Virtuoso Travel Week Highlights, The Debut of Miraval Berkshires
Every other year, Lisa travels to Las Vegas in the heat of August to meet with hundreds of travel suppliers, hotel GMs, cruise companies, and many other faces in the travel industry for Virtuoso Travel Week. This year, we had those meetings for 4 very full days from the comfort of our office thanks to Google Meet. I have no idea how they can organize hundreds, if not thousands of meetings, at the same time without crashing. But, lo and behold, every 10 minutes we clicked on another link and had our private sessions with the people we most wanted to speak with. This week, I will present the highlights from those meetings:
The big news out of New England is the opening of the new Miraval property in Lenox. After $132 million investment, the Miraval Berkshires wellness resort and its close cousin, the Wyndhurst Manor & Club, opened in late July on the former Cranwell hilltop property overlooking October Mountain. Miraval offers 100 guest rooms and suites, while Wyndhurst has 11 rooms in the historic mansion and 35 additional rooms in nearby cottages. Now, with social distancing in place, the resort can accommodate 40 percent of total occupancy. Miraval’s “digital detox” wellness approach emphasizes outdoor programming, including guided hikes and equine activities, as well as smaller group settings to encourage social distancing for indoor programs such as yoga, fitness, culinary and meditation classes, though many of those classes will be moved outside this fall. Guests also have access to the resort’s private beach on nearby Laurel Lake, where programs include stand-up paddle, paddle yoga and kayaking, as well as meditation. Other activities include sustainable living classes, like beekeeping and raising chickens, and the much-needed spa for healing and nurturing.
If interested in a visit to Miraval this year or next, please let ActiveTravels know and we’ll check availability and pricing. As a member of Virtuoso, we can also get you a free upgrade upon arrival, complimentary breakfast, and $100 resort credit, per person.
We currently have a group of 15 family members at the 
The kids are stand-up paddleboarding near the middle of the lake. My wife is sea kayaking with her siblings and their spouses closer to the shoreline. Steady wind blowing through my hair, I’m at the tiller of an 18-foot sailboat accompanied by Granny Franny and her longtime beau, Saul. To celebrate a special birthday for Fran, my wife’s extended family decided to book a week at the classic family retreat on the shores of Lake Champlain, 
Conditions need to be ideal to walk the historic Crawford Path through the Presidential Range. Once you venture beyond Mizpah Springs Hut to Mount Pierce, you’re above treeline on a ridge walk, entirely exposed to the weather since there’s really nowhere to hide. In decent weather, you’ll be treated to the views of the bald knob atop Mount Eisenhower while walking in a lunar-like landscape. Bordered by velvety green sedge and moss, you’ll find alpine wildflowers in bloom like bog laurel, white bunchberry, and purple fireweed. Then you spot the 
Thanks to the direct flights on Copa Airlines from many of North America’s largest cities, we’ve been designing more and more itineraries to Panama each year. Expect the same wildlife, cloud forest, rainforest, mountains, wildlife, and exotic birds as Costa Rica. Then add the Panama Canal and seven unique indigenous cultures of Panama. Where Panama pales in comparison to Costa Rica is unique properties, but we learned about two of the more recent boutique hotels to open in the past several years. 
The second property we discussed was 
I was so moved by the webinar on 
The Spanish colonial city of Cartagena might get all the hype, but if you asked 
They recently added another property to their expanding portfolio, 
Similar to the many webinars Lisa and I have attended, Rick Steves’ weekday broadcasts on PBS have been a wonderful source of insider information. I always grab one of his guidebooks before visiting a European destination, appreciating his honesty and opinions, like “Bordeaux is boring.” But his 25-minute shows really highlight his top picks, because he doesn’t have much time to discuss the Croatian, Czech, or Danish countryside. So if he raves about the Plitvice Lakes region of Croatia, the mountain village of Cezky Krumlov in the Bohemian region of the Czech republic, and the Danish island of Ærø, take note. Few know the continent better. If you’re fortunate, he might even throw out the name of a pension or inn he’s staying at, like the house built in 1784 by a sea captain as a dowry for his daughter called 
They recently added another property to their expanding portfolio, 
I was so moved by the webinar on 
Anyone planning a driving trip out West this summer should consider a lengthy stay at that classic resort, 
I hopped into a saddle on a stallion named Lady Bug and off we went on a 90-minute ramble through dense forest high atop a ridge peering at the craggy summit of 10,073-foot Mount Vigel. Many of the trails we rode that day were created by mules and workers to lay down a pipeline built in the 1930s that once brought water from a nearby reservoir to Colorado Springs. After a full day of hiking and horseback riding, I returned to Emerald Valley to soak my weary body into a cedar-lined hot tub while snacking on a favorite dessert at the ranch, peach-filled donut holes.
Due to the pandemic, it’s not surprising that we’re receiving many more requests for homes, villas, and townhouse rentals this summer. These residences all have full kitchens, so you don’t have to worry about dining at restaurants every meal. Also, the companies we work with not only personally inspect all properties, but hire cleaning services to thoroughly disinfect before and after each rental.