I've recently returned from my first visit to Harbour Island in the Bahamas, and I have the tan—and, more importantly, the caftan—to prove it. Famous for its white sand beaches and billionaire homeowners (think Ron Perelman, Barry Diller, Arki Busson and Robert Miller), the island is also home to The Sugar Mill, the cultishly revered store owned by model-turned-designer India Hicks.  In fact, one of the first things my friends and I did upon arrival was get on a golf cart (the preferred mode of transportation of the Brilanders, as the locals are called) and zip over to the shop.

The irony was not lost on us that we were coming from New York, a city with thousands of boutiques, and we were spending hours shopping at one store on a tiny island. But we couldn't resist the floaty caftans and cute bikinis—not to mention the decent exchange rate.

Unfortunately India herself was in Los Angeles filming Top Design—she's the show's new host—but we still had fun perusing the clothes from Allegra Hicks (India's sister-in-law), Anya Hindmarch Beach, Taka and the Danish line Day (my favorite). I ended up walking away with a pink-and-white scarf from Kenya, Spider Lily body polish (part of a bath collection India created with Crabtree & Evelyn) and a gorgeous cotton tunic that India had made, well, in India. I wore mine the very next day to Sip Sip, the restaurant where all the Brilanders, it seems, stop for lunch.

The Sugar Mill
(242) 333-3558
thesugarmill@coralwave.com

Until recently, the quaint market town of Tetbury in England's Cotswolds district was best known for the antique shops lining its narrow, cobble-stone streets. Now there's another reason for visitors to flock to the Gloucestershire town. Last month, the area's starriest resident, Prince Charles—whose rambling country pad Highgrove is just outside Tetbury—set up shop there.

The store—Highgrove Shop—stocks a cornucopia of organic fruit and vegetables sourced from Highgrove's own Home Farm. There's also china decorated with images of hens, designed by Samantha Buckley, an alumna of Charles's Traditional Arts School in London, and soaps infused with hypericum plucked from his gardens.

So far, the store's royal connections have been drawing in the tourist crowds. "We've even had people from America signing the vistors' book," says Sally Jarrett, the shop's manager. But it's not only those eager to experience a slice of royal life who are turning up. Local residents are regulars too, snapping up chutneys, honey and leeks. The store's Champagne and red and white wines have also proved popular, perhaps because they're the very same as those served at official functions in the Orchard Room at Highgrove.

Even the usually cynical British press has nodded approvingly at the store, both for its relatively competitive pricing and the fact that all the store's profits go towards the Prince's various charities and projects. And for those who can't make the trip across the pond to visit the royal corner shop, not to worry. Later this year, the store will launch its own Web site, and the goods will ship worldwide.

"I didn't know there were any great, old, cool places like this in New York," marveled my step-daughter soon after we checked into the 139-year-old Mohonk Mountain House on a recent weekend. A teenage world traveler, she's seen Asia and Europe, but her first trip to the Shawagunk Mountains of upstate New York did not fail to impress.

With its winding hallways, creaky staircases and oak-panelled everything, the lodge reminded me of The Shining—that is, if The Shining had been a family comedy. Kids were everywhere in evidence, scampering through the halls, spending their parents' quarters in the game room and dressing up for dinner in the massive dining hall, where jackets are still required for men of all ages. We slept late, overate and played endless rounds of Scrabble and hearts in front of our room's crackling fireplace.

Mohonk has managed to make its spa, which opened just three years ago feel equally old-world. There's an outdoor hot tub, a sauna, steam rooms and sixteen treatment rooms where you can get treatments like warm stone massages and rosemary sage body exfoliations. While you wait for your appointment, you can relax in the spa's glass-enclosed veranda, surrounded by ancient trees. I now hear that Mohonk may soon offer outdoor treatments. Excellent. Now I have a work-related excuse to plan our next visit.

The idea of getting a Thai massage has always seemed unappealing to me. In a Thai massage, I was always led to believe, one's body is stretched mercilessly into all sorts of uncomfortable positions, and instead of the masseuse's long, swooping movements, there are individual applications of pressure up and down the body. Sounded like way too much work. But a recent trip to Thailand, where I sampled the treatment at Chiang Mai's Four Seasons and the spa at Phuket's Trisara resort, proved me wrong. Not only was the massage, a combination of exacting moves, yoga and physical therapy, oddly energizing, it actually made me feel like I had done a bit of exercise—a serious plus. Still, the real bonus for me was the discovery of Thai fisherman pants, the oversize one-size-fits-all cotton trousers that one wears during the massage. The sarong-pant hybrid makes more of a style statement than sweats, and is the ultimate after-hours uniform. I scooped up 10 pairs at a local handicraft store for 100 baht (about three dollars) each;  you can score a pair online for $22 at fisherpants.com.

Fisherman photo: APICHART WEERAWONG/APPhoto

M1NT Shanghai, view overlooking the Bund

Three years ago, the members-only club M1NT was London's talk of the town. Billed as the world's first club in which members could own shares, M1NT quickly became known as the place where nouveau riche and old money rubbed shoulders, with members reportedly including Val Kilmer and Laura Parker Bowles.

But not all went smoothly for M1NT and its brash young founder, former trader Alistair Paton. The club's original location, on Sloane Street, closed in summer 2006 after the building's landlord (a company owned by Gordon Ramsay) claimed M1NT had fallen behind on its rent. And some of the boldface names identified as M1NT members—Elizabeth Hurley among them—told the press they'd never set foot in the place. But the club persevered, relocating to Mayfair and more recently opening locations in Hong Kong and Cannes.

This August, M1NT will bring its bling to Shanghai, opening a new club on the city's historic waterfront. The perks touted are almost cartoonishly billionaire-bratty: Members can sip Champagne from the rooftop Jacuzzi or buy Aston Martins directly from a catalogue that accompanies the drink menu. With no shortage of new wealth in China, finding people willing to plunk down the $25,000 minimum investment to become shareholders (non-shareholder members pay an $800 annual fee) shouldn't be a problem, says Paton. "The market has just changed dramatically," says Paton. "The next New Yorks, Parises, Londons—to me, that's Shanghai."

M1NT Shanghai

When I moved to Paris from Los Angeles last year, one of the upsides was a welcome respite from the never-ending onslaught of trashy celebrity culture. In L.A., if you don't Tivo The Hills and check TMZ twice a day (as I did, I admit), you often have nothing to contribute to a dinner party conversation. In Paris, however, being seen buying a tabloid like Gala is still more embarrassing than being caught chain-smoking in a maternity ward.

In truth, I always suspected that the relative paucity of gossip rags here was due not just to the time-honored Gallic respect for la vie privee, but also to the lack of interesting French celebrities.

And then Nicolas Sarkozy came along. In recent months the president (who appeared on Gala's cover seven times in 2007) has overturned decades of social and political protocol, and the ever-discreet French have been trying to figure out how they got tricked into electing Donald Trump. From his scandalous October divorce from Cecilia to his all-media globetrotting with ex-supermodel Carla Bruni to last weekend's release of three new biographies revealing Cecilia's true opinion of her ex—as an unstable egomaniac—the talk here is all Sarko all the time, which seems to suit the president just fine.

Alas, the hyperkinetic Sarkozy moves so fast that it's almost impossible to cover him in a monthly magazine like W. A few weeks from now, when our next issue hits the newsstands, who knows? Sarkozy may already have confirmed the latest rumors that he and Carla are expecting a child, or he may have dumped her for Angelina Jolie.

The French themselves, meanwhile, are watching the drama unfold with that mix of horror and fascination that we Americans know so well. At a dinner party the other night, a wealthy and elegant Frenchwoman declared that Sarkozy was the first plouc (a notorious Gallic put-down meaning something like a peasant or a hick) to ever occupy the Elysee Palace. After trashing his flashy clothes, his bad grammar and his unfathomable lack of discretion, she admitted that he does have attractive, muscular legs, which she knew from seeing his jogging photos in magazines like Gala. Then, when pressed, the woman admitted that she finds Sarkozy kind of hot. "He's a plouc," she said, "but a plouc with a certain charm."

Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images

Who needs the beaches of St. Barth's for Christmas when a new foot of snow is being dumped daily over Utah's Little Cottonwood Canyon? My family and I just returned from a week-long ski trip to Snowbird and Alta, and although every muscle in my legs has yet to recover, I'm still thinking about some of the sybaritic pleasures we discovered.

Snowbird and Alta, which are literally around the bend from each other, each offers its own distinct translation of luxe comfort. Snowbird's is, without a doubt, Cliffspa, high atop Cliff Lodge. Its rooftop pool and hot tub offer spectacular views of the white-peaked mountains. Whether you're a native Mormon or a New York City atheist, the view gives new meaning to the term "God's country."

Alta, generations older than Snowbird, has kept its old-school ways, from its charming rustic lodges to its no-snowboard policy (they've even resisted adding safety bars to the chairlifts). And it offered a most thoughtful surprise that we discovered on our last day. Stopping for lunch at the restaurant at the mid-mountain Watson Shelter lodge, we began the tedious process of removing mittens and loosening buckles. Then we noticed several pairs of inviting fleece Ugg-like slippers stowed neatly in a corner. "Oh yes, please, they're for you to wear while you eat," offered one of the waitresses. The four of us pounced on the pile and happily wiggled our newly cozy toes throughout our meal.

Cliffspa at Snowbird

As a nonsmoker living in Paris, I long ago learned that there's no point in whining about the smoke level in cafes here, even if getting a quick espresso sometimes seemed more damaging for my lungs than working in a Chinese mine. Secondary smoke was one of those Parisian inconveniences (along with mean shopclerks and lack of decent peanut butter) that you just learned to live with. So this week's ban on smoking in cafes, restaurants and bars has brought many unexpected breaths of fresh air. Most surprising of all has been the way the recalcitrant French have willingly complied with the new law. As of this writing, the ban has been in effect more than 24 hours, and there have been very few reported infractions, let alone riots in the streets. Of course, France is still France, so the national newspapers are jammed with philosophical essays wondering whether the new ban signals the final death knell for liberté, egalité and, especially, fraternité. In last weekend's Journal de Dimanche, famed pundit Bernard Pivot predicted that cemeteries will soon have to offer separate sections for the remains of smokers and nonsmokers, and he wondered whether Heaven's appeal will now be definitively eclipsed by that of Hell, where fire and smoke are presumably welcome. Another newspaper, Le Parisien, trotted out a quote from Moliere's Don Juan, in which Sganarelle declares that "He who lives without tobacco doesn't deserve to be alive." So far, 60 million Frenchmen seem to disagree.

AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere

Transportation problems are epidemic in Europe. Recovering from the French national rail strike (see Derailed), I arrive in Venice to find the vaporetti, those lumbering water buses, on sciopero, too. Getting lost while strolling around is an essential part of the experience here, but not when you’re in black tie, which I’m supposed to be tomorrow night for the party of the season, the 40th birthday ball of Toto Bergamo Rossi, art restorer and dashing local It boy, which will draw Brandolinis, Ruspolis, Gettys and other Euro glamour folk, most in heavy jewelry, per Toto’s request.

Toto Bergamo Rossi; Robin Navrozov

But as I’m sitting in Café Florian reading a galley that fortuitously came into the office in New York just before I left — Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon, a fascinating biography Knopf will be publishing in January — an email pings in on my Treo from a friend in New York telling me next time I am in Italy I have to meet an American-expatriate journalist friend of his, Robin Navrozov. After a few messages, it turns out Robin is in Venice, hosting a pre-ball party that night at an apartment she rents in the Palazzo Mocenigo, originally the home of the Lucia I am reading about, and attendees will include Lucia’s great-great-great grandson, Andrea di Robilant, author of the biography. How’s that for coincidence?

Robin proves herself to be in the great tradition of colorful, intrepid Americans in Venice. Piloting her own motor skiff, she pulls up at the dock of my hotel that night in blazing red evening gown. Finding a parking space in Venice is surely even harder than it is in Manhattan, but somehow she finds any number of handy docks at which to tie up in the course of the evening (miraculously, jumping in and out of the small shallow boat in matching red Manolos with towering heels). I didn’t ask if they give parking tickets in Venice. Cruising through the inky night, the Grand Canal is empty and silent, offering a rare view of its ghostly palazzos. This was one strike with a silver lining. 

Additional Images

The switch from daylight-savings time to normal time has played havoc with exercise schedules in Los Angeles, where hiking in the canyons, a popular fitness regimen, is difficult to maintain when it gets dark at 5:30. But this just in: The L.A. chapter of the Sierra Club is leading night hikes through Griffith Park, the city's sprawling wild-land park populated by coyotes, mule deer and rabbits. There's even a gay-lesbian outing, every Wednesday at 7 p.m.

Adrian Sanchez-Gonzalez/Landov