Ritz

Tour and photograph Moscow's most renowned places, including Red Square, on Ritz Tours' "Russian Waterways Excursion." Dates: Multiple departures through Sept. 27. Itinerary: Moscow to Uglich, Yaroslavl, Goritsy, Kizhi Island, Svirstroy and St. Petersburg. RUSSIA Land tour and river cruise Price: From $2,799 (double occupancy; single supplement varies), including 12 nights' lodging, most meals, a reception, tours and educational lectures, but excluding taxes and fees.

Two luxury apartment buildings are under construction in West Hollywood aimed at mobile, creative tenants who make a living on the go, often tapping on their laptops in coffee bars and other hangouts. The goal of developers Essex Property Trust and the Monarch Group is to rethink apartments for people who don't work 9-to-5 in a traditional office - a generally younger demographic found in abundance in West Hollywood. Named the Huxley and the Dylan, they are being built on two busy intersections on La Brea Avenue at a cost of more than $150 million.

The Art Deco-inspired Century City condominium tower expected to be the home of wealthy widow Candy Spelling and many other moneyed residents has been completed after nearly six years of planning, demolition and construction. With high-rise living still rarer in Los Angeles than in other international cities, the dramatic 41-story Century on Avenue of the Stars is targeted at a sliver of home buyers willing to spend as much for a condo as they would for a sumptuous home in an exclusive neighborhood such as Beverly Hills or Malibu.

After a hot morning of work, David Kahn and his farmhands sat down to lunch at a long wooden table on the porch. Today's feast featured a salad of juicy heirloom tomatoes picked from vines just a few feet away, pasta and pesto made with homegrown cilantro, and a crusty loaf of wheat bread baked the day before in an outdoor clay oven. If there are any doubts about the viability of Edendale Farm ? which Kahn built, improbably, on a sloping half acre smack in the middle of a swanky Silver Lake neighborhood ?

Ritz, a longtime Newport Beach fine-dining establishment, has been sold to a Las Vegas restaurateur who promises to preserve its famed Continental cuisine. Ritz owner Hans Prager, 71, who has been in failing health, agreed to sell the restaurant to Fred Glusman, who owns an upscale Italian restaurant, Piero's, in Las Vegas. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Employees and guests of the plush Ritz-Carlton Hotel were briefly evacuated today after a fire erupted in a third-floor laundry room. The fire began shortly before 10:30 a.m. and sent smoke through the lower floors of the building for about 20 minutes. No injuries were reported.

Fluor Corp. said Friday it won a $125 million contract to build a Ritz-Carlton resort in the Cayman Islands. The project will include a 365-room luxury hotel, restaurants, conference facilities, a full-service European-style spa, and a Greg Norman-designed golf course, the Aliso Viejo company said. Construction will begin this month, with the resort scheduled to open late next year.

There is nothing innovative, challenging or even very interesting about the menu at the Ritz Grill in Pasadena. And this may be precisely why the place is jammed. The Ritz (no relation to the Ritz Cafe in Los Angeles) is a haven from the nouvelle , a place where there is food, not pictures, on the plates, where one is not ashamed to be seen eating mere meat and potatoes.

Fallout from the recent bankruptcy of Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. has caused construction to be halted indefinitely at the Ritz-Carlton, Rancho Mirage. The 20-year-old resort, formerly the Lodge at Rancho Mirage, was expected to show off the results of a $500-million, top-to-bottom overhaul early next year, but contractor Ledcor Petty of San Diego halted construction Sept.

The world's most romantic hotel looks out upon Catalina sunsets from the bluffs of Dana Point, a survey of Gourmet magazine's tasteful readers has found. They bestowed the honor on the Ritz-Carlton, a Mediterranean-style luxury hotel with sweeping coastal views and unusual options for the romantically inclined.