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.

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.

Fresh from my chocolate wrap at the Wave spa, I reposed upstairs to my suite at the corner of the 9th-floor of the Seaport Hotel to admire the late afternoon sun on the sailboats and white ferries darting around Boston Harbor.

It’s golf that brings most people to The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island, a super-deluxe seaside resort overlooking 10 miles of beautiful barrier island beach near Charleston, S.C.

The decline in customer service among airlines is so widespread that a genuine show of interest and concern is a rare luxury. We just got a reminder of what a luxury it can be.

No matter what hour of the night they arrive in Papeete’s airport, passengers are welcomed by smiling girls in colorful sarongs who drape necklaces of fresh flowers around visitors’ necks in welcome.

Say Tahiti and a glorious paradise comes to mind, a landscape of steep mountains from which waterfalls plunge hundreds of feet through a blossom-studded tangle of tropical vines into clear pools --- or of white beaches with palms curving toward a turquoise sea.