DECADENCE with a difference

Hotel rooms are often boring places you have to put up with just to explore someplace exciting.

At Nick's Cove, a new complex on Tomales Bay an hour or so north of San Francisco, you could be perfectly happy spending most of your time just exploring the hotel rooms.

Not that you actually would call any of these places “hotel rooms''.

A string of a dozen cabins, cottages and other assorted structures that stretch alongside Highway 1 just north of the town of Point Reyes, Nick's Cove is a kind of Ralph Lauren meets Northern California fever dream of a resort.

Eccentricity's home

It's almost impossibly chic. Rather than settling for the kind of streamlined, polished glamour you find in luxury resorts, Nick's revels in eccentricity.

Most great hotels want to make you feel as if you're rich.

But Nick's also wants to make you feel as if you're tasteful, well-travelled and just plain interesting.

And you'll find lots of great stuff to boot.

Take the cabin called Nicolina, where I stayed. It's built on the frame of a houseboat that was transformed in the 1950s out of an old hay scow once used to move feed across Tomales Bay to the dairy farms of Point Reyes.

Before that, it was a rail car.

Crisp and quirky

Now it juts out over the water on pilings.

It no longer rocks with the waves but when it's quiet, you can hear them softly slapping against the shore underneath.

The interior is snug and shipshape.

Highly varnished dark wood ribs contrast against bright, white wainscoting.

A kind of clerestory lets in the light.

You sleep on crisp, white linens in a captain's bed surrounded by padded bumpers and flanked by portholes.

In the bathroom, a big claw-foot tub gleams with chrome piping and it features a rain-style showerhead.

The tile floors are heated.

For the gadget-minded, the sink empties by flipping up.

You eat, read and write at a breakfast nook anchored by a highly varnished foot-thick mast.

Stacked in one corner of the room is an assortment of antique fishing rods.

Alongside is a tackle box, full of old fishing lures.

A framed collection of outsize specimen moths hangs on one wall, a 1930s sportfishing map of the US on another.

There are seashells galore, pictures of fishermen and a basket made from an armadillo shell.

The place is so set-designed that when a floorboard creaked underfoot, I almost believed it must have been planned as a sound effect.

Yet everything is put together so artfully that it never quite crosses into parody.

This could be because, as improbable as it may seem, the whole thing is rooted in reality.

Although the name, Nick's Cove, sounds as if it might have been focus-grouped by a Hemingway book club, it really was the name of the fishing camp that Bay Area restaurateur Pat Kuleto bought to build the property.

(The settlement was established in the 1930s by Nick Kojich, a Slavonian fisherman, and some of his friends.)

Other treats in store

Kuleto is a well-known San Francisco restaurant designer and owner.

The chef at his restaurant Farallon, Mark Franz, is a part-owner of Nick's Cove and helps run the restaurant here.

The food is very good, and, of course, based on local and seasonal products.

This is Marin County.

The oysters, farmed within a couple of miles of the restaurant, are terrific.

I particularly liked the grilled sardines that were a late-summer appetiser.

Kuleto and Franz bought the property in 1999 and it took eight years of fighting with various governmental and environmental entities to get it open.

(The restaurant menu features a mock item of “Red Legged Frog'' served with “mounds of sticky red tape'' priced at $2 million, or Dh7.3 million.)

From my perspective, it was all well worth it. Nick's Cove is so marvellous that you can easily imagine spending a weekend without leaving the premises.

That would mean missing out on some treats, however. Tomales Bay is one of the prime oyster-growing areas on the West Coast and the drive along Highway 1 is punctuated with places to stop and slurp.

There's the well-known Tomales Bay Oyster Co.

Be sure to stop at the Marshall Store, where the barbecued oysters come finished with a shot of chipotle sauce and are accompanied by Kermit Lynch refreshments and Cowgirl Creamery cheeses.

Indeed, Cowgirl Creamery, one of the finest artisanal cheesemakers in US, has its headquarters in the charming little town of Point Reyes Station, just a few miles south of Nick's.

It's a great place to spend the day, with a food hall, a bakery, a really good bookstore and several galleries.

Sweet decadence

Or you can travel another couple of miles to the Point Reyes National Seashore, a splendid place for long, foggy walks on the beach.

If you're feeling really energetic (or merely anticipating a big night of oyster-eating), hike down to the lighthouse, where winds of more than 100mph have been clocked.

Fair warning: Coming back up to the parking is like climbing a 30-storey building.

On the other hand, you may want to go in another direction entirely.

Wait for the breakfast delivery at your cabin — freshly baked pastries, ripe fruit and a strong pot of filter-press coffee.

Wrap yourself in a warm robe and snuggle into bed with a mystery, listening to the rhythmic slap of the waves and watching out of the window as the sky's dawn grey gradually clears.

It's good to be rich and interesting, even if only for a morning.

Go there . . . Tomales Bay . . . From the UAE
From Dubai
Emirates flies three days a week. Fare from Dh6,730
Singapore Airlines flies daily via Singapore. Fare from Dh6,630
Cathay Pacific flies daily via Hong Kong. Fare from Dh6,000
Delta flies daily via Atlanta. Fare from Dh5,680
— Information courtesy: The Holiday Lounge by Dnata.
Ph: 04 4298576

Where to stay

II Nick's Cove
Cabins start from $225 to $695 (Dh827 to Dh2,553).

Bay watch

Tomales Bay is a 6,800-acre estuary located on the central California coast approximately 40 miles northwest of San Francisco.
The bay occupies the seaward end of a rift valley created by the San Andreas fault. This fault lies underneath the bay and below Highway I.
Tomales Point and the surrounding hillsides were not traditionally forested.
Non-native Monterey Cypress trees and Blue Gum eucalyptus trees were planted on Tomales Point and along the shores of Tomales Bay to shelter pioneer settlements and summer residences.

Source: Tomalesbay.net