The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman

Seven Mile Beach is one of the Caribbean's genuinely great stretches of sand — wide, calm, and the color that makes people question whether the photos are edited. The Ritz-Carlton occupies the best position on it, 144 acres anchored to a beach that has no business looking this good.

We checked in after a short flight from Miami and were on the beach within the hour. The scale of the property takes a moment to register — most Cayman hotels are small by design, but the Ritz-Carlton is a full resort campus, with gardens, a Greg Norman golf course, several pools, and a spa that was recently reimagined with La Prairie, 111SKIN, and ESPA. What keeps it from feeling impersonal is the staff-to-guest ratio and the accumulated investment in programming. Every amenity feels activated rather than decorative.

Blue is the reason serious diners visit Grand Cayman. Eric Ripert's restaurant holds the Forbes Five-Star designation — the only restaurant in the Caribbean to do so — and the kitchen executes French technique against local Caymanian fish in a way that feels earned rather than imported. The wasabi is hand-grated tableside at Taikun, the resort's Japanese counterpart. The sake list is the deepest on the island. We ate at Blue on our first night and Taikun on our last. We should have done it the other way.

The beach is the property's real amenity — Seven Mile is shallow enough for safe swimming well offshore and clear enough that you can see the reef fish from the sand. The Ambassadors of the Environment program runs night snorkeling excursions, stingray city trips, and mangrove kayaking that are worth scheduling in advance. The Greg Norman course plays through the resort grounds and is more interesting than nine holes usually are. We played after our first dinner at Blue. It worked.