Looking for a luxury escape in the sun

I'm looking for a luxury week's break in some beautiful spot where there is sun. Though not necessarily sand. No more journeying to Europe for us, so we need to look closer to home.

And there's the rub if you are Australian and live in the far south in Melbourne. Part of the rub is that Melbourne is such a great place to be anyway and we have our own perfect little part of it. It's suburbia but even so if we want to dine out - like maybe tonight if we are back late from a sad funeral, there are so many varied and excellent options nearby. So why go anywhere? And I think David probably feels that anyway.

The other part of the rub is that anywhere else is a long way in Australia. It even takes you three or four hours by road to get to the north of Victoria, and a day trip if you go towards Adelaide or up the coast - no make that two days if you don't want to rush. By plane - an hour to Sydney - but Sydney is not warm enough in winter - not for sitting by a pool anyway - which is what David wants to do I think. It's a three and a half hour flight to Cairns in the far north and if you want to go even further - Magnetic Island for example, off Townsville it will take you something like 6 hours to get to your final destination. And then you are getting over the time it takes to get to Fiji for example.

So you try to be patriotic and look at Queensland, maybe even Broome. But pretty soon you find yourself looking further afield to Bali, Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Lombok, because Australia is expensive and those other places tend to have bigger and better and more luxurious resorts at a much lower price. The one at the top of the page for example is in Lombok - where you can even have your own private pool. And where the food options are just so, so tempting. But alas Lombok is off the menu. It is only - in Australia this is only - 5 1/2 hours away to Bali, but to get to Lombok which is just off the coast the connecting flights are so difficult to organise that the total journey would be more like 10 at the least and more likely need to include an overnight stay in Denpasar. Now why would you want to do that for just a week? Yes the accommodation, the cultural interest and the very wonderful food is very tempting but ...

For this is the other rub about Australian destinations - on islands anyway, which is what I have been looking at. The food. Not, I hasten to add that the food is awful. No quite the opposite probably, but limited and expensive. I have already discarded Green Island for example because they only have two restaurants - the posh one and the casual one but (a) the casual one doesn't do dinner, and (b) it seems to really only do hamburgers. And David doesn't do lunch anyway. I don't see myself eating hamburgers every night. And because it is a small and exclusive island there is nowhere else to go. The posh restaurant is very expensive - most of the mains were $40 or over - well over in some instances - and there was a lot of seafood which would not please David. So no - not Green Island.

Lots of food options on Hamilton Island but (a) it's a bit further south and so not as warm, and (b) these also are expensive. The real rub though is that the accommodation is not that tempting unless you want to spend an absolute fortune at Qualia.

I don't think I have focussed on food so much in my destination choices. Well in Europe I know that you can always find something great, and besides half the time you are cooking for yourself. Which is fine when you are with friends and you are away for a long time - 6-7 weeks. But for one week with just your husband. I am not going to cook. I want to be waited on hand and foot and have sumptuous food served in beautiful locations.

Like this. Now this is Fitzroy Island which is currently shaping up as the favoured destination, but this private meal on the beach option is expensive I guess. But then again - why not - once anyway.

We once had two weeks holiday in Tahiti on the island of Moorea. It was at Club Med and pretty nice, but the real rub was the time it took to get there. Two days really because we had to stay overnight in Papeete, there and back - which was several hours away anyway - so four days of your holiday were gone on getting there. Which is Ok if you are going for 6 or 7 weeks. But not for one or even two.

But then I shouldn't complain at all. I mean these are all world class beauty spots. The rest of the world comes here. We can afford it. Aren't we lucky? So which has the best food - maybe that should be my criterion?

POSTSCRIPT

The die is cast - Port Douglas again. Stick with what you know! Well actually a super deal suddenly appeared and so we grabbed it. Vanuatu was the runner up. It was the travel time that did it really. Which is always the problem with Australia.