The Best Places to Stay and Do in the United States

Parking near a college football stadium ranks among life's reliable miseries, and Tempe's solution is a boat. On ASU game days, a water taxi runs across Tempe Town Lake, dropping fans at the stadium after a $5 park-and-walk at the Watermark garage and a $10 ride over. Hundred Mile Brewing is a partner, which explains the general good cheer on deck. Maroon and gold optional, but everyone seems to wear it anyway.

The dim lighting is a design choice, not an accident, and the 24-hour hours mean the staff has seen everything without flinching. This adult shop covers the full range: lingerie, toys, accessories, and a 200-channel digital arcade with private viewing booths. The team is notably relaxed and helpful, which goes a long way in a category where shopping can feel awkward. Phoenix New Times named it Best Adult Shop in 2025.

An indoor climbing gym that's been beefing up forearms in West Kendall since before bouldering was a personality type. No sauna, no juice bar, no steep initiation theater, just reasonable day passes, a full upstairs gym, and walls that reward actual footwork. The community is the real draw: regulars here talk beta, not brunch. Miami New Times named it Best Rock Climbing in 2025.

Forty-three courts spread across ten lakeside acres make The FORT one of the larger pickleball complexes in South Florida, and it also serves as the official home of the Association of Pickleball Players. Open play, skill-rated matches, private rentals, and tournaments all run here, and the après-match bar and kitchen give everyone a reason to linger. The crowd runs from first-timers fumbling their dinks to people who travel for this.

A century-old shopping center two miles from the Arizona State Capitol, the Gold Spot's golden brick courtyard has become an unofficial annex for state legislators, lobbyists, and the occasional curious constituent. Pita Jungle, a coffee shop, a salon, and a sandwich counter share the space with enough elected officials that eavesdropping feels almost civic. Consider it democracy, but with better focaccia.

Five vintage signs from vanished Mesa businesses glow outside The Post, an open-air neon garden that doubles as a love letter to the city's midcentury Main Street. Watson's Flowers, a porcelain Dairy Queen cone, and a Bill Johnson's bull head share the garden with a 15-foot Diving Lady, a replica of the last animated neon sign in Arizona, restored by the local artist who fixed the original after a storm took it down.

A women's resale boutique tucked into a strip mall in Ahwatukee Foothills, where the racks are hand-curated and the smell is notably not thrift store. Think Anthropologie dresses beside Lululemon sets beside a Coach bag or a Louis Vuitton one, all priced for people who do math at the register. The team runs sip-and-shop events with wine and markdowns, which is a reasonable way to make decisions you'll stand behind later.

Midcentury decor and nods to Mesa's past set the look, but the 400-capacity concert hall books metal, punk, hip-hop, and indie acts on a proper stage. Beyond shows, the room leans hard into being a genuine community space, with record swaps, DJ workshops, open-format dance nights, and yoga sessions on the calendar. It's the newest piece of a local empire that already runs a beloved theater, a basement venue, and a record store nearby.

A Birkenstock-forward shoe shop that has quietly become a fixture in downtown Tempe, drawing students, professors, and people who finally admit their feet deserve better. The selection runs from sandals and clogs to dressy leather styles, with brands like Dansko and Pikolinos filling out the racks alongside leather goods and accessories. The staff actually knows the inventory, which helps when you're deciding whether orthotics are a personality trait or just good sense.

A ten-mile linear park running beneath the Metrorail, The Underline has spent years converting concrete shadow into bike paths, basketball courts, fitness zones, art installations, and native-planted trails. The Brickell Backyard section is the busiest stretch, while the Hammock Trail pushes north into something that feels genuinely wilder. The whole thing is still expanding toward completion, which means returning visitors keep finding something new to argue about.

Pinball leagues run here most weeks, which tells you something about how seriously Tilt Studio takes its arcade. Tucked inside Arizona Mills mall, it's a full family entertainment center with laser tag, a snack bar, and a long row of Street Basketball machines that actually work, a small mercy in a genre plagued by stuck balls and swallowed credits. The hoops even feature a moving basket for anyone who finds a stationary target too easy.

The wedding-cake silhouette rising from a hill ringed with cactus is visible from the freeway, which is how most people know Tovrea Castle before they know anything about it. Built by an Italian entrepreneur dreaming of a resort, inherited by an Arizona cattle baron, and left to crumble before Phoenix restored it, the place has a strange, layered history. Tours happen twice a year by lottery, which somehow makes it more compelling.

Two separate gated fields, one for big dogs and one for small, sit inside this sprawling Doral dog park where weekends bring a genuinely chaotic mix of zoomies and sniffing diplomacy. A wash station handles the muddy aftermath, and there's outdoor fitness equipment plus a kids' playground, so the humans aren't just standing around looking grateful. The nearby Starbucks is two minutes away, which your dog has already calculated.

A record shop sprawling across the old Lowenstein Center on East Colfax, Twist & Shout stocks vinyl, CDs, DVDs, books, and decades of rock-era paraphernalia in a space big enough to lose an afternoon in. Touring acts play occasional in-store shows, and a rotating Local Listening Post keeps tabs on Denver's own scene. Westword named it the city's best record store in 2025, which will surprise nobody who has spent an hour here and left with six things they didn't plan to buy.

A butcher shop that actually explains itself, which turns out to be the hard part. Underbelly carries grass-fed, locally sourced cuts in a clean, curated case that rewards the curious and doesn't punish the clueless, because whoever's behind the counter will walk you through the difference between a skirt steak and a bavette without making you feel bad about it. The rotating sandwich menu is a quiet bonus from a team that clearly has more to say.

A strip-mall card shop in Scottsdale where the staff can tell you whether that rookie pull is worth grading and will handle the PSA submission paperwork so you don't have to. The hobby has gotten expensive and a little arcane since the '90s, and Valleywide seems to exist specifically to meet that confusion with a straight answer. Weekend afternoons draw collectors of every age, which is either heartwarming or proof that the hobby never really left.

A women's clothing boutique tucked into The Frederick, a small uptown retail complex, Vida Moulin stocks California boho pieces, think cotton cashmere tees and gingham maxi dresses, that manage to be relaxed without looking like they came off a fast-fashion conveyor belt. The prices don't require a moment of quiet reflection at the register either. Phoenix New Times named it Best Women's Clothing in 2025, which feels about right for a shop that regulars visit just to see what's new.

A volunteer-run distro shop stocking thousands of zines on every conceivable obsession, Wasted Ink is the kind of place where you go for one thing and leave an hour later having agreed to collaborate on someone else's publication. The shelves double as a small archive of zine history, and the staff can help you figure out how to start your own. Phoenix New Times named it the best place to buy a zine in 2025, which feels correct.

Sunrise over the Sonoran Desert looks different from a Robinson R66 at altitude, which is the whole argument for booking with this family-run helicopter tour company out of Scottsdale. Routes cover metro Phoenix, Sedona, and the Superstition Mountains, with mountaintop picnic flights for anyone who finds restaurants too horizontal. Pilots are seasoned and apparently good at talking first-timers off the ledge before liftoff does it for them.

A plastic-poo-flinging slingshot sits near a bar of beer-scented soap, which sits near cockroach-shaped toy cars, which is how you know you're in the right place. This Phoenix novelty and gag gift shop is a cheerfully unhinged bazaar of knickknacks nobody ordered but everyone quietly wants, from Magnetic Jesus Dress-Up kits to dragon merch to ass-shaped stress balls. The perfect stop when a normal card simply will not do.

Birding has quietly shed its retirement-hobby reputation, and Wild Birds Unlimited is where the newly converted come to figure out what to do next. The staff will match you to the right seed and feeder for what's actually flying around Scottsdale, talk you through attracting peach-faced lovebirds to your yard, and flag any local avian health alerts worth knowing. A specialty shop that takes the hobby seriously without making you feel like a tourist in your own backyard.

Somewhere between the white rhinos and the maned wolves, you may find yourself face to face with a capybara, which is a reasonable argument for coming. Wildlife World is a private zoo on the western edge of Phoenix, one of only two nationally accredited privately owned zoos in the country, with around 1,300 animals spread across naturalistic enclosures, no concrete-and-bars austerity here. The animals range from penguins to African wild dogs, and the place leans educational without being preachy about it.

Film cameras are having their moment, and Wilson Camera has been ready since the Eisenhower administration. This old-school camera shop in Scottsdale sells and services vintage gear and develops nearly every film format you can feed it. The new owner leaned hard into analog when everyone else went fully digital, so you can actually drop off your rolls here rather than mailing them to some lab in Brooklyn like everyone else apparently does.

An outdoor roller rink on colorful tiles in the heart of Wynwood, with a DJ running old-school hip-hop and Bad Bunny and a bar nearby for the non-skaters who came anyway. It runs Thursday through Sunday and costs under twenty bucks, which is a reasonable price for the combination of nostalgia and bruised dignity. Pack socks, or be prepared to hear about it.

Canyon Lake sits in the Superstition Wilderness, and Yak N Sup is how most people actually get on it, renting out kayaks and paddleboards by the day or longer from their Apache Junction outpost. Beyond self-guided rentals, the team runs guided tours that range from daytime paddles to full-moon and paranormal-themed excursions, which is a sentence you don't write every day. They also help organize lake cleanups, so the water stays worth paddling.

Four-dollar beers on Lincoln Road, which should be physically impossible. Zeke's is a cash-only sidewalk bar that has traded under a few names over the decades but never really changed: cheap cold beer, a bag of chips for a dollar, and a front-row seat to the full Miami Beach parade passing by. The hours shift, the tap selection is unpredictable, and none of that seems to bother anyone nursing a bottle in the sun.

A pool table and round-the-clock coffee in the lobby signal the priorities here: this is a no-frills Hilton budget hotel about 15 minutes from downtown Savannah, built for people who plan to spend their days elsewhere. Rooms are compact but tidy, with big TVs and walk-in showers. Complimentary breakfast covers the classics, and the lobby doubles as a decent remote-work setup if you need to put in an hour before exploring.