People sometimes ask me how I design a retreat experience that feels so personal. How does it feel like someone actually knows you, even on the first trip? The honest answer isn't a system or a checklist. It's relationships. Years of them. Carefully tended ones, on both sides of the experience, with the women who travel with me, and with the remarkable local people who make what I do possible. That web of relationships is the real infrastructure of each Maison d'Amies women's retreat in...

I have a confession to make. I've spent years taking women to France...to Provence, Normandy, to Avignon and beyond. I know France the way you know a place you keep returning to year after year. And it keeps giving me something new every time I visit. And somehow I didn't even think about another huge part of France. Martinique is an overseas region of France. Not French-influenced or inspired by France. France. The currency is the euro, the language is French (which I actually did know)....

There's a version of a day trip to Châteauneuf-du-Pape that most people get. They drive in, take a photo in front of the castle ruins, buy a bottle at the first cave they see, and leave within two hours feeling like they've done it. Yeah, we're not doing that. But we are doing this . You wake up knowing the day has exactly one job: to be enjoyed. Today there aren't any museums keeping us on track with their timed entries. We don't have a single reservation we're rushing to make. I have...