Spotlight :: Miami

[trip style = sun + beach + foodie + urban]

I had high hopes for Miami. Mr. Trip Styler and I spent a handful of sun-sational days in South Beach about five years ago, and everything worked out postcard-perfectly. Plus, we're MASSIVE fans of deco-era design and hotels---areas Miami has the market cornered---so my early-October trip was poised to turn out beachy-keen. Until it got off to a slow start.

Trip Styler Tip :: I tagged all my South Beach photos with #TSMiami on Instagram if you'd like an inside look.

Without getting into the nitty-gritty---the TS glass is always half-full---we encountered polar opposite service standards, both lacking and lovely. Once we realized this was a theme, we quickly toughened up, switched our sentiments, and in doing so, rediscovered the very reason we fell in love with Florida's most famous, 15-mile stretch of sand.

Note: while it pains me, there are a few hotels and restaurants---cool design, sketchy service---I've left out of the below list of recommendations. Trip Styled spots must measure up!

MIA's Gems Stay: The James Royal Palm, renovated to the tune of 42 million in 2012, The James turned the 1939-built Royal Palm into one of the most design-forward, deco-meets-mod hotels on SoBe.

Happy Hour: Khong River House has a happening happy hour {4-7pm mon-fri} where spicy cocktails aren't just cheapie renditions of better drinks, but stay-for-a-while bevvies. Order The Killer B; it has kick!

Eat: Ice Box Cafe is one of Miami's authorities on desserts, but I visited for an organic breakfast because the all-day fare measures up, too. Plus, dessert can be ordered after any meal, including breakfast.

Eat: La Sandwicherie; a fast-paced and health-conscious outdoor sandwich and juice shop lined with bar stools---ahhhh, below misters---in a quasi-alley, off-the-beach locale.

Eat: Yardbird Southern Table and Bar. Voted one of the 50 best restaurants in America by Bon Appetit Magazine in 2012, this ode to down home cookin' is worth a meal {or two} for the cheddar waffles alone.

Sip: South Shore {rum bar} at The James Royal Palm. Rum doesn't rev my engine, but the bartender at South Shore made me a rum believer. I ordered the Hispanola {highly recommended}, which took over five minutes to craft with its three fresh-squeezed limes, egg white, tiki bitters and mint.

Java: Panther Coffee is bathed in concrete, shipping containers and really good coffee. To me, the space is one of the coolest in MIA. Also, while you're here, check out the boutiques along Purdy Avenue.

Java: Nespresso's Bar is a sleek gallery devoted to au courant coffees---think cortado with a dollop of vanilla bean gelato.

Snack: Lee & Marie's Cakery's is at the foot of South Pointe Beach in case you want to refuel your sun-parched lips with a homemade lemonade, scone or cake. Also, this cake shop has a cool little secret; it supports and employs adults with autism.

Do: Deco Bike's stations are spread all over SoBe. Rent a bike from $4 per half hour, and explore {while burning calories!} along the beach path. Alternatively, many of the roads have bike paths if you want to use the Deco bike-share system as your taxi.

Do: Beach it like you mean it on one of the USA's most famed ribbons of sand. I like the beach at the Southern end of SoBe: South Pointe.

[photos by @tripstyler, except for The James Royal Palms, via The James]

Roam+Board :: Hotel Lone

[trip style = luxury + spa + foodie + sightseeing]

{Editor's Note :: Recently, Trip Styler's Fashion Friday contributor, Heather, visited Croatia. Here, she gushes about one of her favorite Croatian hotels.}

What
Croatia's first five-star design hotel rises from its lush forest setting like a gleaming white ocean liner. The minimalist, curvy waterfront hotel was conceived and crafted by Croatian creatives. Everything from architecture to art to furniture to light fixtures to uniforms are Croatian design. I was wowed from the moment I stepped inside, greeted by a two-story living wall and a 9-metre art installation.

While Hotel Lone is only a 15-minute walk from Rovinj {pronounced roh-VEEN}, one of Croatia's most picturesque hilltop towns, you may never want to leave the property. It boasts excellent restaurants {I highly recommend "L"}, a Croatian design store where you can find unique gifts for others or yourself, a wine shop, indoor and outdoor pools, full-service spa, Finnish-style baths, saunas and steam rooms. If you're not accustomed to European spas, take note: the saunas and steam rooms are co-ed and clothing optional {emphasis on the optional}.

Rooms are large, decorated with tasteful textiles and furniture in greys, greens and blues, and all have big balconies with ocean or park views. Sixteen rooms have their own balcony infinity pool. Forget never leaving the property; you may never want to leave your room! I confess that we spent one night in our room, wearing robes, eating room service and watching Italian television. Perfecto! Trip Styler approved!

Where
The hotel is a short walk from the center of Rovinj on Croatia's Istrian peninsula. Rovinj is the country's most Italian city and only a three-hour ferry ride from Venice. If you're driving, it's 40 minutes from Pula or 3 hours from Zagreb.

When
A year-round destination popular with Italian, Slovenian and Croatian weekenders, Rovinj is hot -- both in temperature and busyness -- during the summer, but you can count on milder temperatures and smaller crowds in late spring and early fall. The hotel fills its 248 rooms with conference goers during low season. Foodies take note: October is white truffle season, with festivals and hunts celebrating the delicacy known for its aphrodisiac characteristics.

Who/Why
You consult the Design Hotels guide when selecting a place to stay. You appreciate a full-service resort that has everything you need, but doesn't feel like an all-inclusive mini city. You need a relaxing escape in the midst of your European vacation -- and you're not afraid of a nude spa.

Cost
Rates start around $150/night in low season for a premium double room {the same room will cost you up to $500/night during the summer}. Rates include full breakfast buffet, spa access, WiFi and free arrival-day minibar. Free street parking or paid valet. Note: single occupancy {vs. double occupancy} can save you up to $100/night.

Photos

More Roam+Board
Templar Hotel - Toronto
Encuentro Guadalupe - Mexico
The Ampersand Hotel - London
The Wickaninnish Inn - Tofino
Four Seasons Resort at Manele Bay - Lanai

[photos by @heatherlovesit]

Vancouver Summer Sizzlers

[trip style =  sightseeing + spa + staycation] I don't want to jinx it, BUT, we've had a dreamy summer in Vancouver: warm and sunny seasoned with sea breeze. While Sun-couver is hot to trot, I spend a lot of time at home. I mean, who would want to leave one of the world's most gorgeous cities when it's like California outside?!?

Aside from "Vancouvering" by way of hiking the Grouse Grind, riding the Aquabus or lounging at the beach, here are a few more reasons to give the City of Glass a big hug while school's out:

Pop-Up Pianos Coined the keys to the streets, four pop-up pianos are gracing the streets of Vancouver from July 1 - Aug 24. Painted in polka dots and rainbows {literally}, these music makers are giving dabblers and concert pianists a casual, alfresco stage for their craft. There are two installations near my running/walking route, and somebody is tickling the ivories every single time I pass by. Aside from the occasional heart and soul medley, I've witnessed some serious tunes about town, many times with an audience that grows by the note. Visit; it's worth it for the photo opp alone. Beethoven-level music is a bonus.

Food Cart Fest Hanging out in an uber-urban, concrete lot near The {Olympic} Village, Food Cart Fest is making its second annual summer appearance from June 23 - Sept 22. Forming a circle of cuisine around a concrete box, aka the DJ's digs, 20 trucks set up camp from noon - 5pm every Sunday. It's a tasty way to sample Van's street food without roaming the city in search of each truck, like Holy Perogy, The Juice Truck, Mom's Grilled Cheese, Yolk's or Roaming Dragon. There's also a flea market for browsing between bites, and a bouncy castle for kids {bounce first, eat second}. Cost of admission is $2 {VanCity members and children under 13 are free}.

The Spa CHI, Shangri-La's spa has just launched an uber-Vancouver spa package, perfect for recharging your sun-drenched batteries for fall. To date, it is the most exquisite spa I've visited in Vancouver, from the cashmere robes and sheets {so luxurious you want to rip them off the bed and wear them as a scarf} to the spa suites sporting infinity soaker tubs with embedded light therapy. The discreet service is also on another level. The four-hour West Coast Lifestyles package starts with a private yoga class {so Vancouver!}, and is followed by sea kelp soak, body wrap with mud flown in from China and a seaweed facial {or massage}. From $355 for the 'lite' version and $485 for the full version. Bonus, this runs into Spring 2014. {See my Instagram snaps for recent photos of the experience.}

Vancouver Chinatown Night Market Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 6pm - 11pm, Chinatown's Keefer street shuts down to perform a quick-change into a standing room-only market. Vancouver has the largest Chinatown in Canada, so it's only fitting! Think of it like a summer vacation to the Far East, plus, most of Vancouver's hottest restaurants are a stone's throw away {if you're still hungry, which is unlikely}. You've got until Sept 8th to pick up dumplings, deep-fried snakes {ok, they're just sugar-topped pieces of dough shaped like a snake}, orchids or cellphone cases.

Trip Styler Tip :: If you want to venture just beyond Vancouver's borders, check the Richmond Night Market, open every weekend and holiday night until Oct 14. Admission is $2.

Grand Hotel I wrote about Grand Hotel at the Vancouver Art Gallery in the Spring, but it's worth mentioning again since it's only on until Sept 15, and the exhibition was nearly SEVEN years in the making. To say I liked GH is an epic understatement, in fact, it left me on a hotel high—higher than Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. Chronicling game-changers like the 1887-built Raffles hotel to the 2010-built Marina Bay Sands {where people book a room for the sole purpose of perching atop the surfboard-shaped SkyPark’s 150-meter infinity pool}, the multimedia show acts as a lab into hotel life. An adult ticket is $21, but admission is by donation every Tuesday after 5pm.

[photos by @tripstyler, except for CHI where I was a guest of the spa]

Enter to Win :: A West Coast Weekend Away

[trip style = spa + active & adventure + luxury + beach + weekend getaway]

{Editor's Note: Tourism Ucluelet recently contacted me with a trip that was too good not to share. In partnership with Trip Styler, they are offering a trip style = weekend getaway including a three-night stay, a spa gift certificate and surf lessons! See below for details.}

Update June 24, 2013, 6.35pm: Congrats Bridget Clifford. According to Random.org, you have been chosen to win this sand, surf and spa package in Uclelet, BC. You have been contacted via email and have two days to claim your prize.

One of my VERY accomplished travel writing friends recently told me Vancouver Island's west coast is his favorite place on earth. In the spirit of sharing my GORGEOUS backyard with you, I implore you to check out this sand, spa and surf giveaway to that very locale, Ucluelet.

The Goods {a $1000 value}

• Three-night stay at Black Rock Oceanfront Resort in a Studio Suite. Black Rock Resort is perched at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in a centuries-old rainforest. Suites offer a magical perspective of Vancouver Island’s wild west coast.
• $100 gift certificate to Nurture Day Spa, an Aveda Spa merging plant-based skin and body care products with the art of high-touch experience customized to your specific skin and body care needs.
• Surf lesson and complimentary rentals for two at Relic Surf Shop and School, offering a wilderness surfing experience in Pacific Rim National Park.

How to Enter Comment on this post and tell us your favorite way to spend a three-day weekend, via the "leave a comment" link below. *You MUST comment on this post for a chance to win. Along with the below bonus entries, you have up to three chances to win.

Bonus entry 1. Go to Trip Styler's Instagram, find this contest's post, and regram it per the instructions. Bonus entry 2. Tweet this: Enter to win a 3-day surf n spa weekend via @Travel_Ucluelet + @tripstyler -> Enter: http://tiny.cc/TSUcl #TSUcluelet #UclueletXCanada

Details Open to residents of Canada and the USA 21 years or older. Entries will be accepted June 10 - 24 {until 5pm}, 2013. Winner will be chosen via random.org and announced at the top of THIS POST on June 24, 2013. After prizing notification is sent via email, the winner has two days to make contact, or the prize will be given to another entrant.

PS - To get to Ucluelet, fly to the Tofino airport from Vancouver, or go by boat from the Horseshoe Bay BC Ferries terminal—a half hour outside of downtown Vancouver—and drive onto the 1.5-hour car ferry bound for Departure Bay, Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. Once in Nanaimo, follow the signs for Tofino/Ucluelet, a 2.5-hour drive away.

[photos by tourism ucluelet]

Spotlight :: Hawaii (The Big Island)

[trip style = beach + sun]

As my flight descends towards the Kona Airport over an 1890s lava flow, I'm welcomed by Hawaii Island's bubbling beginnings. This is not your average sandy beach vacation; it's so much more.

At 11:50am I settle into my sweat box of a rental car and open my TomTom GPS app---my travel BFF---ready to tackle the island on two wheels. Problem: trusty Tom does not include Hawaii's Big Island {note to self: download Tom's newest version, doh!}. Before I have a molten meltdown, I realize that while the Island is big, it only has a few major roads. Old-school exploration it is; map in hand, we start the car.

Pulling out of the open-air airport with the air con blasting at arctic levels, my eyes are glued to the window instead of the map. Wispy grasses sprout between the shiny, course lava---indicating different flow generations---as we motor to our first of five hotels on the youngest Hawaiian Isle.

En route I notice a bunch of highway-side parked cars and lava ash roads leading to what seem like secret spots. Out yonder, oceanfront palm oases brighten the inky landscape. The trusty map shows no evidence of such places, and I quickly learn Hawaii 101: have a guidebook, and Hawaii 102: go off-book and explore like Captain Cook.

At first I skip Kona and do what ANY sun-starved winterite would do: beeline to the Kohala Coast Resort, don my bathing suit and dine while watching the sunset. P-r-i-o-r-i-t-i-e-s. Over the next 10 days, I make my way around the island, descending into sacred valleys and going on DIY turtle safaris along the way.

The Big Island has four of the world's five major climates zones, and it shows; the landscape changes by the minute. Look left and find cow pastures, look right and find a Tarzan-thick tropical forest, look ahead and there's flowing lava, look back and there's a frosty fern gully.

Between frequent roadside stops for everyday sights like breaching whales and cascading waterfalls, my eyes stay glued to the window the entire journey. While this results in what most would call a series of wrong turns, I come to realize that the far reaches of this world were discovered by wrong turns. In Hawaii, wrong turns are right.

Here's your trusty Trip Styler guide to Hawaii Island:

Eat

Da Poke Shack - Reeling in a boatload of freshness, Da Poke Shack chops the Pacific's bounty seven days a week in a standing room-only lunch market visible only by a neon sign and two picnic tables. Try the $10 dynamite poke bowl with island avocados. I could eat it every day for the rest of my life.

Punalu'u Bake Shop - If you're in the area {and you will be if you visit the Punalu'u black sand beach}, stop by the southernmost bakery in the USA to taste some of Hawaii's famed malasadas---Portuguese sugar buns that often come with pudding or guava jam in the center. Heaven help me! I bought way too many.

Other faves: Merriman's for homegrown Hawaiian food and Brown's Beach House for seaside dining and locally sourced delicacies.

Do

Beaches - Almost side by side, the Kohala Coast's Hapuna Beach {or Mauna Kea Beach} are some of the island's nicest white sand stretches. On the south side, check out Punalu'u black sand beach.

Hikes - Trek down Pololu Valley's steep and palm-packed cliffs to the rocky {and rolling} beach below or head to the Waipio Valley Lookout to shimmy down a 25% grade paved path to a black sand beach, a bevy of waterfalls and the boyhood home of famed Hawaiian King Kamehameha I. Note: do not drive, the steep decline is not covered in many rental car agreements!

Spa - My job affords me a bounty of spa treatments, and while I don't mention most of them---I only mention the best---I must tell you about one of my best ever at the Fairmont Orchid's Spa Without Walls. I had the Ali'i Experience, which started with a lomi lomi hot stone massage in a beachfront cabana and ended with warm coconut oil slowly trickling down my head for what seemed like 20 minutes. It felt so Hawaiian it was as if I was dancing the hula at Mauna Kea's summit. Note: most massages take place in spa huts that sit beside the ocean or babbling brooks.

See - Finally, the hot-ticket items: volcanoes and lava. An hour from Hilo, Kilauea continues to broil below the earth. An active cauldron of lava bubbles at the peak, while at its base the Pu'u 'O'o vent slowly flows, adding more mass---500+ acres since 1983---to the biggest Hawaiian isle.

Stay

Lava Lava Beach Club - A four-cottage beach retreat we profiled in our most recent Roam+Board. Love!

Fairmont Orchid - A 540-room, bang-on beach resort with all the fixings.

Holualoa Inn - A six-room inn hidden in a 30-acre coffee estate perched high above the ocean's spray in Kona coffee country.

Puakea Ranch - While we didn't stay here, this five-house property comes highly recommended by many publications we trust! It's on our list for our next visit.

Wear Hawaii is casual---even more so than Maui. When I wasn't hiking, I spent my entire trip in a bathing suit and sarong, jean cut-offs or a simple dress. Guys and gals, here's what we recommend you wear.

Know This - Parts of the island are uber lush for a reason; it often rains {in pockets, so don't assume it's raining on the whole island just because it's raining where you are}. - Don't touch the turtles; they're endangered and you could be fined $10,000. Would you want people touching you while you're sleeping on the beach? - You can do Hawaii one of two ways: use one hotel as your home base/jumping-off point, or hop around the island. The hotels I mentioned above provide that opportunity. - Renting a car is a must. - To get a lay of the land, check out my Fodor's article on How to Tackle The Big Island.

[photos by @tripstyler taken while a partial guest of Hawaii Tourism]