"Florida-based journalist Nila Do Simon, along with her two young children (then ages three and one) and septuagenarian in-laws, stayed at this collection of private cottages in the Florida Keys in September 2020. “It was a multi-generational trip that had what we all were looking for: a postcard-perfect location to relax and disconnect,” she says. Their three-bedroom cottage sat on a white-sand beach. When they looked out their windows and back door, they were met with “turquoise-blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean, more than a dozen twisting palm trees, and a hammock that my daughter couldn't get enough of.” Simon also liked that the cottage was decorated with furnishings and artwork that the owner picked up in his travels to Bhutan, China, and Botswana. “The environment beckoned us to put down our phones and computers and take in the natural setting,” she says. “I even made an audio recording of the soft waves that danced upon the shore, and often listen to it. To this day, it instantly puts me at ease.”" - Ashlea Halpern