Applebutter Inn is just what a B&B should be: not too big, comfortable and welcoming, a place where you immediately feel at home. And not pretentious about it.

Woodstock, Vermont, may not be the first place you’d think of for a family vacation, but it should be. The kid-friendly Woodstock Inn & Resort is only the beginning of the town’s charms.

Overlooking a mile of pristine beach on Martha’s Vineyard, this new resort combines contemporary style and old-fashioned hospitality for a perfect island getaway close to Boston.

Willow Stream is the signature spa brand of a few select Fairmont Hotels, purpose-built to new standards of luxury. The Willow Stream Spa at Banff Springs, a resort long known for its natural hot-springs, brings that historic Canadian Rockies grand hotel into the 21st century of healing springs.

Our room was in a treetop aerie, elevated so that we looked out at the ocean from the tops of a stand of manuka trees. It was hard to know which to admire first – the 360-degree views of sea, coast and snowcapped mountains or the window-walled room itself.

UNESCO named Switzerland’s Lavaux region, on the sunny north shore of Lake Geneva, a World Heritage Site for its cultural landscape of vineyards and farms.

The bellman swept back the gold drapes with a flourish to let the late afternoon sunlight flood my room – and to reveal a post-card view across Lake Lugano to the mountains on the opposite shore.

The original owners entertained the vacationing Italian royal family at Villa las Tronas and we felt like royalty ourselves, from the moment we stepped inside this Sardinian retreat.

In the heart of Valpolicella vineyards, just north of Verona in Italy’s Veneto region, stands Vila del Quar, a Renaissance villa and wine estate whose owners welcome guests to beautiful rooms and Michelin-starred dining.

Perhaps the world’s most colorful festival, and certainly its noisiest, Las Fallas in the Spanish port of Valencia is a celebration that has to be experienced to understand its appeal.