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Cancun tempts with multiple indulgences. Sun, sand, spa, shopping, scene-making.

And these days, sipping and savoring. Cancun has muscled to the front ranks of culinary getaway destinations. In a word, the food’s fantastic.

Cancun chefs from Mexico and beyond ply tasteful visitors with innovative, intriguing fusion fare. Expect exotic Yucatecan ingredients, worldly technique, and flavor-charged results.

• A virtual tasting pilgrimage to Cancun’s best restaurants >
• Why luxury travelers are beating a path to cosmopolitan Cancun >
• A tasty Cancun hotel, Le Blanc Spa Resort >

Photos from top: The astounding TEMPO by Martin Berasategui restaurant at ©Paradisus Cancun. Chef/magician Jonatán Gómez Luna of Le Chique ©Karen Tina Harrison. Labna restaurant, serving Yucatecan dishes, is named for this elaborate Mayan temple near Cancun. ©Frankmx/Wikimedia Commons.

Vacations are an important part of enjoying life and staying relaxed and effective in your job and your life. They need to be grand and expensive, but they work better if they contain a few key ingredients–otherwise, you could literally come back from your vacation needing a vacation! See what they are, and find ways to work them into your next break.
Create Truly Restful Vacations For Yourself

Why We Need Vacations
Feel like an annual vacation is a luxury that you can’t afford? Here’s why vacations are not only fun, but necessary! Read up on research-proven benefits to vacations.

How To Reduce The Stress of Travel With Kids
Whether you’re trying to coax an antsy toddler to stay sitting (and quiet!), answering the endlessly asked question, “How much longer now?,” or desperately trying to avoid being the parents with the screaming baby, travel with kids can be stressful! Luckily, these steps can greatly cut down on your travel stress so you can really enjoy your trip.

Quick and Cheap Vacations
If you can’t take days off of work and go somewhere exotic, here are some ideas you can do in a weekend, and feel like you really had a break!

What are the best ingredients to include in a vacation? The worst? Write your comments in the ‘comments’ section, and pass this blog onto your friends and family using the ‘share’ button. Have a great week!

Granted, Maui, Hawaii is off the beaten path. And that’s one of its many charms.

So if you can’t make it to the 32nd Annual Kapalua Wine & Food Festival, I understand.

This epicurean extravaganza kicks off tonight, June 6th, and runs through Sunday. Many pleasures await.

The festival’s home is The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua (seen here), a gracious resort with glorious golf, beach, spa, and dining. You could say that every day you spend here is a festival.

Luxury travel has its perks.

• See what tix you can still get for the Kapalua Wine & Food Festival >>
• Pleased to introduce you to The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua >>
• The hotel brand that inspired the very word Ritz >>
• Why other hotel brands aspire to Ritz-Carlton’s spectacular service >>

Photos: Kapalua Wine & Food Festival and the main pool, both at ©The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua.

Here’s the latest list of 10 travel deals for this week. Many of these links lead to offers with a very limited shelf life, so if you’re interested, act quickly. But don’t act so quickly that you miss the fine print. Spring Travel Deals aren’t quite so fleeting, and are also worth a look. Among this week’s deals: a sale on luxury escapes, rail discounts for couples and an all-inclusive sale on resorts in the Dominican Republic.

To the world, Los Angeles means Hollywood. But to Hollywood bigshots, Los Angeles means home.

And L.A. stars’ passion for their home city is an epic love story.

You can get inside this Hollywood love story in My City, My Los Angeles, an engrossing new book by Jeryl Brunner.

Jeryl (seen below) is a journalist who covers celebs and lifestyle for top media like In Style and About.com. A magical interviewer, Jeryl got scores of L.A. stars to open up and reveal what makes them feel at home in Los Angeles.

• New L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, Jessica Chastain, Kim Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest, and many more…
• Get a sneak preview of My City, My Los Angeles here on Luxury Travel >>
• Order your copy of My City, My Los Angeles >>



• Right here, highlights of Jeryl’s companion book, My City, My New York >>
• Order your copy of My City, My New York >>

Photos from top: My City, My Los Angeles; Oreos/Wikimedia Commons; Author Jeryl Brunner ©Karen Tina Harrison

Lots of us luxury travelers pride ourselves on knowing a charming, affordable little hotel on a side street in Paris or Rome. You can see it: family-owned, in a shabby-chic old buiding.

You wouldn’t think that such a place exists in New York City, a bulwark of big-brand luxury hotels.

But you’d be wrong.

Guest Author Victor Fiorillo knows one such hotel smack in Greenwich Village, with a view of Washington Square Park‘s famous arch. (Plus, guess what, a guest clientele heavy on Euro visitors).

Let Victor clue you in to Washington Square Hotel >>

(Still skeptical? Well, how Parisian is this? On Sundays, the hotel’s restaurant morphs into a jazz club.)

Photos ©Washington Square Hotel. Hotel stairwell ©Karen Tina Harrison.

California’s Napa Valley furnishes fabulous fun any time of year. Here, you’ll savor the USA’s most beloved wines and many of the country’s best restaurants and resorts.

Napa Valley has it all. And from July 12 to 21, it has Napa Festival del Sole.

Inaugurated in 2006, this tasteful festival has become a summer must for visitors who love great wine, food, and the performing arts.

In other words, luxury travelers.

• What you’ll miss if you don’t make it to Napa Festival del Sole >>



• All the delicious reasons that Napa Valley is an ongoing luxury travel legend >>

Top two photos: Castello Amorosa dinner and concert at Festival del Sole ©Tom Sullivan. Sunrise over Napa ©Vi Bottaro. Coveted table at Chef Tom Keller’s The French Laundry ©Deborah Jones.

Loyalists — American colonists who sided with England during the Revolutionary War — were run out of the soon-to-be USA. Some of them fled to Harbour Island in the Bahamas. When you see where they ended up, you can’t think of them as losers.

Luxury Travel’s guide to this patch of paradise is resident India Hicks. Once known as Princess Diana’s 13-year-old bridesmaid, the native Brit is today a designer, entrepreneur, and creator of award-winning Crabtree & Evelyn potions. Allow India to…

• Show you where to sun, shop, dine, and dance on Harbour Island >>
• Tell you the love story that led to her Harbour Island life with five kids >>
• Reveal how she stays comfy on long international flights to her modeling and design gigs >>

Photos: Harbour Island pink sand beach at sunset. ©Larry Deack/Wikimedia. India Hicks ©Tim Monro. Cycling on Harbour Island ©The Islands of the Bahamas.

The Ritz-Carlton first became a legend in the early 20th century, and was revived by the Marriott hospitality company in 1983. Once again, The Ritz-Carlton is a beloved luxury hotel brand.

This top-drawer name now graces 82 hotels in 27 countries. Ritz-Carlton properties to open in 2014:

• Two in Morocco: at Marrakech’s jet-set Jnan Amar Polo Resort (top); and on Rabat’s famed golf course
• Ritz-Carlton, Kyoto, on Kamogawa River near the Gion geisha district (left)

2011 marked the opening of the futuristic Ritz-Carlton, Toronto (below) and the first ultra-luxe Ritz-Carlton Reserve, in Phulay Bay, Thailand (right). Two hotels, one word: breathtaking.

The takeaway: Ritz-Carlton remains charismatic and cutting-edge, like a true superstar.

• Find out more about the hotel label that inspired Puttin’ on the Ritz >>
• See why other hospitality brands aspire to Ritz-Carlton’s service standards >>

Photos from top: ©The Ritz-Carlton, Marrakech; ©The Ritz-Carlton, Kyoto; ©Phulay Bay, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, Thailand; ©The Ritz-Carlton, Toronto; Kids’ club at ©The Ritz-Carlton, Palm Beach.