Hi-Hotel

Nice’s most extreme design hotel is awash with colour, funk and bonkers ideas. It has rooms like no others you ever saw. The bar is a basket. It is warm and hugely enjoyable even if, like me, you have the design flair of an Austin Allegro.

Naturally, the place comes promoted (in the hotel blurb) by ecologically-sound culturo-babble. That is the French way. What they omit to say is that the Hi is mainly great fun, a sort of adult adventure playground. Off-centre and 200 metres from the sea, the neutral eight-storey block gives no indication of the wackiness within, where walls are like beaten metal and the floor is fuchsia.

To the muted bongs and boings of electro-music, one notices high-backed chairs dotted about in colours not so much primary as primary school. For a luxury hotel, space is a bit tight but configured as a succession of things to discover.

And the bedrooms? Imagine a space designed by someone who’s never heard of bedrooms. Mine had a bed in the middle of decking, not at all screened from the shower by a bank of bushes. A wok-shaped washbasin stood by the green armchair.

It was all genuinely entertaining, as were other rooms which responded to other concepts. On the roof, there’s a solarium, with a little tub. The basement now houses a spa, and snack dining is in a sort of organic canteen. With the nearby bar backed into what looks a basket fallen from a big balloon, it’s wonderfully chummy - and groovy, too, on regular DJ-driven music evenings.

These days, the Hi has its own, equally groovy private beach just moments away. In a bucket-and-spade world, you may have massages, sushi and mood music.