From top: The inn’s yoga loft; the private dining room.
Naturally, many will come solely for the transcendent experience of seeing Gere up close. “I’ll be doing room service,” he jokes, noting that the stargazing hasn’t gotten out of hand—just yet—even though he and Lowell pop by regularly. Recently, however, he had no choice but to greet a group of women trooping along a dangerously high stone wall, calling his name. “They just kept walking toward me, waving and saying, ‘We’ve come on zee bus,’” he says, laughing as he slips into his best Inspector Clouseau accent. “‘We are from Monaco! Hello, Richard!’ They had gone past six do not enter signs. They were the ladies’ garden tour from Monaco and they wanted pictures. I said, ‘Get down from there!’”
For the moment, Gere plans to keep his day job, pointing out that he and Lowell are not looking to become celebrity hoteliers: “We’re trying to invent something else,” he says. Still, they do occasionally wish that their latest project were more like a movie. “We do sometimes have those conversations,” adds Lowell, “where we say, ‘Can we sell it now and move on? Is it over yet?’”
