Every week, and by their own admission nearly every day, Refinery29’s writers and editors trade notes on what is actually improving their lives. Sometimes it’s a water bottle that has become indispensable. Sometimes it’s a sleep product that has quietly rewritten the eight hours after lights-out. Once a month, those conversations get turned into a list of things the team has personally tried.
The October edition of the lifestyle, wellbeing and experience roundup opens with Susan Devaney, the site’s Lifestyle Director. Her two picks sit at opposite ends of the day: a pillow for the last thing you touch at night, and a Barcelona hotel for the first thing you do on a trip. Neither is a gadget. Both are about comfort that holds up after the novelty wears off.
The Pillow That Beat the Rest
Devaney’s bedtime upgrade is the Cozy Earth silk pillow. Her description is physical rather than technical: it is so soft and silky that when her head lands on it, she sinks right in. She doesn’t hedge about its standing either. She has tried plenty of pillows over the years, and this one comes out on top.
She is also upfront about the cost. “Yes, it’s expensive. Yes, it’s worth it,” she writes, which is about as direct as a product recommendation gets. The pillow is available at Cozy Earth, and as with everything in the roundup, the link is independently selected by editors, though Refinery29 may earn a commission on purchases.
Barcelona, Revisited From a Better Bed
The second pick is a place rather than a product. Devaney first came to Barcelona as a teenager and took in the warmth of its culture. Even then, she understood she was watching something rare: Antoni Gaudí’s La Sagrada Familia, still under construction. She never expected to see it again in her lifetime, let alone finished.
Last month she did. She stayed at Miiro Borneta, a boutique hotel, and spent a few days exploring the city and Gaudí’s church. That kind of return trip is different from a first visit. The first time, everything is discovery. The second time, you notice what has changed and what hasn’t, and a building you once saw as scaffolding and promise now stands as an actual place you can enter.
Her main takeaway about Barcelona is practical. The best part of the city is that you can walk it, looking up at the architecture as you drift from street to street. A hotel can either support that kind of wandering or work against it. By her account, Miiro Borneta’s location supported it, and she moved around with ease.
Many travel recommendations lean on the room itself: the linens, the view, the lobby. Devaney’s endorsement rests on something less glamorous and more useful, which is how little friction there was between the front door and everything worth seeing.
What Was Within Walking Distance
The area around the hotel gave her plenty to do on foot. She found cute little wine bars, small tapas places filled with locals, and a great gelato spot. The detail about locals matters. A tapas bar full of residents suggests a neighborhood that still functions as a neighborhood, not just a corridor of tourist menus.
Mornings started at the hotel, with a breakfast she called delicious. The pastries, in her words, were too good. It’s a small remark, but it says something about how a trip is built. Breakfast is the one meal almost every traveler eats at the place they’re staying, so a strong one sets the tone before anyone has opened a map.
The Case for a Park Across the Street
Across from the hotel is a park, and Devaney says she always loves it when a city has plenty of green space. Barcelona, she notes, certainly does. For a destination known mostly for dense streets and landmark architecture, that is a useful reminder: a good city break needs places to sit down and do nothing.
Put the two picks side by side and a pattern shows. The silk pillow and the Barcelona stay both aim at the same thing, which is rest that feels deliberate. One handles the hours you’re asleep. The other shapes the hours you’re awake, with long walks, a slow breakfast and a park nearby to reset.
The roundup’s framing helps here. These aren’t products chosen from a press release. The team says they are things its writers have personally tried and tested, shared because, as they put it, gatekeeping isn’t in their vocabulary.
Whether a pillow justifies a high price is a question only a few nights of sleep can answer. Whether a hotel can make a city feel walkable again is easier to judge: you step outside and see what’s there. Devaney found wine bars, tapas counters, gelato and a park, all within reach of a bed she was happy to come back to. What would you want within a five-minute stroll of yours?
