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Tahiti. It is the most dreamt-of isle in the South Seas, one of the most romanticized spots on earth. Those who have visited it have called it heaven or, at least, Eden. First discovered by Europeans during the Age of Enlightenment, Tahiti was embraced by French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, who claimed that the island was proof that his "noble savage," uncorrupted by civilization, existed. Tahiti became a place to escape the world. "All the time our visits to the islands have been more like dreams than realities," wrote Robert Louis Stevenson of his days in French Polynesia. Paul Gauguin, who sought out the islands to overcome the torment of his life in Europe, wrote in his journal that in French Polynesia "the reality of yesterday becomes a fable and one forgets it."

Today travelers still make the pilgrimage to the islands to seek out a perfect existence, vanquishing their worries with white-sand beaches, crystal-blue waters and lush tropic rain forests. If there is a place in which to truly cast off the cares of the world, this is it. Tahiti and her sister islands in French Polynesia - Bora Bora, Moorea, Huahine and over 100 more - are exquisite landfalls where French and island culture have merged to create a sophisticated yet casual lifestyle. Visitors to French Polynesia will find the beauty Gauguin captured in his canvases everywhere about them. A temperate climate where the sea is as warm as a bath and the air is as gentle as a lover's touch. Volcanic peaks that soar hundreds of feet heavenward, their flanks covered with vibrant flowers. Stunning hotels where the fares (bungalows) are built right over the water, and you can have the morning's first café au lait while watching the fish dart beneath your porch. Poet Rupert Brooke, who spent a year in Tahiti at the turn of the century, fell in love with a Tahitian woman; before he left the island, he spent many hours writing in celebration of her homeland, a place where "life consists of expeditions by moonlight and diving naked into waterfalls and racing over white sands beneath brooding palm trees."