Luxury and family travel aren’t always mutually exclusive. The ultra luxe Somerset Hotel on the world famous Grace Bay Beach in Turks and Caicos is the perfect getaway for the posh family.
Gracious condos are stocked with everything from sippy cups to champagne glasses. Leave your hectic lifestyle behind, drop the kids at the free kids club and pull up a chair at the blissfully abandoned beach just outside your door.
Each condo not only offers all the space a traveling family could want or need, but it’s done in grand style. The bathrooms are marble, the kitchens gourmet and the furnishings all designer. Don’t worry though, your little ones are welcome in wet swimsuits and sandy feet. Twice a day housekeeping ensures your castle by the sea is always in pristine condition.
The beach has won more awards than Meryl Streep has Oscars. The sand makes powdered sugar look rough and the shimmering azure water looks better in person than in photos. The most popular excursion is a conch diving trip that is appropriate for all ages. The concierge can arrange for the boat to pick you up in front of the hotel. The kids can see a Pixar movies’ worth of fish just snorkeling next to the boat. The more daring (read Dads) can try to conch dive with the staff. It’s harder than it looks to free dive to the bottom of the ocean and wrestle a conch from its’ cozy perch. The guides make it look easy. After hunting for conch they make a fresh salad from the meat pulled from the shell right on the boat. Each guest takes a huge pearlescent pink shell home as a souvenir.
The Frommer’s review in the New York Times described the hotel as “looking and feeling like old money, gobs of old money”. But it’s the coddling staff at The Somerset that will keep your family coming back for generations to come. Great family services like pre-arrival grocery shopping, pre-arrival concierge and free daily kids club make this resort an effortless indulgence for families. The staff has been known to cut down coconuts from poolside trees just because young guests wanted to try fresh coconut water, catch lizards with blades of grass giving tiny reptile tamers a pet for the day and allow aspiring DJ’s to man the turntables during beach parties. The swimming pool recently underwent a an expensive upgrade that added tiles that hold the sunlight from the day and reflect it back at night. Truly magical.
Getting to Turks and Caicos is easy; flights are plentiful and inexpensive from the United States. All business is done in the US Dollar and the native language is English.
