We nearly didn’t come to this marvellous place and I am so glad we did - we came for dinner and our experience was truly magical.
Entering HF, we were welcomed into the most uniquely creative, history-full family home, covered in naïf wall and ceiling art, wonderful paintings/sculptures, dripping candelabras, pewter goblets, tons of momentoes, family photos and press clippings which paper the walls. There are also enormous tablet sized books full of comments, laughing anecdotes and scribbles from previous guests.
We were 1 of 3 couples dining that evening and we each had our own private lounge area where we enjoyed a cocktail and appetiser and soaked up the wonderful atmosphere. The lighting is intimate and the music [Edith Piaf and other legends] evokes more impressions of happy times and eras gone by. We were then invited to dine in our own beautiful room upstairs with lovely antique tableware and more dripping candles. We had a truly delicious dinner although I understood the other 2 couples were less excited about what they had ordered [vegetarian biryani I think?] so maybe we were lucky in our dinner choice as it was lovely. We had a beautiful soup with homemade bread, followed by a very generous perfectly cooked chilli spiced tuna steak with rice and aubergine salad. Dessert was a lovely chocolate cake.
Helga had been unwell that evening but had made the effort to email us the next day to check we had enjoyed our meal and to apologise for not being able to say hello which was v thoughtful and summed up for us the essence of the Folly, which is that it is so magically personal.
When travelling around SL we wanted to experience SL as authentically as possible and thought that choosing to dine in the glamour of HF might be cheating a little bit …[?!] Having visited we now realize that was naïve as HF’s long and beautiful story [hung, draped, painted, etched on every wall and ceiling!] is every bit as authentic as our other adventures in SL.
Passing an evening at HF was a step into a very special time and place in SL and it is off the scale in atmosphere and heart. Thank you for a truly lovely, transporting evening, we’re still reeling from having visited!

There must always be certain places that catch the imagination in a
very certain way. If this opportunity were not there, the world of
travel and discovery would be a far less exciting place.
Helga's Folly is just such a place.

Visitors to Helga's Folly will not need to know that the essence of
the place is Helga herself. It is to be found . In the
photographs on the walls, in the reflection of the silver-slivered
mosaics of the bedrooms, in the voices of Andrea Botelli, Frank
Sinatra and Aretha Franklin that float across the distance of years,
through a series of cavernous, cool reception rooms and distant
corridors.
The house is imbued with a lingering concentrate of the woman who
brought the idea into being in the first place. A little time worn, a
little faded by the years, withdrawing more from the acquisitive probe
of the sun into the shadows of its' theatre-land setting, the Folly
carries - along with the allure of moth-blown velvet and dust-settled damask -
the elegance and wit of a bright and engaging mind, a generous spirit of glamour;
it is this that the guest will remember.

Some people are fortunate in stumbling upon the adventure they
recognise from the outset; others suffer the misfortune in arriving
somewhere for the right reasons, but in very much the wrong frame of
mind. These are the people who will not see a place for that very
particular magic it possesses. They, sadly, leave empty-handed and in
no way enriched by the experience.

This visitor is fortunate in thinking that a certain kind of magic has
worked in bringing him to the door of Helga's Folly.
Where would the magic be found without the memories to carry it away?