The Best Places in the United States

The balcony patio goes by its own name, Carnelian Bay, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Fremont cocktail bar and diner. Margaritas come in disco balls, Jell-O shots taste like homemade jam, and pimento cheese arrives on fried saltines. The steamed burger at happy hour has a cult following among people who take their diner food seriously while pretending not to.

A tiny sake bar tucked next to Kamonegi in Fremont, Hannyatou is the kind of place where the servers will talk you through a flight without making you feel like a student. The snacks, from the same team next door, are good enough that you may accidentally eat dinner here when you came only to drink. The habanero umeshu, when available, tends to inspire the kind of enthusiasm people usually reserve for sports.

Across the street from Georgia Tech, this 12-story Hilton Garden Inn sits in Midtown with MARTA access and a handful of good restaurants within walking distance, which takes real pressure off the planning. Rooms run colorful and tidy, some with proper living areas if a standard footprint feels tight. The outdoor pool deck has grilling stations and a fire pit, which is a nicer amenity mix than the category usually delivers.

A seasonal rooftop pool a few blocks from Columbia University is not something you expect from a hotel on 126th Street, which is part of the point. The George sits in a former industrial stretch of Harlem that's been pulled into the present without losing its bones. Rooms run compact and modern, the outdoor lounge leans chic without trying too hard, and the Broadway line is close enough to make Midtown feel like a minor inconvenience.

Rattan furniture, grass skirts, and cocktails arriving in vessels that would embarrass a prop department set the tone at this tiki cocktail bar on East Central. The drinks are genuinely stiff under all the kitsch, and the signature comes in a schooner glass, fuschia-hued and finished with a flaming sugar cube on a lemon slice. South Pacific camp done with a straight face, which somehow makes it funnier.

The Rock sits 1.25 miles offshore, close enough that prisoners could see the city lights from their cells, which was apparently the whole problem. A 12-minute ferry gets you there, and audio tours walk you through the cell block, laundry, and chow house. The burned-out Warden's mansion is worth finding: it was torched during a 19-month Native American occupation in 1970, a chapter the gift shop tends to underplay.

A state park sitting in the middle of San Francisco Bay, Angel Island has been a Coast Miwok home, an immigration station, and a Cold War missile base, which makes the hiking trails feel unusually layered. Rent a bike, join an open-air tram tour, or walk to the Immigration Station museum. The views of the bay and city skyline are the kind that make you forget you took a ferry to get here.

A Beaux-Arts building that used to be the city's main library now holds one of the largest Asian art collections in the Western hemisphere, spanning India, China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, and beyond. Pottery, weapons, calligraphy, snuff bottles, and a fully reconstructed Japanese tearoom share space with a standout Chinese bronze collection. The redesigned galleries organize the sprawl around 15 anchor masterpieces, which helps considerably.

A neighborhood shop in the Sunset that stocks handmade home goods, locally printed graphic tees, and vintage finds sourced from local makers and the occasional road trip. It has the feel of a very good flea market find without requiring you to actually dig through one. The shirts are designed and printed in San Francisco on US-made blanks, which is either a detail you care about deeply or proof that you do now.

A long strip of sand tucked beneath the Presidio's bluffs, with the Golden Gate close enough to feel like a backdrop someone forgot to take down. The surf looks inviting and is genuinely dangerous, so most people stay on dry land and enjoy the view, which is the point anyway. Fog rolls in more often than sun, so dress for it. The Sand Ladder at the north end connects to trails along the bluffs for anyone who wants to turn a beach walk into a hike.

A wine bar with a list that runs close to 400 bottles, anchored in Spain and Italy but wandering convincingly into South America and France. It's a chain out of Connecticut, which the lively, group-heavy room makes easy to forget. Tapas keep things going between pours. Good for a party that wants to spend a long evening working through the menu without anyone having to make too many decisions alone.

The ferry to Sausalito leaves from Fisherman's Wharf, which means you start in the loudest possible version of San Francisco before the engine kicks in and the city quietly peels away behind you. Blue & Gold Fleet is the bay's main ferry operator, running routes to Sausalito, Oracle Park, and Chase Center. The crossing itself is the point: Coit Tower shrinking, the water coming up over the bow, the skyline doing its slow goodbye.

A retrofitted house in Madrona with a porch and backyard patio that gets claimed fast once the sun appears. Bottlehouse is a neighborhood wine bar with a range that runs from Bolivian syrah to Walla Walla grenache blanc, plus wine cocktails that pair well with whatever the resident cheesemonger is recommending. It feels more like a very well-stocked friend's place than a formal tasting room, which is exactly the point.

Bungalow is the Logan Square brewpub where the beer runs on wild yeast and the wine is made with as little intervention as the law allows. Tavern-style thin-crust pizza shows up on Tuesdays, cut in squares, but the toppings come from regional farms and the sauces wander off script. Order a pepperoni pie here and you'll feel like you've missed the point. The Beard folks named the beverage program a semifinalist in 2024.

Renzo Piano gave this natural history museum and aquarium a living roof planted entirely in native California greenery, which feels appropriate for a place that houses a rainforest, a planetarium, and a penguin colony under one roof. Kids can sleep over beneath the stars and wake up next to the fish tanks. Adults get Thursday NightLife events with DJ sets and full run of the exhibits, which is a more interesting Thursday than most.

Getting into this off-Strip speakeasy means ringing a football, which feels like a sentence from a fever dream, and then supplying a password you only get by booking ahead. A host in a vest and flat cap works the room while jazz singers handle the stage, and you can request an unlikely cover from the lounge. It's an Italian steakhouse in costume, so the red leather booths fill up with tourists.

The oldest Chinatown in North America sprawls across 30 dense blocks, and it rewards wandering on foot more than any map can promise. Tin How Temple sits quietly on a third-floor walkup, incense thick in the air while neighbors light candles and pray. A few streets over, the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory folds cookies by hand amid whirring machinery. The lanterns and neon signs are as good as advertised, which almost never happens.

The Poetry Room upstairs has a sign inviting you to sit on the floor, which tells you everything about the kind of bookstore this is. City Lights has been a Beat landmark forever, the place that published Ginsberg's "Howl" and survived the obscenity trial that followed. Today it still publishes its own titles, leaning toward poetry and politics, alongside a well-stocked general floor that rewards serious browsing.

Beach Blanket Babylon ran here for 45 years, which is a long shadow to step out of. Club Fugazi has done it by turning the room into something acrobatic and immersive, with tiered table seating that keeps things intimate even when the energy runs high. The bones of a grand old North Beach theater are still very much there; the production just doesn't treat them like a museum exhibit. Good date night, good out-of-towner night, good "I forgot San Francisco is fun" night.

The instructions say to write about a bar, but the source material describes Crepe Neptune as a grab-and-go crepe and boba shop with no mention of alcohol or bar service. Writing it as a bar would misrepresent the place. Could you clarify the "Kind of entry" field, or confirm whether this should be described as a casual counter-service crepe shop?

A daisy painted on the facade of what looks like a converted lobby is all the sign you get, so consider this your heads-up. Daisy Lounge is a speakeasy tucked into a Circle C Ranch strip mall, far from the usual Downtown clusters, with built-in bookshelves, armchairs, and a multi-floor floral interior that reads more cozy library than hidden bar. The cocktail menu runs classics alongside house originals. Book ahead.

A 15-seat marble-counter cocktail bar in Edmonds where the only food on the menu is a brie and baguette platter, which turns out to be exactly what you wanted with your French 75. Textbook coupe drinks are the point: aviations, corpse revivers, the occasional off-menu jungle bird. On a Friday it's a sardine-tin singalong; on a slow Monday the counter still fills fast. The kind of neighborhood bar people immediately claim as their own.

Dark Arts is a cocktail lounge hidden behind the fireplace at Grey Witch, which means you enter by walking past some LED flames like a very polite arsonist. Inside is a hunting lodge gone gothic, with animal bones, tarot art, and dried wildflowers. The drinks lean on warming spices and herbs, and there's a deep tobacco list. It's only open a few nights a week, so check Instagram before you go knocking on hearths.

A preloaded card and a WineStation let you pour your own way through California vineyards at this wine bar and retail shop in Roswell. The self-service setup covers up to 24 samples, ranging from everyday bottles to collector-tier Napa, so the pace is entirely yours. Sommeliers and producers swing through for ticketed events, and the retail shelves go home with you after. Ideal for the crowd that finds a server hovering a little exhausting.

Dimmi Dimmi is a corner Italian spot in Lincoln Park that took over a three-decade neighborhood fixture and somehow kept the regulars from rioting. The tavern-style pizzas have crackly edges and come cut in squares, and the handmade pastas hold their own beside them. It's a sit-down dinner, so book ahead, or try your luck at a weekday lunch, which is when the people who know things tend to walk in.

A walking food tour that threads through Japantown for a couple of hours, stopping at restaurants, grocery stores, and family-run shops that most visitors walk right past. Small groups eat, drink, and hear the neighborhood's stories from guides who are plainly obsessed with the place. Japantown reads quiet from the outside, but that changes fast once you're in.

Flo & Santos is a South Loop pub that can't pick a lane, so it picked three: tavern-style thin-crust pizza, Polish comfort food, and a beer garden with daily specials. Order the pie with kielbasa and sauerkraut and a pierogi sampler on the side, and your cardiologist will lose track of the subplots. Casual, reasonably priced, and equally happy to see you in a work shirt or a ballgame jersey.

This Edgewater pizza shop does deep-dish on a sourdough crust that borrows from a Greek bread called lagana, then turns around and makes cracker-thin tavern pies from the same dough. There's barely any seating and the oven is small, so most people order online and take it home, where an uncut pizza stays crunchy. Eater has put it on its lists for deep-dish, thin-crust, and best pizza overall.

The International Orange paint, chosen partly because it makes the bridge visible through San Francisco's famous fog, is the first thing you learn at the Welcome Center before walking across. You can drive it, walk it, or rent a bike and pedal over to Sausalito for lunch. San Francisco City Guides runs free walking tours if you want the engineering backstory delivered by someone who finds suspension cables genuinely thrilling.

A drum circle can materialize next to a serene Japanese garden on the same afternoon you pedal a boat past ducks on Blue Heron Lake, which is more or less how Golden Gate Park operates. The California Academy of Sciences anchors the cultural end, with a living rainforest and an albino alligator named Claude. The 1914 carousel still spins its painted lions and dragons to carnival music, and the park band has been playing free summer concerts here since forever.

The Gothic Revival cathedral atop Nob Hill has two labyrinths, a 7,466-pipe organ, and behind-the-scenes tours that venture into spaces most visitors never see (the fine print notes heights and tight passages, which is either a warning or a selling point). Soaring arches and enormous stained glass windows do the heavy lifting architecturally, while a packed calendar of music and community events keeps the place feeling lived-in rather than merely visited.

The corner of Haight and Ashbury still draws people who want to feel the ghost of 1967, but the neighborhood has long since grown into its own thing. Painted Victorians sit alongside vintage shops, record stores, and cafés where nobody is in a hurry. The proximity to Golden Gate Park means an afternoon here tends to drift pleasantly sideways. Come for the browse, stay for the walk.

The password comes from their social media, which is either charmingly old-fashioned or exactly what a speakeasy is now. Either way, the third-floor of one of Orlando's oldest buildings is a genuinely dim, close-quarters cocktail bar where the drinks are stiff and the couples are very comfortable with each other. A small outdoor ledge offers escape when the room gets cozy. Dress the part and look like you belong.