Five sweet retreats by the water

How To Beach It (on the lake)

Villa Serbelloni is the pride of Bellagio on Lake Como: as grand as the name implies, in the same family for more than a century, upholstered in history and gleaming from the ministrations of a long-serving local staff. Fourth-generation owner Jan Bucher has rung in the 2025 season with a slightly unexpected new amenity: a Capri-style private beach club.

Baci da Bellagio capitalises on the hotel’s direct water access (Villa Serbelloni is the only five-star property here that can make the claim) to bring a hint of the south to Como. Smart navy-and-white umbrellas accompany enfilades of loungers on a wide platform suspended out over the water. Next to it is the club’s bar-restaurant, done up in cheery turquoise and lemon yellow, shaded by palms and a lacquered-wood canopy. The menu is casual and delectable, from signature spritzes to homemade gelati.

Holistic healing and ocean horizons

“Redefining ocean travel” is how Explora Journeys, founded in 2021, describes what it does. Likewise, its ships – Explora I and II (III will launch in summer 2026) – are referred to as “boutique hotels at sea”. Behind the slightly self-reverential gambit to reshape the cruising paradigm is a brand that is disrupting the sector: think omakase on the menu, rows of Reformer machines in the absurdly sleek fitness centres and scads of high-spec contemporary Italian furniture and dedicated Bucellati and Panerai boutiques.

New for 2025 are its Ocean Wellness Retreats, multi-day programmes combining tailored movement, mindfulness practices (from breathwork to face yoga), menus and body therapies. Each retreat will bring aboard a handful of experts to lead seminars, cooking classes and movement practices. Menu recommendations are made, and healthy sleep counsel dispensed. The first departs on 27 October, calling in Cádiz, Funchal, St John’s in Antigua and San Juan.

All-access land passes, from private palazzi to tented camps

Not to be outdone on land, Crystal Cruises has brokered a collaboration with Abercrombie & Kent – whose parent company, A&K group, happens to be Crystal’s owners. Launching this summer, The Land Experience is a series of pre- and post-cruise cultural excursions, adventure outings and exclusive jaunts to private collections and historic sites. These travel from Italy (where A&K offers truffle hunts in the hills around Montalcino and private palazzo visits in Rome) to Africa, where its longstanding safari expertise will be leveraged to the full for guests offboarding in Mombasa and, later this year, Port Elizabeth in South Africa.

There are overnights in various A&K-affiliated estates, camps and lodges. In Hong Kong they’ll whisk you across the border to China to walk the Great Wall; in Singapore and Ho Chi Minh there are private viewings and restaurant takeovers at the city’s most sought-after addresses.

Going gourmet in Norway’s far north

Norwegian expedition outfit Hurtigruten’s reputation as a pioneering responsible operator goes back to 1893, so no surprise its own take on gourmet cruising foregrounds sustainable sourcing and indigenous culture. The Culinary Voyage is a seven-day itinerary from Bergen to Tromsø, with several points of call above the Arctic Circle and a maximum of 18 people on any given departure. Guests will forage their own seaweed in the Lofoten islands; indulge in a 20-course degustation and overnight stay at Kvitnes Gård, where Halvar Ellingsen (an award winner many times over) has parlayed a 15-room farmhouse above the Arctic Circle into a hotel-restaurant that, at one point, had a six-month waiting list; and enjoy a whisky-pairing dinner at Aurora Spirit, the world’s northernmost distillery.

It’s a culmination of Hurtigruten’s Norway Coastal Kitchen concept, overseen by culinary ambassador Máret Rávdná Buljo, who taps Sami producers, develops the menus and sleuths ways to promote indigenous Nordic culture via every plate and glass. Handily, she’s a great cook too.

Salty good times (and super-local food culture)

Silversea has always pioneered lifestyle on the high seas, from innovative cabin designs to luxury wellness. SALT (it stands for “Sea And Land Taste”) is one of its more farsighted collaborations, one that taps the talents of New York-based food writer and former Saveur editor Adam Sachs, who has created niche on- and offboard-dining and food-culture experiences around the world. In January, the company inaugurated its second Nova Class ship, Silver Ray, which, having completed a 71-day circumnavigation of South America, will spend the remainder of 2025 in the Mediterranean and Iberian Atlantic, toggling between prime eating and drinking destinations.

The onboard SALT Kitchen stocks up on local produce and specialities in each port of call, while its chefs are schooled in both local recipes and local agricultural traditions. Land experiences include rare barrel samplings with a sit-down farmstead lunch at Bodegas Hidalgo, an eighth-generation sherry producer outside Cadiz, and vertical tastings with the Tasca d’Almerita family winemaker at Sallier de La Tour, its award-winning estate in the gorgeous Sicilian interior an hour’s drive from Palermo.

@mariashollenbarger