Rebecca Sparrow loves the lobby at The Algonquin Hotel, New York.

It’s the type of place American Idol’s Ryan Seacrest hangs out at to garner a bit a street cred.  It has more fabulous stories than the New York City Public Library. And there’s a pampered feline called Matilda who receives more fan mail than, well, pretty much everybody…

The Algonquin Hotel is one of New York’s historical landmarks thanks to it being the one-time stomping ground of the Apple’s literati in the 1920s.  Known as the “Algonquin Round Table” some of America’s greatest writers and wits (think Dorothy Parker to Harpo Marx) gathered for daily lunches to throw one-liners and barbs at one another.

Then there’s the fact that William Faulkner wrote his 1950 Nobel Prize speech here; that it was a favoured hang out of Tallulah Bankhead and that the hotel’s Oak Room Supper Club launched the careers of people like Harry Connick Jr, Diana Krall and Jamie Cullum. Next time you’re a Saturday Night Sally, rent the movie ‘Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle’ for an Algonquin 101.

While you have to shell out big bucks to unpack your suitcase, anyone can hang out in the infamous Algonquin Lobby at cocktail hour.  More delicious than the hot chilli raspberry cosmopolitans are the glorious armchairs and the pithy Dorothy Parker inscribed napkins (“I love a martini, two at the most – three, I’m under the table – four, I’m under the host.”)  You’ll feel like you’re hanging out in the library room on your Cluedo game board.

In a world full of Paris Hiltons this hotel is like Lauren Bacall – elegant, sophisticated and full of classic wit.
The Algonquin Hotel  59 West 44th Street  Between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, New York, NY 10036.  Visit www.algonquinhotel.com