Dare to be Bare

When we visited St. Martin in the Caribbean 3 years ago, we visited a little isle off the shore named Ile Pinel. A sort of large sandbar, it had a beach restaurant or two, with lounge chairs from each restaurant dotting the shores. Children ran up and down the calm beach, enjoying the almost total lack of surf. It was great fun watching them, particularly since many of the tots were naked and completely carefree. And being on the French side of the St. Martin, in many cases, the moms were topless too.

While we'd never done the topless thing before, given that our 9-month old daughter was still nursing, all of a sudden it seemed like a fabulous concept. Instead of trying to be inconspicuous and looking all the more obvious for covering a baby in 90-degree weather, we were able to feed her in peace. No one looked askance or seemed to notice, and we're sure D appreciated being able to fall asleep with a sea breeze caressing her face instead of a blanket.

Thanks to Kelly Amabile over at Gadling, we've just learned that there's a guide to nude beaches for your, ahem, perusal. Aptly titled Bare Beaches, this book was originally published in Great Britain (who said the Brits were prudes?), and the authors also penned Bare Britain - interesting, because we would never have thought there was enough to fill a book about Britain alone.

While Ile Pinel was only topless, perhaps you're looking for even more freedom, and even if you may not feel that nude beaches are for young ones, many families visit them - and the beaches to accommodate them are out there. The book includes a list of the most family-friendly spots, and other cool lists include celebs who like to bare it all (which we rather figured was all of them, so it should be interesting to see who made the cut...) There's also a blog that posts continual updates, should your quest for a nude beach be so urgent as to demand immediate attention.

How's that for a family vacation idea?


Bare Beaches, $32 (including postage)
available at barebeaches.com

Take A Sabbatical & Hit the Road

We all have lists of places we'd like to go before we die. Frommer's 500 Places to Take Your Kids Before They Grow Up by Holly Hughes is putting a tighter deadline on your plans.

But not a bad idea, really; it's certainly a way to lend some focus to your travel plans. Suggestions are all over the globe and span a wide variety of interests. You'll find the usual suspects here: the Eiffel Tower, Disneyland, Easter Island and the Dead Sea (which is evaporating rapidly and might soon be the Extinct Sea) all make the cut. But with 500 recommendations, you're sure to find somewhere you hadn't thought of going. We, for instance, hadn't realized that the Mack Truck assembly plant was exciting enough to be a "destination", nor had we thought to set our sights so close to home as Hartford, Connecticut.

We may not make it to all of these destinations. We may not even want to. But there is somewhere in this book for everyone, and plenty of reasons to plan your next vacation.

www.frommers.com/bookstore
$19.99

Caribbean Escapes

So we're in Montego Bay, lounging across the squeaky bed at the Ritz-Carlton (see more on that in our previous post), when we come across this massive tome tucked away in the nighttable. Too big to be the Bible and too pretty to be the yellow pages, we had to investigate further.

The book, roughly the weight of the stone tablets God gave to Moses, is a stunning journey through top luxury resorts throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Culled from the ranking lists of Conde Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Elite Traveler and other luxury travel publications, the resorts in here are the creme de la creme of the Caribbean, with a few select choices from Latin America. The writing comes from top travel writers in the industry, but we were really wowed by the large pages with impressive photos, which helped us to imagine ourselves on-site with particular vividness.

The great thing is that the company's website allows you to do more than just dream - they'll help you get there. Caribbean Escapes is a full-blown marketing company, with a website booking engine that helps you to stop dreaming and start packing. If you're not ready to go but still want to dream, you can order the book online. (We really wanted to steal ours from the Ritz but it was too damn heavy and big to fit into our already stuffed bags - bummer for us, good for the people at Caribbean Escapes, who would surely be replacing these at a higher rate if it was more portable).

In the spirit of full disclosure, we should point out that we know the publisher of the book and the owner of the company. However, we didn't realize that he was heading up this venture until well after we'd started pawing through the book and salivating. A former colleague from our days of corporate serfdom, he's gone on to create an impressive company, with the book as merely one facet of a multi-pronged marketing plan that focuses on giving you, the consumer, one definitive place to go for all your luxury travel research. Hie thee to the website and order a copy. While we can't promise that every resort in here is family-friendly, there are more than enough to keep you occupied for several trips to come.

www.caribbeanescapes.com
$45.00