Sherman's Travel

Feel young again, with the wind in your hair and the crystal blue ocean stretching out before your eyes, on a new model Harley Davidson as part of a special package offered by the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach. Don’t feel land-locked into just pool and spa amenities any longer – grab the keys and cruise the beautiful South Florida coast in luxury. The “Keys to Palm Beach” package includes overnight guest-room accommodation with a private balcony, a complimentary valet for the “rental car,” and a quintessential scenic adventure via either your choice of an Electra, Road King, or Street Glide model motorcycle or a BMW 3 series or Mercedes C Class sedan. If you’re looking to get wet, you can even ride the waves on a self-guided catamaran trip, ideal for four people.

The package is available until March 2012, with the best rates offered until January (at $369 per night). After January, rates jump to $569 – still nothing to scoff at, considering you’ll be the envy of all travelers seeking thrills and sophistication! One “toy” is offered per night – so stay for three and enjoy all three adventures!

Use our Travel Search price comparison tool to find the lowest rates on flights, hotels, packages, and more travel deals.

While many spa-goers want to channel a healthful, Zen vibe, there’s an entirely different group – group being the operative word – looking to turn up the volume a bit and raise more than just a glass of lemon water as they enjoy some pampering. Hence, the rise of the “social spa,” with public and/or private areas designed for pre- and post-treatment lounging, soaking, chitchatting, and sipping. They are ideal for girlfriends’ getaways and bachelorette parties, and here’s a small sampling:

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Baby Boomers, take your mind off that dwindling 401(k) and pursue a more experiential type of retirement savings at Jupiter Beach Resort in Florida this fall. The AAA Four-Diamond property is offering a “Beach Boomers” package through September 30 that slices 20 percent off the best available room rate, plus provides access to bucket-list vacation activities like skydiving, deep sea fishing, and Harley Davidson joy rides. If the grandkids want to tag along, book an extra room – the hotel will slice half off that rate.

THE VALUE: The 20 percent savings brings room rates as low as $199, including daily breakfast for two; save 10 percent at the on-site restaurants, spa, and on beach rentals. Plus, score a second room for 50 percent off.

THE CATCH: The package is technically only available for bona fide Baby Boomers – those born between 1946 and 1964 – though we’re told the managers won’t check your age .

THE DETAILS: Call 800- 228-8819 or visit the Jupiter Beach Resort site and use promo code BOOMERS to book.

WE’VE GOT MORE: See our Palm Beach Travel Guide for more trip-planning information, then use our Travel Search price comparison tool to find the lowest rates on flights, hotels, packages, and more travel deals.

While one-off organic spas with fastidiously natural skin-care treatments have always existed, now a number of high-end hotel spas are adding all-natural, non-toxic spa treatments to their menus. These hotels spas are catering to a customer who’s concerned about chemicals in her cosmetics and wants beauty treatments to be as carefully sourced and crafted as her dinner at ABC Kitchen (or groceries at Whole Foods). Here are five hotel spas offering luxurious all-natural facials:

1. The Spa at Four Seasons Resort Palm Beach
The South Florida spa just debuted eco-luxe treatments with Amala, which means “most pure” in Sanskrit. It contains no synthetic ingredients and whole plant ingredients (and is one of the most popular product lines at Barneys New York). Its pioneering founder, Ute Leube, sources a majority of the ingredients from organic farmers around the world.
Treatment to try: Amala Worth Avenue Firming Facial. www.fourseasons.com

2. The Sahra Spa & Hammam at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas
Treatments at this brand-new spa use Kahina Giving Beauty, a high-end natural skin-care line based on the benefits of argan oil. This nourishing ingredient is sourced from Berber women’s cooperatives in Morocco, and every facial gives 10 percent back to them.
Treatment to try: Kahina Giving Beauty Facial. www.cosmopolitanlasvegas.com Read more

You don’t have to have a closetful of Lilly Pulitzer dresses or manage a multibillion-dollar hedge fund to enjoy a romantic getaway in this pedigreed, perfectly manicured South Florida resort area. Sure, it helps to have a little cash – after all, the Town of Palm Beach is the wealthiest in America with at least 22 billionaires and untold millionaires among its 10,000 year-round and 30,000 seasonal residents. Still it’s possible for even non-moguls to enjoy a relaxing stay at one of the 13-mile-long island’s top resorts – unless, of course, you can wrangle a personal invitation from Donald Trump to overnight at his 20-acre historic beachfront estate Mar-a-Lago.

Don’t know the Donald? How about conservative pundits Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter? (I didn’t think so.) Perhaps mystery writer James Patterson? Or what about rockers Rod Stewart and Jimmy Buffet? All call this tony, hedge-lined enclave home for at least part of the year. And as Palm Beach emerges from the shadow of its most infamous former resident, jailed Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff, who swindled his posh neighbors out of millions in the last decade, and prepares to celebrate its 100^th anniversary in grand style in 2011, you, too, can be part of the scene. Well not really, but at least you can watch from Worth Avenue’s sidewalks, which are quite lovely. I recently spent a whirlwind visit touring Palm Beach and its top resorts – which range from intimate to grand and from posh to playful. Which best suits your style?

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Pumpkin is not just great in a pie. It’s also great in a skin-care product or in a facial. Particularly pumpkin enzymes, which literally digest dead skin cells, helping along the skin’s exfoliation process. By clearing these surface skin cells, pumpkin peels help prevent pore congestion and pimples, and they help smooth, refine, and brighten your skin almost immediately. (While it would take several treatments to see dark spots lighten, new skin cells revealed by exfoliating tend to be more even in tone and reflect light better.) Fruit enzymes like pumpkin (or papain from papaya or bromelian from pineapple) sound gentle compared to peels with the word “acid” in them, but they’re definitely potent ingredients.

Pumpkin’s also a multivitamin for the skin, since it contains beta carotene, zinc, and vitamins A, C, and E – all great antioxidants that help protect the skin from free radical damage and signs of aging. “Pumpkin is a super-ingredient for the skin,” says Kristin Carpenter, director of the Eau Spa by Cornelia at the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach. “It’s a natural cleanser that exfoliates and fights aging.”

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Swapping your cell phone for a pair of slippers and your boardroom voice for a whisper can be a real spa drag, according to a growing number of spas that are serious about playfulness. (The Jonathan Adler–designed Parker Palm Springs was one of the country’s first to break with the spa-as-sanctum standard, and other like The Standard in Miami and Eleven Spa in Las Vegas have followed.) These spas, like the Eau Spa by Cornelia at the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach, which I just visited, take a deliberately carefree approach to de-stressing. What they all have in common: lessening the burdens (and the buzzkill) of toeing a strident spa line by playing up the pampering—a spa M.O. and a term that’s all but been banned from the rule book. Read more