Further south on this coast, The Crane (thecrane.com) has added a "village" of boutiques and restaurants to its 202 luxurious suites and rooms. On the south coast at St Lawrence Gap, the all-inclusive Almond Casuarina Beach Resort (almondresorts.com) has had a revamp, adding 95 sea-facing rooms and a shorefront pool.

The activities

Any self-respecting surfer should try their luck in the Soup Bowl off the east coast at Bathsheba. This world-class ( Read more... )
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Finding the perfect beach in Bahia shouldn't be difficult. Brazil's most colourful state may be known for its handsome colonial architecture and inclination for partying but, with over 1,000km of coastline, its prime assets are its beaches, quintessential white-sand shores laced with palm trees and lapped by warm, clear water. But, with so many to choose from, deciding which stretch of sand to park your towel on isn't easy.

Surfer-friendly Itacare and full-moon partying ( Read more... )
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It may be one of the most spectacular airport approaches on earth ? a sweep down the rocky and foaming Potomac river that still carries a hint of untamed frontier, then the final turn and the sudden unfolding below of the imperial city: the State Department and Federal Reserve buildings, then the White House half hidden by trees, the white needle of the Washington Monument, then the Capitol, and finally across the Potomac, now flat and wide, at an impossibly low height, before ( Read more... )
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Ski Independence

£1,418: Panorama, British Columbia

Includes Air Canada flights departing Heathrow on 30 December and self-catering accommodation in a Gold studio. "Panorama is a superb resort, renowned for its quality ski-in/ski-out accommodation and its great snow record, so with 50 per cent off the accommodation, and 2-for-1 on transfers, this is a perfect solution for the January blues," says Ski Independence's Philli Swindale. (0131 243 8097; ( Read more... )
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It surprised Christopher Columbus, too. He knew nothing of the island when he landed on it in 1492. Nobody did. Except, that is, the indigenous Tainos, whose ancestors had called the place home for some 4,500 years. Christopher Columbus put a stop to that. He declared it Hispaniola ("little Spain") and, with one eye on future colonisation commissions (and marketing brochures), noted in his journal that it was "a beautiful island paradise with high forested mountains and large ( Read more... )
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But it is more: it holds our roots, the source of our history and tiny family legends. We breathe in warm air, feel the sun on our backs. We've travelled thousands of miles to a place that only a generation ago we would have called home.

We ride in the taxi from Hewanorra Airport on the island's southern end to the tourist resorts and hotels that blanket the north. Banana plantations and rainforests, clinging to volcanic hillsides, roll past the windows. I ponder the ( Read more... )
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The report asserts that the failure to kill or capture bin Laden at his most vulnerable in December 2001 has had lasting consequences beyond the fate of one man. Bin Laden's escape laid the foundation for today's reinvigorated Afghan insurgency and inflamed the internal strife now endangering Pakistan, it says.

Staff members for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Democratic majority prepared the report at the request of the chairman, Sen. John Kerry, as President ( Read more... )
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Florida Highway Patrol officers had been preparing to quiz the world number one yesterday about how he came to crash his car into a fire hydrant and tree outside his luxury home in Isleworth, Florida.

A bloodied Woods, 33, was found in the early hours of Friday lying in the road with wife Elin Nordegren, who police said used a golf club to smash out the back window and help get the golfer out.

He was taken to Health Central Hospital in nearby Ocoee where he was ( Read more... )
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The bedrooms

Limelight Lodge has 126 rooms in 13 categories, ranging from standard to a two-bedroom penthouse suite. The style is contemporary minimalist ? none of those surplus cushions that have to be thrown on the floor. Mountain colours dominate, with sturdy dark-wood furniture and russet bedspreads on white sheets. The beds themselves are kingsize in spades or, in the case of twin rooms, spacious queens. All rooms have HD flat-screen TV, iPod docking stations, ( Read more... )
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It's a landscape of the greenest greens, impossible reds and the bluest of skies. Everyone should see a view like this once in a lifetime, take a deep breath and relax. Yet, the Foreign Office has only just advised that travel to this part of Colombia is safe. It's difficult to believe it was ever anything but.

Alex lumbers on to the veranda in his vest and shorts. Our big, gentle, Colombian guide used to be a policeman, working in narcotics. He now shows visitors ( Read more... )
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Balenbouche Estate, St Lucia

This former sugar plantation is a heritage site and now an elegant "eco-lodge" and organic farm. The four little cottages (two-bed Almond and Banyan, one-bed Calabash and Frangipani) are scattered with antique furniture and local artwork, and are surrounded by luxuriant gardens. The family-owned estate is committed to sustainability, uses solar power, composts organic waste and is involved in various community projects.

Balenbouche ( Read more... )
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The location

In the middle of Banff National Park, so development has been limited and the scenery is stunning. The town centre is only a brisk walk or short bus ride away. People come to Banff all year round for the activities and the wildlife. In winter skiing is, of course, the main draw; in summer the big attractions are hiking, golf and fishing. But if you have ever fancied playing lord of the manor - strolling through vast wood-panelled rooms with roaring fires and gazing ( Read more... )
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This summer sees more flights from more UK airports to more cities in the US and Canada than ever before. And it's hard to think of anywhere more suited to the car than North America: the sheer diversity and size of each individual state or province makes driving a great way to see the country on your own, with the flexibility of diverting to places that take your interest whenever you want. There's an extensive, excellent and well-signposted network of (mainly) wide and relatively quiet roads.

That's ( Read more... )
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We're in Brazil, the Vale dos Vinhedos, in its southernmost province of Rio Grande do Sul. The Valley of the Vines is at the hub of a modern Brazilian wine industry that owes its existence to the influx of the Italians in 1875, when several boatloads of immigrants arrived to take up the Brazilian government's offer of land grants to escape the poverty of Trentino and Veneto. The best land had already been snapped up by Portuguese and Spanish settlers, so the Italians had to ( Read more... )
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But there's something about the car's squared-off, blunted shape that doesn't feel quite right. Of course: the roof. After 1963, this ill-starred limousine wasn't honoured as a national shrine, nor was it sent to the crusher's yard. No, it remained quietly in government service for another few years, during which time some bright spark welded on a hard top. Try to subtract this unwelcome addition; try to put the sheer physical presence of this vehicle into that iconic, tourist-cine-camera ( Read more... )
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Mr Brown, the manager of the Hotel Trianon, and the dead doctor, Papa Doc's Secretary for Social Welfare, were both fictional characters in Graham Greene's The Comedians. The pool, however, was very real and so was the hotel. Apart from changing the name, Greene had hardly altered a thing.

The Hotel Oloffson is a gentle uphill mile from the Champs de Mars, the centre of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. Papa Doc Duvalier, the background villain in The Comedians, died ( Read more... )
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Not only is The Chelsea the first boutique hotel in Atlantic City, it is also the first non-gaming hotel on the boardwalk since the 1960s. There are no slot machines or strung-out gamblers here; instead, stepping into the main lobby of The Chelsea feels partly like stepping into the chill-out room of a Miami nightclub and partly like stepping into your (rather cool) grandmother's living room.

Split into two halves, the retro-styled Chelsea was formerly a Howard Johnson ( Read more... )
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Why visit?

It's 20 years since Crockett and Tubbs last rolled up their pastel jacket sleeves to tackle the drug lords of Miami. In those two decades the city has been transformed from seedy and sleazy to downright sexy. Yet, while British tourists flock to Florida each year in search of winter sun, how many of them stop to sample the delirious concoction that the United States' fourth biggest city has to offer?

In fact, more and more Europeans ( Read more... )
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The limousine driver outside the Hotel Nacional obviously thought I was mad. He had never heard of La Guarida, and he certainly hadn't planned on driving his smart Mercedes into the chaos of central Havana, with its romantic collection of street peddlers, pimps, touts and black-marketeers. But we eventually purred off to the sound of rustling convertible pesos, Cuba's eccentric hard currency. Dodging falling masonry and swerving around potholes, we reached an elegantly carved neo-Baroque wooden ( Read more... )
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