The Best Places to Stay and Do in the United States

A 1929 brick building on Ponce de Leon, now a boutique hotel where a sleek modern addition tucks in beside the original without much fuss. The basement once housed a storied gathering place in Atlanta's LGBTQ+ history, and the hotel wears that legacy with genuine intention. Rooms are compact and well considered, with plump bedding and luggage stashed in cubbies under the bed. The second-floor terrace and lobby sunroom give you somewhere to land after a day in Midtown.

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.

Three wings of rooms orbit a central elevator bank in this retro-futuristic high-rise hotel downtown, which at 28 stories and 1,249 rooms is less a hotel than a small municipality. Skybridges connect it to neighboring hotels and the conference center, so conventioneers can spend three days entirely indoors if the Atlanta summer has anything to say about it. Fourth-floor rooms open onto a terrace with a jogging track and pickleball courts.

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.

The 47-story atrium is so vertiginously tall that John Portman's neo-futuristic design has moonlighted as a movie set for decades. This downtown convention hotel connects to Peachtree Center by skybridge and runs multiple restaurants, from a coffee shop to a steakhouse. Rooms are clean and functional, with low platform beds and a proper desk. The glass elevators alone will make you feel like you're in a film, which, statistically, you sort of are.

The Fox Theatre is literally across the street, which makes this Marriott Courtyard a practical choice for anyone coming to Atlanta for a show or using Peachtree Street as a home base. It's a mid-range hotel with 158 rooms, soft lighting, plush beds, and a lobby big enough to spread out in. The attached restaurant leans into Southern comfort food, chicken and waffles among them.

The bones go back to 1913, but a thorough renovation means the lobby reads contemporary rather than musty. This downtown Atlanta hotel keeps rooms compact and practical, with a proper desk and a modern bath, and some king rooms add a sofa if you need the breathing room. The lobby coffee counter pulls double duty as a morning café and evening bar. Peachtree Center MARTA is a short walk south, and dozens of restaurants surround it.

The atrium here was John Portman's original experiment in the form: a cavernous open void with a skylight ceiling and glass elevators gliding up the walls, and it still stops people mid-stride. This conference-scale hotel spreads across three towers, from standard king rooms to the Radius, a glass cylinder with compact quarters and mosaic-tile showers that feel like a set from a 1970s sci-fi film. Polaris, the revolving rooftop restaurant under a blue dome, completes the retro-futurist mood.

The painted coffered ceiling in the lobby is original to the 1929 office building, and it sets expectations the rest of this extended-stay Marriott hotel doesn't quite match, in the best possible way to stay calibrated. Most suites come with a full kitchen setup for actual cooking. Complimentary hot breakfast runs daily, the Peachtree Center MARTA stop is right outside, and the fitness center looks straight down onto the street below.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.