There Are New Reasons To Go To The Exclusive Resort Albany Bahamas

Over the past 15 years, I've taken 50 cruises with family and friends, trying out different ships, routes, and cabins.

Spring skiing brings out the best in downhill enthusiasts. Warmer weather, plenty of sunshine and a festive atmosphere that often includes sloppy slaloms and mountain scavenger hunts all make for a very enjoyable time on the slopes.

The hundreds of pink-and-white cherry blossoms that bloom each year symbolize the start of spring in our nation’s capital. But when peak bloom occurs varies by year, and is dependent on the weather — a few warm days could cause the blooms to come early in March, while a cold snap could keep them from opening up and painting D.C. pink until later in April.

Though most locals use Chicago's Orange Line to commute to work or Chicago Midway Airport, I think it has so much more to offer visitors and residents alike.

Saudi Arabia has launched a global brand campaign for its cultural tourism site AlUla, home to ancient ruins and a growing list of luxury hotels. The “Forever Revitalising” campaign has been produced in six languages with events in Dubai, London, New York, Paris, Shanghai, and Mumbai.

Transatlantic and other lengthy, ocean crossings once defined sea travel, but in modern times only one true ocean liner remains. Aside from Cunard’s Southampton to New York service, travelers seeking a transatlantic cruise are mostly left with world cruises or lengthy grand voyages, but there is another option.

Grapes have been associated with pleasure since ancient times, a symbol of Bacchus, the god of wine and revelry. These days, clusters of plummy Concords, oval autumn royals and dusky kyohos are decorating dinner tables, doubling as cornucopian decorations and low-effort snacks. “You can get a beautiful, imperfect drip and drape from grapes,” says the interior stylist Colin King, 35, who overflowed a marble urn with abundant mounds of them for the launch of his furniture collection, a collaboration with the Future Perfect, in New York this past fall. Although he uses green grapes for daytime parties, for evening events he prefers the “moody, sensual vibe” of dark varieties — like the attenuated, oblong moon drops that the artist Laila Gohar, 35, mixed with red globes and flames to form an edible monolith for the recent opening of the Essentiel Antwerp clothing store in New York. The chef Mina Stone, 42 — who runs Mina’s, the cafe at MoMA PS1 in Queens, and is a go-to caterer for art gallery dinners — favors Thomcords, a sweet, seedless hybrid she often serves with dessert to “provide heft and a colorful backdrop” for daintier confections. She also likes to roast grapes alongside seared duck breast. In London, the pastry chef Claire Ptak, the owner of Violet bakery, offers what she calls fragolina cupcakes, named for the fragola (Italian for “strawberry”) grapes that she cooks down, then purées and adds to the buttercream frosting. The fragolas “taste like a berryish Concord,” says Ptak, 49, who tops each cake with a small cluster of fruit. The frosted treats “transport you back to childhood when you take the first bite,” she says, “and then you realize they’re also very grown-up.” —

Since moving from Seattle to Luxembourg for school, I've noticed a few things the European country does better than the US.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jaclyn Sienna India, the founder of the luxury travel concierge Sienna Charles . The following has been edited for length and clarity.

The quest for a better quality of life influences many Americans’ decisions on where to live, work, play and travel. U.S. News and World Report has just released its ranking of the top 25 U.S. cities that offer the highest quality of life.

I first landed in Berlin in the late 1990s, in the heady years after the fall of the Wall. I was aware enough of its licentious reputation to startle a teacher by announcing plans to run away there and open a club. But that first night my girlfriend and I chanced on a bar owned by the Glaswegian cousin of queer artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman. I DJ'd with a pile of scratched 78s, he took us to a party in an after-hours record store run by Russian émigrés, and we ended the morning at a techno night in the basement of a mansion block on Karl-Marx-Allee, sweating among the Stalinist decor.

Even in a city packed with flashy competition, the new Fontainebleau Las Vegas managed to attract the biggest stars during Super Bowl weekend.