|

Vetted House Rentals with Villas of Distinction

With the popularity of Airbnb and VRBO, more and more clients are requesting apartment and house rentals with us. For apartments in residential neighborhoods of European and American cities, we enjoy working with OneFineStay. Someone meets our clients at the residence the first day, goes over the apartment, and then gives them a concierge list of restaurants, shops, and sights to see in the neighborhood. For house rentals, especially on the beaches of the Caribbean isles of the Turks & Caicos and St. Barts, it’s hard to top the Villas of Distinction. Each house is personally visited and inspected before being added to the list. It also helps to know the Director of Sales, who ActiveTravels will often call to ensure that the one particular property we like for our clients is indeed fantastic. Try getting the personal lowdown with VRBO. Not happening. 

 

Similar Posts

|

The Ocean Edge Resort Takes Advantage of its Waterfront Setting

With six pools, a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course, tennis courts, and bike paths that connect easily to the 22-mile long Cape Cod Rail Trail, the Ocean Edge Resort offers its guests more than enough outdoor activity. Yet, I’m most excited about the resort’s latest partnership with Cape Cod Museum of Natural History to go on naturalist-led walks on the mud flats of Bay Pines Beach. Throughout the summer, you’ll explore Cape Cod Bay at low tide, searching for clams, crabs, sea cucumbers, and other marine life. The beachcombing is appropriate for ages 5 and up and they don’t need to dress up like SpongeBob. Though it might help find other critters.
 

|

Saving the Sharks of Palau

Palau is one of those locales, like Fiji and the Red Sea, discussed only in clandestine conversations between avid scuba divers. To reach it, you have to travel five hours from the West Coast to Hawaii, another seven hours to Guam and yet another 90 minutes to this cluster of 200 sparsely populated islands, which Jacques Cousteau called the best scuba diving site in the world. From your home base on the capital isle of Koror, head to the Big Drop-Off, considered the best wall dive on Earth. It starts in knee-deep water and then abruptly plummets almost 1,500 feet into an abyss. Nearly as mind-boggling is Blue Corner, a large coral cavity where three ocean currents meet. Hunker down and watch schools of tuna, white-tip sharks and 3-foot-tall giant clams (where’s the melted butter when you need it?). Those white-tip sharks are protected, along with hammerheads, leopard sharks, and more than 130 other species fighting extinction in the Pacific Ocean now that Palau has created the world’s first shark sanctuary. The country has banned shark fishing on more than 237,000 square miles of ocean, so divers can expect more up close views of those pearly whites. 
 
|

Favorite Fall Outings in New England, Biking Around the Basin Harbor Club, Vermont

The two weeks prior to Columbus Day is one of my favorite times of the year to be in New England. The temperatures are still reasonably warm, in the 60s during the day, and the leaves have changed color. Anywhere in Vermont will do nicely, thank you. But I love Addison Valley, known for its web of backroads ideally suited for road biking. The network of roads that branch off from the Basin Harbor Club are particularly enticing. Head south on Button Bay Road to Arnold Bay Road and you get exquisite vistas of Lake Champlain, with the Adirondacks standing tall in the backdrop. Venture onto Basin Harbor Road, turning right on Jersey Street, and the smell of manure is wafting in the air as you pass numerous dairy farms, eventually arriving at the Panton General Store. Continue on Panton Road and you see the backbone of the Green Mountains. This fertile valley was meant to be seen on two wheels at a reduced speed, especially during fall foliage. 

 
|

Exploring Prince Edward County, Ontario

Guest Post and Photo by Amy Perry Basseches 

For many years, New England was my playground to explore, and, in much the same way, I am now discovering the province of Ontario. Recently, I was off to Prince Edward County, about 2 ½ hours northeast of Toronto, "an island on the northern shore of Lake Ontario where you go to fall in love with food, nature, art and community all over again," says the official tourism site. I stayed with an artist friend in Demorestville, and visited Picton, Wellington, Lake on the Mountain, and Bloomfield. I loved the small towns, field upon field of agricultural use, numerous options for water activity, wineries (there are 30!), artists’ studios, antique stores, old stone buildings, and excellent farm-to-table food. 
 
For wineries, I can recommend Karlo Estates, with its wonderful tasting room inside an historic barn, and Waupoos Estates Winery, overlooking the waters of Prince Edward Bay. I thoroughly enjoyed the local food at the Drake Devonshire Hotel sitting outside on the beach. Also good was The Miller House Cafe, located in a 1796 former residence in Lake on the Mountain Provincial Park, 62 meters above Lake Ontario, with views of the Bay of Quinte below. I found antiquing success at the humorously-named Dead People’s Stuff, where I purchased a set of lovely highball glasses and a set of deep blue snifter glasses for my son (who recently moved into his first apartment in Boston). Lastly, it was off to Sandbanks Provincial Park, with "the world’s largest baymouth barrier dune formation," and long sandy beaches. I wish I had had more time to walk on the trails and swim in the surf. 
 
Also in Prince Edward County: theater, music, birding, as well as a renowned "Great Canadian Cheese Festival" every June, and a famous August Jazz Festival. The Globe and Mail ran an article recently entitled "Ten new things to see, do, eat and drink in Prince Edward County." It’s definitely a weekend destination I’ll return to. 
 
|

A Wonderful Week at The Basin Harbor Club

To celebrate my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday, my wife’s family headed to the Basin Harbor Club last week. And what a spectacular week it was! 127 years after Ardelia Beach started taking in summer boarders at her 225-acre working farm on the shores of Lake Champlain, the club’s fourth-generation hosts, siblings Bob and Pennie Beach, are proving that a family business can prosper over time. It helps that they have one of the premier locales on the lake, 740 acres overlooking one of the narrowest parts of Champlain. We did it all—golf, tennis, sail, sea kayak, stand-up paddleboard, swim to the trampoline, and my favorite activity of all, biking. Basin Harbor Club is based in Addison Valley, one of the most fertile parts of the state, where around every bend is a dairy farm, rolled hay, a carpet of emerald green, views of the lake, and the Adirondack and Green Mountains forming a ridge of peaks on either side of you. 

 
Basin Harbor Club is perfect for multi-generation family reunions, because everyone can do what they want during the day and meet for dinner that evening. The food was surprisingly good for a property that offers all-inclusive rates. A highlight was the lobster clambake on the shores of the lake while the sun was setting. Magical! The following day, we danced to a live band playing Nat King Cole favorites as we celebrated my 16th birthday (at least that’s what it said in the daily newsletter). Not surprisingly, many families book the same cottage for the same week the following year before they leave. No doubt, we’ll be joining them. 
 

Hotel Week Returns to Rhode Island April 17-30

Hotel Week in Rhode IslandTop hotels and inns around the Ocean State have significantly discounted their rates April 17-30, just in time to welcome visitors in need of a quick getaway or school vacation trip. The Second Annual Hotel Week features flat rates of $100, $200, and $300 per property as well as packages. For example, your family can spend the night at Newport’s Hotel Viking for $100 and enjoy the indoor pool. Or treat yourself to a cozy room with a fireplace and balcony at the Shelter Harbor Inn in Westerly or a junior suite with breakfast at the Stone House in Little Compton for $200. $300 a night will get you a master junior suite and hot breakfast at the Auberge Collection property, The Vanderbilt in Newport, or a midweek night at the Weekapaug Inn in Westerly, which Travel & Leisure named “One of the Best Hotels in the World.” If you need help with what to do in Rhode Island, pick up a copy of my latest book, New England in a Nutshell, where I include more than 75 entries on Rhode Island.

Leave a Reply