A trio of New England inns offer not ony respite from the road, but a chance to unhook from the grid. Boston Globe travel section.

The top level of the Lenox is the first entire hotel floor in Boston to get a molecular-level cleanliness treatment slowly spreading throughout the industry.

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JERUSALEM - Perhaps it is a bit strange that Jerusalem, where Hebrew and Arabic are the native languages, is home to probably the world's largest club of English-speaking Scrabble players.

But its 50 or so members - and the three or four newcomers who drop in weekly - don't care about that. They just want to play.

``It's a social haven for every sort of Jerusalemite. Here, they have everything in common,'' said Sam Orbaum, director of the Jrslm Scrbbl Clb, as he likes to spell it.

NAIROBI, Kenya — One of Yogi Berra's famous malaprops is, "No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded."

Kenya is like that these days, only different. No one goes there anymore, so it's a lot less crowded.

There are plenty of reasons not to go, of course: political violence, tourism crime, washed-out roads, fears of Rift Valley Fever and other exotic diseases, and even the weather. Even some tour operators in Kenya, whose livelihood depends on attracting people to the central African nation, say they have difficulty advising people to come.

EAST DORSET, Vt. - There are plenty of rustic inns in Vermont. There are even plenty of inns in Vermont that are on the National Register of Historic Places. But there's only one inn in Vermont where the founder of one of the 20th century's great social movements was born.

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico -- At the end of a narrow, cobblestone street in San Cristobal de Las Casas, hopes for an ancient Mexican people and their home in the rain forest reside in the house of a jaguar.

It is an enchanting place, full of hospitality, purpose and character, a walled community where tourists can find a gentle solitude or mix in with a cadre of crusaders for jungle culture, or perhaps some indiginos staying overnight while on a visit to town.
 

PUERTO ANGEL, Mexico -- What seasoned tourist hasn't complained about the paving of paradise, those once-unique destinations that have been transformed into ugly commercial monsters by developers spurred on, well, by tourists?

Take Mazatlan, for example, or Acapulco. You can have them.
 
But then there's Puerto Angel, a tranquil fishing village down the coast where developers, thankfully, have missed the boat. Here, charm and character and ease have survived.

And there isn't a swinging hot spot to be found.

It was a long, hectic, tiring journey, the day I didn't go to Spain.

My destination was not only Madrid but adventure itself, the excitement of deciding on Friday to hop across the pond on Saturday. No reservations, no plans, no luggage. I was going to be an air travel courier.
 
Air courier outfits view airline tickets as a two-course delight, where the booked space in the cargo hold is every bit as valuable as the space in the passenger compartment. They buy the tickets to meet the needs of shipping clients, and then sell off the seats almost as excess.

HAVANA -- If not for the embargo, I probably would have been no more motivated to vacation in Cuba than I am to go to Puerto Rico or Guadeloupe or any other Caribbean hot spot.

But when a friend suggested we hop down to Havana, I was instantly enthusiastic, excited not only by the promise of a warm sun but also by the taste of forbidden fruit. It would be a place, yes, but it was also an exotic idea.