SOME people collect stamps or coins, others prefer Toby mugs, salt and pepper shakers or vintage cars. As a youngster growing up, I had an uncle who collected hotels, probably at his wife's suggestion.

To my young eye, she seemed happiest if staying some place that required changing clothes half a dozen times a day to display her vast wardrobe!

While my travel enthusiast's parents planned vacation itineraries around spectacular scenery and historic sites, my uncle's itineraries started with some famous world-class hotel he was anxious to see and savour.

My childhood postcard collection includes many showing a line drawing of him waving from the window of some headline hotel. The Mark Hopkins in San Francisco, Quebec's Chateau Frontenac, Canadian Rockies' Banff Springs Hotel, Colorado Springs' Broadmoor, Los Angeles Biltmore . . . and the collection continued when he headed for Europe.

Those hotels and their glamorous dining rooms where the centrepiece of his trip. The area's attractions seemed secondary. As a youngster, I was intrigued by his enthusiasm choosing unique hotels.

In fact, I had another very special uncle (brothers, both childless) who also travelled the world in similar fashion. Sadly, both had heart attacks in their forties and I never got to share my own adult adventures with them.

And while we all like to stay in memorable accommodations with personality, our family always sought out a destination first, then decided where to stay once we got there.

But reminiscing about those early travels, I got to thinking there are definitely some world-class hotels so special that they are truly synonymous with their location. Staying at them is part of the total experience.

Here are some that staying in them is alone worth the trip. All tend to be in the "splurge" category. However, if visited off-season when airlines offer special rates, you'll find they become more affordable.

So many properties that left such a strong impression on this traveller have undergone ownership change because of economics, death, heirs anxious to divide profits and so on . . . any number of reasons. But the essence of their magic personality remains.

Charles Ritz was ill, but resting in an upstairs suite on my first visit to that fabled Parisian treasure. My staying in a very gilt-edged, large private suite reserved for Aristotle Onassis obviously set a certain mood. But an encore visit to one of its "regular" suites a few years later was almost as impressive.

Obviously, there's absolutely nothing "regular" about the Ritz and a small private dinner hosted by Charles Ritz's attractive, very chic young wife in one of its private salons was a classic example of what flawless grande luxe service really means.

Staying at Paris' Meurice was an equal joy . . . exceptional accommodations and grand public rooms, especially the dining room with its elaborate painted ceiling all rated applause. So did its prime location overlooking the Tuilleries Gardens.

Both remain part of a disappearing era. And both the Ritz and Meurice are in the heart of Paris' most prestigious shopping near Rue de Ste. Honor?, Rue de Rivoli and Rue de Castiglione. One can easily work up an appetite strolling through such shops as Hermes, Perfume House of Guerlain (creator of my favourite Shalimar) and prestige fashion houses.

Travelling south towards the Riviera, Hotel du Cap at Antibes epitomises glamour and grandeur of lifestyles described by F. Scott Fitzgerald. After several lunches on different trips sipping champagne on its Eden Roc terrace, one almost needs a decompression chamber to return to reality.

There was a time when assignments took me to the Riviera with some frequency. Prestige properties like Nice's Negresco and Cannes' Carlton where headliners then . . . and still are.

My Negresco suite, with its gilded Napoleonic bed draped in pale blue silk, was quite dazzling. So was the Carlton's view of the liner anchored in the harbour, just in front of the hotel so favoured by film stars attending the Cannes Film Festival.

There's no disputing those many Riviera experiences were memorable . . . but, sadly, overbuilding and overcrowding along that acclaimed shoreline have forced us up into the upper hill villages seeking scenery and more solitude. The coastline has become a victim of its own overdevelopment and when a cruise ship disembarks there, we flee fast.

We've covered both Claridges and the Savoy in this column, celebrity properties synonymous with the good life in London. We've found both exceptional in very different ways. Of course, every traveller develops their own list of personal favourites. Although I didn't stay at Raffles during a cruise sailing from Singapore to Indonesia aboard Holland America's first (the one that tragically sank off the coast of Alaska while still very newly built), it left a memorable lasting impression. Sitting on its fabled Palm Court sipping the Singapore Sling invented there, with music of a string orchestra drifting out across the veranda, created a rare mood.

It was followed by a tri-shaw ride back across Singapore, passing eerie death houses where the terminally ill were taken to die. Home base going and returning from that cruise was Peninsula's Marco Polo, another gem, especially if you're staying in one of its two-storey suites. Wherever your room there, seldom will visitors have seen orchids displayed so lavishly.

And speaking of Peninsula . . . most famous of its properties remains its Hong Kong luxury property. Tea in its lobby is a must, so was being picked up at the airport in one of a fleet of Rolls. Its lesser properties use Mercedes. Oh my.

Yes, there are glittering new celebrities on the scene . . . the Regent's Four Seasons, Shangrila and on and on. Certainly comfortable and luxe and one might add similarly priced.

But somehow staying in Somerset Maugham's suite at Bangkok's historic Oriental Hotel was the edge for this traveller, although I've stayed at many dramatic properties there on other Thailand trips.

of trips ago there I attended a private fashion show at the Oriental with members of the Royal Family's honoured guests. Watching Chanel-dressed women nearly prostrating themselves on the rug bowing before the Princesses was a far different experience than the polite courtesy Queen Elizabeth receives.

There's something very special about a luxury hotel that's been in the same family ownership for generations. Heidelberg, Germany's Europaischer Hof is a prime example. Owner Ernest von Kretschman maintains a standard that few others can meet. And there's no sitting on one's laurels or coasting along on past reputation there. Constant upgrading and improving what already seems perfect is the rule here.

Unfortunately, many travellers trapped in the "chain syndrome" get locked into staying at only internationally branded hotels. That's fine sometimes, but often it means missing out on what is truly the world's premiere jewels in the hotel world's crown.

They're individualistic, dramatic and incomparable, definitely never "cookie-cutters". Canadian Pacific never duplicated itself, whether it was Canada's Banff Springs Hotel, Chateau Frontenac or Chateau Laurier. Obviously, we'll have to be back another time for some encore visits with readers. We're running out of space before taking you to Aswan's Old Cataract Hotel overlooking the Nile, Estoril's very royal Palace Hotel, and our great favourite, five-star Reyes Catolicos at Spain's Santiago de Compostela. There's a long list of favourite castles, palaces, country estates and Relais and Chateau waiting to fascinate you.

they're pricey, but certainly a gala way to celebrate a very special occasion. When Lugano, Switzerland's Hotel Splendide owner asked us for suggestions on marketing his priciest suites, my brother Jim had a suggestion.

Daily price of intensive care at our back-home hospital was BIG $$$ per day at that time. "Sell it as preventative stress reduction medicine," said Jim.

But you don't have to go half way around the world to find such gems. Laurence Rockefeller was definitely ahead of the curve when his Rock Resorts created Caneel Bay Plantation on the island of St. John in the US Virgin Islands.

And to make sure it remained surrounded by pristine vistas, he bought 50,000 acres and donated it for the Virgin Islands National Park. What an inspired use of money, preserving a dramatic slice of scenery from the threat of over-development and proving his theory that resorts and conservation could co-exist.

For many years, Caneel Bay was the location where winners (or sometimes losers) of major American elections, especially presidential ones, went to relax and unwind after hectic campaigns.

It's low-key, understated, but beautifully done, the kind of place where the rustle of quiet old money was as subtle as trade wind breezes that made air-conditioning unnecessary. Our several visits there were Utopian.

Rockefeller was very serious when he proclaimed no building should rise above palm level. He'd first discovered the area cruising by with his wife in 1952 and wanted it to remain unspoiled.

On one of his inspection visits when some new villas were under construction, he carefully viewed the scene from a boat along the shoreline and when a roof was visible rising above that desired palm tree height, it was immediately lowered. Ah Laurence, where are you when the overdeveloping world needs you! (He died in 2004 at age 94).

Yes, it was relaxed and "country club casual" . . . but run with a very high level of perfection. Jim used to kid that the property's super-efficient Swiss hotel school-trained staff gave the impression of having cuff links chiselled into their wrists.

Back in the long ago golden age of travel, when people sometimes spent "the season" at these gems, it was considered fashionable to pack up a large steamer trunk and sail or train off to one of those fabled glamorous resorts.

Although that tradition is mostly "Gone With The Wind", there are still jet-setters who do take off in a modernised less formal way. After all, it's not how long you stay some place, but the pleasure and change of pace just a few days can bring. It will probably come as no surprise to readers to learn this traveller, who enjoys collecting the unusual, has assembled a collection of vintage standing steamer trunks. They're quite nostalgic and it all started with some well-preserved ones from my grandparents and great grandparents.

Then the occasional one appeared at large estate sales, complete with polished brass hinges and locks that opened to reveal pristine drawers and areas for hanging clothes . . . and, of course, colourful travel stickers with names of those headline hotels and vintage steamship companies.

It's quite fun for creating a museum-like storage area. But now, suddenly they seem to have disappeared and it's been a couple of years since the last one surfaced.

q On to Berlin for football's World Cup