1. Luxury

Mustique

Fashion, as you may be aware, is about to have a Princess Margaret moment. Come spring, the more style-savvy among us will be tripping about in duchesse satin coats, accessorised with a ciggie holder and a quart of gin and Dubonnet. The season, says Christopher Bailey, designer at Burberry, is "less rock, more royalty". To stay in step with the trend, I quite fancy a month in Mustique, in homage to HRH and her wild, wafting ways. Her old pad - Les Jolies Eaux at Gelliceaux Bay, a private peninsula given to Margaret as a wedding present by Lord Glenconner - has recently been renovated and is available for hire at a mere $24,000 per week ($16,000 after April 30), complete with a poolside master suite, a dining pavilion and a media room. A week at the Bali Hai villa starts at a little over £2,000 - hardly a bargain but this is the "celebrity holiday capital of the world". I intend to spend my days pegged out at Macaroni beach and shall retire to the Cotton House hotel each Tuesday evening to share a bowl of punch with neighbours Sir Mick Jagger and Tommy Hilfiger at the island-wide cocktail party. With any luck, things could get quite fizzy. As Glenconner recalls, "We had many parties on the beach involving naked limbo dancers ... " Fine by me.
Mimi Spencer

· The Mustique Company (01628 583 517, has over 50 villas from US$4,000 a week. Cotton House (001 784 456 4777, cottonhouse.net), from £265 per night. Virgin Atlantic (0870 3802007, virginatlantic.com) flies Gatwick-Barbados from £388.10; Grenadine Airways (svgair.com) flies Barbados-Mustique from US$120 one-way.

2. Food

Gers

South-west France is home to exhilarating ingredients, wines, markets and food festivals. Where much of foodie France suffers from a dose of the smugs, the little-hyped region of Gers (Gascony, as was) offers a sincere welcome and genuine discoveries. Wines like madiran, dishes like l'aligot (imagine the silkiest, creamiest puree of yellow potatoes forked through with fresh Cantal cheese and a French kiss of garlic) and abundant affordable foie gras are produced in green countryside that rolls and dips before sharpening into the Pyrenees. I'd start my bliss trip in the neighbouring region of Aveyron, at Laguiole. High above the village, looking like a crystal embedded in a black basalt peak, Michel Bras' restaurant serves cuisine de terroir of rare simplicity and deceptive subtlety. The experience is heightened by staying the night there sandwiched between duvets of goose down, in a glass-walled room with plunging views over the Aubrac valley. From Aveyron, the Gers is a glorious day's swing through Albi (Gaillac wines) and Toulouse (er, sausages), with maybe a diversion to Agen (prunes), ending at Nogaro, slap in the middle of armagnac country.
Kevin Gould

· Fly to Rodez (ryanair.com). Laguiole is a 45-minute drive away. Fly back from Pau Pyrenees. michel-bras.com opens from end-April to end-October.

3. Culture

Cartagena

A couple of weeks from now I would love to head off to Colombia, to the most sumptuous city in all the Americas for a shot of Latin literature. Cartagena de Indias, a perfectly preserved 17th-century Spanish colonial town, with the Caribbean lapping against the battlements, is a sensual and cultured place any time of year, but with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, its most famous resident, hosting a Spanish-speaking version of the Hay festival it will be really magical. (Or should that be magically realist?) Cartagena, the setting for Love In The Time Of Cholera, and the location for much of the film The Mission, is a dazzling warren of ornate churches, elegant mansions and leafy squares. Surrounded by beaches and bays, lagoons and islands, it is safe, lazy, old fashioned and charming beyond imagining - the perfect place for a combination of the cerebral and the sybaritic. And if I don't make it for the literary fest, I could always shimmy over in March when Cartagena hosts the annual Caribbean Music Festival. Salsa by the sea.
Robert Elms

· The Cartagena Literary Festival runs January 26-29 (0870 9901299, hayfestival.com/cartagena). A six-night trip to Cartagena starts from £1,616pp including flights, transfers and B&B, through Journey Latin America (020-8747 8315, journeylatinamerica.co.uk). The flight-only price is £758 inc tax. Hotel Casa La Fe (casalafe.com) has doubles from around £40.

4. Wellbeing

Estonia

I want to visit Muhu, one of the serene, untainted and strangely romantic islands on Estonia's west coast. It is hypnotic on summer's long, light-drenched days when the scent of juniper forest mingles with rejuvenating blasts of Baltic air and you can hike, horse ride, cycle, fish and swim. But that's not the time for me. I want to go in the next couple of months, hopefully accompanied by dazzling winter sunshine, when locals claim you can drive across the frozen sea. With its historic village architecture, Muhu remains largely unknown to Brits. But now it's being offered on a package with Tallinn, staying in the wonderfully renovated 12-room Pädaste Manor. Built by German Baltic nobles in its own parkland, it has a small spa offering island specials including hay baths, Muhu honey and goat's milk treatments. Add in locally sourced Estonian cuisine - grilled moose, calf and truffle sausages - and it's going to be a memorable visit.
Ian Belcher

· Baltic Holidays (0870 7579233, balticholidays.com) offers three nights in Tallinn and four in Pädaste Manor with flights and transfers for £579pp.

5. Student

Sziget

For an entire week in August, Obudai island in the middle of the Danube, just outside Budapest, becomes a self-contained party city; the temporary home of a multitude of stages playing anything from folk to filthy techno, a metropolis of tents, and thousands of young people from around the world. With the music pumping, the sun shining, and a cool breeze blowing in from the river; this is my idea of hedonist heaven. Sziget festival is full of nice touches to supplement the mayhem: improvised restaurants and swimming pools, surprisingly good toilet and shower facilities and even fully functioning ATMs. Best of all, for those who have already got the overpriced T-shirts of the western European festival giants, Sziget will set you back a mere £80. With its status growing each year, 2006 may be the last chance to experience this unpolished diamond of a festival before the money starts rolling in.
Benji Lanyado

· szigetfestival.com, August 9-16. Camping is included in the ticket price (approx £16 per day or £80 for the week), or stay at the Marco Polo Hostel in the centre of Budapest (marcopolohostel .com) from £8pp for a dorm. EasyJet (easyjet.com) flies from Gatwick, Luton, Bristol and Newcastle to Budapest from £22.99 one-way inc tax.

6. Adventure

Argentina

While foreign tourists flock to more obvious sites near the glaciers and southern lakes, active Argentines have been coming to the Sierras de Córdoba since the 1930s to escape the cities and clean their lungs. The mountains are lower than the Andes, and far more accessible, with red rock canyons in the Comechingones, a huge granite plateau at the Pampa de Achala, and pastizales (grasslands) for leisurely strolls - as well as the Condorito national park where you can see baby condors learning to fly. Woodsy La Falda and more cosmopolitan La Cumbre are both perfect bases for hiking and horseriding and the latter is a world-class paragliding centre. Cycling, rock-climbing, birding and swimming in mountain streams are all on offer out of town and I'll take a balloon trip when I tire of walking. I don't want crowds, so I'll go after the end of February, when everyone's gone back to work and school after the austral summer - and when flight and room rates go down.
Chris Moss

· Aerolineas Argentinas (020-7290 7887, aerolineas.com.ar/uk) can do the round trip London-Córdoba for under £600 inc taxes. Car hire is cheap and accommodation can be booked through estanciasdecordoba.com. Exsus Travel (020-7292 5050, exsus.com) can organise a tailor-made itinerary.

7. Diving

Sulawesi

I want to return to Bunaken Island, to dive in the marine park that includes four other islands offshore from Manado, in Indonesia. All divers pay a licence fee of about £12, and the money is distributed among local villagers who help protect the reefs. There are several excellent dive centres in the park, which has some of the richest coral reefs in the world, but my favourite is Froggies Divers run by the indefatigable Christiane Muller. Froggies takes a maximum of 18 guests and there is a dive guide for every two divers, ensuring you get excellent service and tuition on spotting rare pygmy seahorses, and sponge-crabs hiding among almost 400 species of hard coral. Bunaken also has an estimated 3,000 species of tropical fish, making it close to the epicentre of marine diversity.
Tim Ecott

· Until April, Trailfinders (020-7938 3939, trailfinders.com) has flights to Manado from £712 on Singapore Airlines and Silk Air. Froggies Divers (divefroggies.com, 00 62 431 850 210) has en suite bungalows from £20pp per night including dinner; two guided dives cost £45.

8. Wildlife

Lake Titicaca

I'm keen to find one of world's most peculiar frogs, but this part of the world has many other attractions for those who don't share my herpetological leanings. Lake Titicaca straddles the border between Bolivia and Peru and is the highest navigable lake in the world. The mighty Inca empire emerged here, and if you travel around the lake and explore its 41 islands, you'll find it hard to miss ancient ruins and evidence of sacred sites. Life still revolves around the lake and the Uru people who live here now can make pretty much anything from bulrushes: floating islands, houses, even boats.

But all this pales in comparison with the Lake Titicaca giant frog. They are now in decline, but it's their appearance rather than their rarity that makes them worthy of a quest halfway around the world: they are huge, over 40cm long and weighing as much as 3kg. And they look like they're wearing a skin several times too big - their scientific name is Telmatobius culeau, which translates as aquatic scrotum.
Nick Baker

· Last Frontiers (01296 653000, lastfrontiers.com) can organise an 11-night trip to Peru, including two nights at Lake Titicaca with an excursion to the floating reed islands of Uros and Taquile, three nights visiting the remote Colca valley and five in the Cusco and Machu Picchu region. £2,130pp, including flights, transfers, B&B - full-board in Colca -and tours.

9. Weekending

Galway

It doesn't take a hip hotel to lure me across the Irish Sea, but the opening of G Hotel has made a trip a little more pressing, and puts Galway on my wish list this year. Once the spa - on the upper two floors with a glass-enclosed bamboo "roof" garden - is up and running later this month, the G will be in its full glory. The hotel's interior has been designed by famous hatter Philip Treacy. He's gone full-on theatrical in the public rooms - from the black marble and glass entrance lobby to the pink Ladies' Lounge and a grand gold and silvery salon complete with dramatic Tom Dixon light - but the pale oyster bedrooms appear to have a sort of sensual restraint. Sally Shalam

· 00353 91 865200, theghotel.ie, from €450 per night B&B. Aer Arann (0800 5872324, aerarann.ie) flies to Galway from Luton, Manchester and Edinburgh from £19.99 one-way inc taxes.

10. Families

Washington DC

If, like me, you've got a load of kids with a range of ages to please, Washington DC is a fab place for 2006. Not in the middle of the year - it's much too clammy then - but ideal for 10 days in the May or October half-terms.

My youngest daughter, who's four, is already looking forward to seeing the new panda cub Tai Shan at the fantastic, free National Zoo - he's just started receiving a limited number of visitors, so make sure you book a ticket online at nationalzoo.si.edu. Miranda, who's seven, is a spy-in-the-making who can't wait to decipher secret codes and try out disguises at the Spy Museum (spymuseum.org), while my older children (14 and 12) will up their historical knowledge with trips to the White House, Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial and the eternal flame on JFK's grave.

As well as a being a great centre for museums (in July both the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum re-open after refurbishments), there are loads of places to escape to for a day, like the Great Falls in Maryland where you can walk the trails, or the waterfalls on the Potomac river - you can rent a bike or canoe from Fletcher's Boat House on Canal Road. There's white-water rafting in the Blue Ridge mountains, and at Harpers Ferry there's the civil war re-enactors' museum and the chance to go tubing on the river.
Joanna Moorehead

· Virgin Holidays (0871 2220304, virgin.com/holidays) has a three-night break from £479 per adult and £269 per child staying at the Washington Plaza where family rooms have two double beds. More at washington.org.