three minutes of stealthy zombie arms to find the ‘on’ button amid all that flawlessly lit white Corian. Mr Smith has to text his contractor again when we get out.

For those with romance in mind, a secret staircase leads to a rooftop balcony that offers the two of you panoramic vistas. Which is about as much of the city we saw. Apologies, Amsterdam fans. We did not touch a bicycle, or a canal boat. We didn’t go to Anne Frank’s house, or the Van Gogh museum. We entirely missed the marathon, the music festival and the design event that was on that weekend in this most easygoing of cultural getaways. We were just way too busy admiring the bathrooms.