Luxury hotels and cruises certainly have strong appeal, but there's no vacation experience quite like staying in an exquisite home. While Airbnb offers overnight stays in homes at all price points, their Luxe listings on idyllic coastlines and mountainsides are at the very top of their offerings. Here, we've rounded up some of the most expensive Airbnbs in the world for your viewing and booking pleasure.

The great raiser of offerings, the versatile bearer of your crisps, canapés and drinks; a tray can make the simplest of snacks more tempting. Dishing out a range of platters, dishes and boards to elevate your hosting

Some people believe that the holiday season doesn't officially start in England until every hall at Windsor Castle is fully decked out. Each year in November, the Royal Collection Trust decorates the almost century-old royal residence with fragrant garlands, thousands of colorful lights, and a breathtaking Christmas tree located in St George’s Hall—and this year's beauty is truly something magical. The 20-feet-tall Nordmann Fir tree, which was sustainably grown and harvested at Windsor Great Park, features hundreds of twinkling light towers and is topped with a star marking the 675th anniversary of the Order of the Garter (the oldest order of chivalry in Britain).

1970s brutalist house Villa Stuyven is now home to creative couple Bram Kerkhofs and Lore Baeyens, providing a concrete-lined backdrop to a life of design and collaboration

You’ll want to spend the entire day in Ulla Johnson’s lovely Los Angeles store—and that’s the point. Johnson has added yet another lovely to her line sheet—a sun-drenched Los Angeles store designed by ELLE DECOR A-List Titan Kelly Wearstler. The boutique, located on Beverly Boulevard, is a uniquely Los Angeles wonderland, with a solarium, a lush garden terrace, and even a towering indoor Brachychiton tree.

Christian Siriano shows up regularly at his TriBeCa neighbor’s door, but it isn’t to borrow a cup of sugar. (“Neither of us cooks,” his neighbor says, like a typical New Yorker.) Instead, Siriano often comes bearing a vase or some other interesting piece from his own place that he thinks might actually work better in hers. He should know, after all, since he designed her apartment. The two have been friends for about 15 years, and at one point the client also worked for Siriano, doing sales for his fashion business. “We built a good relationship,” she says, “and I ended up moving into his building. So he can’t get rid of me!”

Don't tell Mimi McMakin that it’s only the thought that counts. Having grown up wading through the tattered remains of gift-giving carnage long after Christmas morning, she knows the wrapping paper counts too. “My dad’s rule was no cleaning up the Christmas-wrapping tornado for at least a week. He loved Christmas, and with eight kids, that made for a big happy mess,” she says.

Catherine FitzGerald is supervising three of her four children and their friends as they prepare vegetables they have just picked from the family’s walled garden at Glin Castle, County Limerick in the west of Ireland. Meanwhile her husband, Dominic West, has been tied into a frilly flowered apron by the kids and is whisking mayonnaise with the help of a YouTube video, as he is a novice in such culinary matters.

This Syros house by architects Block722 is a holiday home in Greece, designed like a small island village

“We design homes that are very comfortable and full of personality; they are never just for anyone, they are for someone,” says Caan. “I think you can tell when you walk into our spaces that someone specific lives there, and that’s what drives me and how I design.”

American nostalgia and southern charm come together at Eastside Bowl, a former big-box department store space turned bowling alley, diner, arcade and music venue in Nashville, Tennessee.

At just over 12,500 square feet, the seven-bedroom, eight-bathroom (not to mention two half-baths) property was conceived to be the ultimate entertaining space for a finance executive and his four children.

Galvanised by the precision of machine-made tools, in the 1930s Josef Volman commissioned a hugely expensive house that took the industrial as inspiration. Political upheaval reduced the Modernist Czech masterpiece to rust and ruin, but now Villa Volman has been beautifully restored