Written by Lucy Fennings: Our top tip: visit Napa Valley in the new year and you’ll have it to yourselves (and at a super-tempting low-season rate). Tip number two: check into unique boutique resort The Carneros Inn. From a distance, Carneros’ rambling collection of structures looks nothing like a boutique hotel, and rather a lot like a group of warehouses. Closer inspection, however, reveals something far more exciting – something that would elicit ecstatic overtures about harmonious spaces and landscape-enhancing projects in Architectural Digest. We imagine one of their writers strolling along its lavender-lined paths, making expansive gestures toward the mountain backdrop and rolling fields. ‘This wonderful new-build resort is the result of a bold, contemporary vision of traditional local farm buildings,’ they’d say. ‘The distinctive tin-roofed barns, silos and rancher’s cottages dotted throughout Napa Valley have informed an ultra-modern “agri-chic” aesthetic that marries old-school decked porches, cowhide rugs and rocking chairs with Le Corbusier chaises and a colour scheme designed to relax and soothe tired minds.’ Click Read More for additional information and photos.

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Written by Lucy Fennings: Right credit crunchers, here’s a hot tip: kiss goodbye to wintry weather and say hello, sunny South Africa! The Rand is still offering a pretty good bang for your buck, so get yourself over there, sharpish. Here’s a little more inspiration to get you going…

When you were little and you fantasized about a letter arriving telling you that you were in fact the child of a kindly, wealthy, outdoorsy couple who owned a magical home with horses and a swimming pool and quad bikes who let you do whatever you wanted, you probably pictured something like Kurland. The gardens are mature and rambling, its private polo ground hosts matches every day in season, the Cape Dutch architecture is stylish 1940s and the interiors mix colonial country chic with contemporary comfort. But you don’t need rose-tinted spectacles to appreciate what’s on offer here: this luxury Garden Route boutique hotel really is that idyllic. Click Read More for additional information and photos.

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Written by Lucy Fennings: There’s not really much point in arguing with the sentiment that Venice (and here you must affect the nasal sing-song and shaggy-haired nod of number-one Venice fan Francesco da Mosto) is the most beautiful city in the world. It just is.

What’s that? You want evidence? What about all those Baroque, Renaissance and Rococo facades, moodily reflected in a network of waterways? The elegant barks firmly punted under mediaeval bridges by stripey-topped gondolieri like so many Turkish slippers? The mists of autumn wreathing over landing stages and around window frames? Venice is a visual, sensual, historical treat, and if its maze of alleyways and many surprising sights fails to quicken your pulse, you may as declare game over right now. Someone visiting such a splendid setting requires suitably splendid accommodation: and Palazzo Barbarigo is happy to oblige. Click Read More for additional information and photos.

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