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Super Spas
Two Coachella Valley spas — Hyatt Grand Champions Resort & Spa in Indian Wells and Two Bunch Palms Resort & Spa in Desert Hot Springs — made it into the third edition of 100 Best Spas of the World (The Globe Pequot Press, 2006). Local author Pam Price writes that blending the Hyatt’s Agua Serena, which includes a medical spa, with golf and tennis constitutes “a vacation prescription.” Of the Desert Hot Springs property, she writes, “As the consummate retro-bohemian spa haven, Two Bunch Palms is rustic enough to ensure that it remains unpretentious.”

Skip the Carousel
Want to take your kayak to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and the airlines
are giving you grief? No problem. The Luggage Club offers door-to-door service for suitcases of all sizes, golf clubs, skis, bikes, trade show materials, and other bulky items that won’t fit in the overhead compartment. You can find a calculator to instantly determine the cost at www.theluggageclub.com. Plugging in a November date to send a large suitcase and medium-sized kayak from Palm Springs to Prudhoe Bay, we came up with a charge of $568.97 one way for next-morning delivery. The club also delivers to cruise ships, though we don’t know why you’d need your kayak on one.

Merrily, Merrily, Merrily
Salvatore Ferragamo, the dashing grandson of the fashion icon who manages the family estate in Tuscany (home to their Il Borro winery), relates an amusing tale in the Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar brochure introducing 60 of this year’s 100 wines by the glass. It seems Ferragamo was driving from Tuscany with Il Borro wines for a tasting aboard a cruise ship in Monaco. Unfortunately, the ship had set sail when he arrived. “I flagged down a man in a motorized row boat, loaded up the wine, and away we went in hot pursuit,” he says, adding that the tasting went on as scheduled. Fleming’s at The River at Rancho Mirage sells
Il Borro 2001 merlot by the bottle ($100).

Never Say Die
New York-based artists/philosophers/architects Arakawa and Madeline Gins may have found the ultimate anti-aging solution: a brightly painted, physically challenging dwelling. Their Reversible Destiny Lofts in Tokyo “prod and coax residents to figure themselves out so that they may come to live forever,” they claim. The nine lofts (from 629 to 760 square feet and priced about $750,000) feature sloping, concave, and sunken floors; unexpectedly placed electric switches you have to feel for; doorways you have to crawl through; and a set of instructions. The idea: Being thrown off-balance keeps one mentally and physically alert. The project made the cover of The Journal of American Medical Association’s Japanese edition.