The Best Places to Stay and Do in the United States

Period lanterns, glossy windows, and varicolored brickwork set the tone before you even walk in. The Spectator is a boutique hotel where the French Quarter and Market Street meet, wearing its Roaring Twenties bones lightly, with Modernist awnings keeping things from tipping into full costume drama. Four floors, a debonair bearing, and a Michelin Key make it a natural base for Charleston at its most photogenic.

Rows of towering palms line the drive up to this Spanish colonial resort sitting at the base of Camelback Mountain, and the inside follows through: Oriental rugs, deep saturated colors, and none of the beige Southwestern pastels you'll find everywhere else in Phoenix. Stone paths wind through orange groves and tucked-away courtyards. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key. It reads less like a hotel than like a very grand private home someone forgot to lock.

Vineyards press right up to the guest room windows at this lodge and spa tucked into Carmel Valley, which sets the tone for everything: limestone fireplaces, marble soaking tubs for two, Italian linens, and a spa that works with wine grapes and lavender grown on the property. The pool anchors the center of the resort, and the restaurant draws its own crowd. It holds a Forbes Four Star and two Michelin Keys.

The complimentary cocktail hour is hosted by your personal valet, who already knows your name before you've set down your bags. Casa Palmero is a boutique resort at Pebble Beach built around a Spanish Colonial manor house, all fountains and courtyard and lush Mediterranean landscaping. It holds a Forbes Four Star. With only a handful of rooms, it operates less like a hotel and more like borrowing a wealthy friend's estate, assuming that friend also pre-books your tee times.

The lobby frames the 18th hole and Stillwater Cove behind it, which tells you immediately what kind of resort this is. Golfers do make pilgrimages here, but the Forbes Four Star property also has a beach and tennis club with a heated pool, horseback trails on the same grounds where National Velvet was filmed, and rooms with big windows or private patios pointed squarely at the Big Sur coastline.

A sweeping spiral staircase and a towering wine cellar greet you in the lobby, which sets the tone for this 234-room luxury hotel on West End. Champalimaud designed the interiors, and the result lands somewhere between art hotel and serious whiskey destination. Three in-house dining and drinking spots lean into Southern fare, and the rooftop pool deck has skyline views that make Nashville's reputation for a good time feel like an understatement.

A boutique hotel built around the fact that Boise sits on the 43rd parallel in the 43rd state, which is either charming or a lot, depending on your tolerance for a theme. Rooms are contemporary with local artwork and a gem-toned palette, and the staff runs an arts passport program with access to the city's ballet, philharmonic, and opera. Chandlers, the onsite restaurant, doubles as a martini bar with live jazz most nights.

A hidden inn spread across a cluster of restored adobe houses in what locals call the oldest neighborhood in the country. The owners spent a lifetime collecting, and it shows: Persian rugs, Tibetan furniture, carved Indian doors, and bathrooms tiled in onyx and lapis. Wood-burning fireplaces, quiet courtyards, and a spa rooted in Silk Road rituals round it out. A passageway off the patio leads to the Dragon Room bar, where Georgia O'Keeffe used to drink.

A Romanesque Revival house on Piedmont Avenue, Stonehurst Place is a Midtown B&B where eight rooms sit inside a building that has been around forever, with two tucked into the carriage house out back. Rooms range from cozy attic retreats to suite-sized quarters with spa bathrooms. A screened porch handles the slow-morning reading crowd, and a sleeping porch moonlights as a TV lounge. Gourmet breakfast is included. It holds a Michelin Key and AAA Four Diamonds.

A glass-encased walkway with water cascading around you is the first thing that happens, which sets the tone for a hotel that seems determined to pretend Times Square isn't happening outside. The seventh-floor lobby is all-white and calm, a minor act of defiance against the chaos below. It's still a W in the middle of the tourist vortex, but the interior makes a reasonable case for ignoring that entirely.

Sage Lodge sits on the banks of the Yellowstone River in Paradise Valley, which is either the most on-the-nose name in Montana or earned by the view, probably both. This Michelin three-key resort pairs modern-rustic rooms with a spa and two restaurants drawing from local ranches and farms. The northern entrance to the park puts you away from the crowds, which is the whole point.

Ski-in/ski-out access at the base of the Tetons, with a dedicated ski concierge to handle the lift tickets so you never have to queue at a kiosk like a civilian. This is a full-service mountain resort, which means gas fireplaces in the rooms, Western-leaning decor, and the general sense that someone is always around to solve your problems. Forbes Four Star. Summer fly-fishing trips replace the ski crowds, but the unhurried pace stays year-round.

Rooms at this 64-room adults-only hotel look directly onto the Beringer Estate vineyards, which sets the tone before you've unpacked. The Indonesian-born Alila brand usually goes modernist, but St. Helena softened it into something with Arts and Crafts warmth. The spa is lavish, the restaurant sits in a separate Georgian farmhouse that reads as an intentional counterpoint to the rest, and downtown St. Helena is just outside. A Forbes Four Star property.

Rough Oklahoma sandstone cut into a hillside at 7,000 feet, with suites that look straight out over the Tetons, describes this Aman resort well enough to explain why Wyoming made sense for a brand that started in Bali. Fewer than 40 suites means the whole place feels private, each room with a fireplace and a soaking tub angled toward the mountains. A Forbes Four Star property, and genuinely unlike anything else in the Rockies.

Six rooms in a residential house a few blocks from the Danforth Street sibling, this Lark Hotels guest house holds a Michelin Key and wears its size lightly. Vintage furnishings and local artwork give it the feel of staying with someone who has better taste than you do. The neighborhood is quiet, walkable, and genuinely residential, which means you'll pass actual Portlanders on the way to breakfast.

The rooftop radio tower sign still blinks over Ponce de Leon, and the Clermont Lounge still does its thing in the basement, which means this 94-room boutique hotel exists, rather perfectly, as the respectable middle of a very Atlanta sandwich. The red-brick building has been around forever and renovated thoroughly, with a restaurant by a celebrated local chef and a Michelin Key to its name.

Shinola, the brand that sells you a handsome watch and a bicycle you'll never ride, also runs this downtown Detroit hotel, and it lands with the Michelin Guide's one Key designation. The rooms carry the same crafted-in-America aesthetic the brand trades on, and the address on Woodward puts you squarely in a neighborhood that has visibly decided it isn't done yet. A stay here feels less like a hotel booking and more like a small wager on the city.

The multicolored lights wrapping the 16-story tower make the resort hard to miss in the low-slung Coachella Valley skyline. This is a full-service casino resort with 71,000 square feet of gaming floor, two outdoor pools, a spa, a concert venue, and a sports bar with screens big enough to cause a mild panic. Las Vegas is four hours away, which the resort is clearly fine with. Forbes Four Star.

Every room has a Juliet balcony and an electric fireplace, which tells you something about what Mirbeau is selling. This Forbes Four Star inn and spa in Rhinebeck takes its aesthetic cues from French Impressionism, soft palettes and all, though the Hudson Valley does most of the heavy lifting. The 12,000-square-foot spa is the main event: a Himalayan salt sauna, eucalyptus steam room, and a heated outdoor whirlpool with its own bar for anyone who needs a rosé with their jets.

Ocean Drive is all neon and bass drops, which makes The Betsy's quietly art-forward lobby feel like a different city entirely. This boutique hotel holds a Michelin Key and earns it through restrained, gallery-like interiors and a pace that has no interest in competing with the clubs next door. Guests who want South Beach energy but need somewhere civilized to recover from it tend to find their way here.

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Midtown skyline from rooms that got a serious refresh, with local art on the walls and furniture that no longer suggests a corporate retreat. This is a contemporary hotel on Peachtree Street, polished and spacious, with a lobby full of comfortable couches that actually invites lingering. The bar next door pulls in the neighborhood crowd, which in Midtown means you'll never feel like you wandered into an airport Marriott.

Harbor views come standard at this full-service hotel in Boston's Seaport District, where the rooms angle toward the water and the nautical nods in the decor are tasteful enough to forgive. Three dining options, a health club with massage, and complimentary bikes keep things moving. The Convention Center is steps away, which tells you something about the weekday crowd, but the ICA and the waterfront are right there too.

A 23-room boutique hotel on El Camino Real where valet, gratuities, room service, and a personal concierge are folded into the rate, so the only decision left is what to do with your hands. Staff greet you by name with your preferred drink, the shared library and kitchen are yours to treat as home, and the guest pantry freezer is stocked with Tin Pot Creamery ice cream. Silicon Valley's expense accounts have found their natural habitat.

A Morris Lapidus building at the foot of Lincoln Road, sitting right on the Atlantic, is a pretty strong opening argument for a hotel. The Ritz-Carlton South Beach is a full resort in the classic Miami Beach mold, with ocean-view rooms done in warm interiors, marble baths, and beds topped with feather mattresses. The spa anchors the property, and a VIP Club Lounge is the only one of its kind on South Beach, for guests who prefer their perks with a zip code.

John Pawson's cedar-doored, travertine-and-tropical-greenery tower sits exactly where the Sunset Strip bleeds into Beverly Hills, and the hotel doesn't pretend that's a coincidence. Rooms run spare and luxurious, with city or Hills views, while downstairs the restaurant, lobby bar, rooftop, and subterranean nightclub form a full ecosystem for people who want refinement and decadence in the same evening. The spa exists, diplomatically, to make tomorrow possible.

A rooftop pool in the Meatpacking District has a way of announcing itself, and this boutique hotel has been making that announcement since the neighborhood was still figuring out what it wanted to be. The surroundings have since settled into high-end retail and the Whitney, and the hotel has kept pace with a refreshed interior and a contemporary art collection that gives the common areas something worth slowing down for.

A living wall of air plants greets you in the lobby, which still manages to feel less like a hotel check-in and more like a very tasteful friend's house in Yountville. Bardessono is a wine country resort built around serious green credentials, all low wood-and-steel buildings, olive trees, water features, and the kind of air that smells faintly of rosemary whether you want it to or not. The Michelin Guide awarded it 2 Keys.

A Victorian-era mansion built in Aesthetic Movement style anchors this boutique hotel on Healdsburg's west side, a pointed rebuke to the region's endless Tuscan fantasies. The interiors, by co-owner and designer Jay Jeffers, layer period details against modern interventions, a serious art collection, and decades of accumulated antiques and curios. The Michelin Guide awarded it 2 Keys.

The lobby ceiling drips with Murano glass, modeled after a Renaissance castle in Genoa, which is exactly the kind of sentence that prepares you for The Breakers. This grand oceanfront resort covers 140 acres and runs to two golf courses, a tennis complex, a sprawling spa, and a beach club where uniformed concierges deliver cold drinks to guests in private poolside bungalows. It holds a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star.

A fireside butler will light your cottage fire pit on request, which sets the tone for this sprawling Wine Country resort on the Napa-Sonoma border. The location is its quiet trick: both valleys are under twenty minutes away, so you can do Scribe one afternoon and Trefethen the next without committing to a county. The spa sees hotel guests only. Forbes Four Star.

Three restored 19th-century buildings sit steps from Lexington Green, where the Revolutionary War opened for business. The Inn at Hastings Park is a Relais & Châteaux property with 22 rooms spread across a former private home, a politician's residence, and a carpentry barn, which is either atmospheric or a trivia question depending on your mood. Walden Pond is nearby for the philosophically inclined. It holds a Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Key.

A boutique hotel planted in the middle of Charleston's historic district, steps from Waterfront Park and a short walk from the South of Broad townhouses that look like they were painted for a calendar. Rooms, the atrium, and the roof terrace all catch harbor views, though the Michelin Key it holds suggests the location is doing the real heavy lifting. The galleries, antique shops, and Southern restaurants nearby are the actual argument for staying here.

The name is a portmanteau of Swiss and Texan, which tells you almost everything about the mood here. This Harwood District hotel plays continental service standards against big-hat Texan swagger, and the combination reads less like a theme than a personality. Spacious rooms with commanding views, decor with a freewheeling sense of humor, and a rooftop worth returning to every night. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

MOLLIE Aspen earns a Michelin Key for doing what almost no Aspen ski hotel bothers to attempt: taking design seriously. The look is somewhere between Bauhaus and Japanese-Scandinavian minimalism, which sounds like a grad-school thesis but reads as calm and cool in person. It sits just off Main Street, a short shuttle from the mountain, and the on-site bar and restaurant keep things lively once the lifts close. Not a log in sight.

Fifty-nine suites and villas clad in weathered cedar sit on 160 acres above the crashing Pacific, with redwoods behind and rugged cliffs in front. This is a luxury resort in the genuinely inconvenient, genuinely spectacular stretch of Highway One, and the mild disorder of the scenery is rather the point. Safari-style tents handle overnight camping for guests who find the suites insufficiently outdoorsy. It holds a Forbes Four Star and two Michelin Keys.

Floors 22 to 26 of a 54-story tower above L.A. Live, which means you wake up with the Staples Center in your sightline and a surprisingly quiet room for being that deep in the downtown buzz. The Ritz-Carlton here is a full-service luxury hotel, with a spa, club lounge, and meeting spaces that draw the corporate retreat crowd as readily as weekending couples looking for a staycation with valet parking.

The Rockwell Group redesigned every room and public space here, steering the W Hollywood from hot-pink maximalism into moody mid-century gold and emerald, with an oculus motif running through the whole thing. It's a full-service hotel sitting on Hollywood and Vine, above the Walk of Fame, with 319 rooms, suites, a rooftop pool bar, and weekly DJ sets and live music keeping the lobby from feeling too grown-up about itself.

The 285 rooms were built partly from 75 tons of local fallen trees, which tells you immediately what kind of hotel this is. Perched at the foot of the Hollywood Hills on the Sunset Strip, the place goes all-in on sustainability without apologizing for the upscale surroundings: recycled-paper hangers, a rooftop beehive, composting. Neutrals and organic materials keep the rooms calm. Harriet's Rooftop handles the drama, with views that make the whole city feel like your screensaver.

Don't let the word "inn" fool you: this is a full Spanish Colonial resort sprawling across a couple hundred wooded acres in the Ojai Valley, with a championship golf course, a serious spa complex, and enough pools to lose track of your afternoon. Hollywood has been retreating here since forever, and the laid-back Santa Barbara-area energy keeps it from feeling stuffy. A Forbes Four Star property that earns its keep with mountain views and room to exhale.

The red-and-white striped lighthouse at Harbour Town is practically the symbol of Hilton Head, and this Forbes Four Star inn sits right underneath it. It's a resort stay built around the outdoors, with five miles of private beach, miles of bike trails, an equestrian center, and three golf courses, the most famous being Harbour Town Golf Links, which hosts the PGA Tour's RBC Heritage each April.

Dolphin pods drifting past the oceanfront balconies have a way of making evening plans negotiable. This Four Seasons resort sits on the Leeward Coast, far from Waikiki, facing a sheltered lagoon with the Wai'anae Mountains behind it. The Naupaka Spa runs fourteen treatment rooms, the kids' club is one of the stronger ones in the portfolio, and Michael Mina's seafood restaurant anchors five dining options. Forbes Four Star.

A Fishtown red brick that did time as a women's home and a retirement community before its current life as a boutique hotel. The 50 rooms mix warm minimalism with antique touches that don't feel forced, and an interior courtyard with a heated pool is a quiet surprise for the neighborhood. A Mediterranean restaurant called Bastia is on site. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Three rooms above a restaurant and café on Lower Greenville, Casa Duro is less a hotel than a very good friend's Italian apartment, assuming your friend is obsessed with Italian culture and happens to own the building. The Duro Hospitality Group runs it the same way they run the two spots downstairs: with a specificity of taste that makes the whole thing feel more like a considered stay than a booking. It holds a Michelin Key.

Stacked stone, rusted metal, and reclaimed barn wood layer up into something that feels like a mountain lodge edited by someone with actual taste. Hotel Jackson is a boutique hotel a short walk from the town square, which puts you close to everything without the parking ordeal. The lobby art runs Western, the chandeliers run Mediterranean, and the combination is less confused than it sounds. A Michelin Key and a Forbes recommendation back up the vibe.

Each of the 40 rooms is a freestanding glass atrium on steel piers, so you wake up with red rock formations where the wall should be. Ambiente is an adults-only design hotel on three acres outside Sedona, built around the idea that the landscape is the amenity. A private rooftop fire pit comes with each room, which is the right call under these skies. The Velvet Spa and an on-site restaurant round things out. It holds two Michelin Keys.

Calistoga is the scruffy, more rural end of Napa, and this Auberge Collection resort leans into that with 22 acres of outdoor space, mountain and vineyard views in every direction, and spa treatments that nod to the town's old mud-bath tradition. The crowd skews wine-serious but loosens up fast around the pool. A Forbes Four Star property where the grounds themselves are the main event.

Wood-burning fireplaces, whirlpool tubs, and antique-furnished rooms spread across a cluster of restored barns and cottages on the Maine coast. This is an inn in the old sense: unhurried, a little formal, the kind of place where afternoon tea by the fire feels like the obvious plan. Bikes are available for riding along the coast, there's a stone pool, a spa, and a candlelit restaurant on the property that guests tend not to leave.

A restored Queen Anne house a few blocks north of downtown, the Blind Tiger is a 14-room guest house from Lark Hotels, the boutique group that has a habit of finding good neighborhoods and settling in quietly. Chestnut Hill keeps it residential and unhurried, which suits the whole approach. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

You reach Little Palm Island by boat, which sets the tone immediately. This private-island resort in the Keys keeps things deliberately unhurried, with thatched bungalows, canopied beds, and hammocks positioned for maximum sunset interference. There are kayaks and paddleboards if guilt demands activity, and a classic wooden boat for mainland runs. Michelin awarded it 3 Keys. The kind of place where silence costs more than the minibar.

Buckhead was never going to be the neighborhood for reclaimed-wood cocktail bars, and the InterContinental leans fully into that logic. This is classic luxury-hotel territory: marble bathrooms, a spa, an Italian steakhouse called The Americano, and staff who apparently remember how you take your coffee without being asked. Business travelers and Southern-charm seekers will find nothing surprising here, which seems to be precisely the point.

Two turn-of-the-century brick buildings joined into one hotel, with 18-foot trees growing under a vaulted glass atrium ceiling that blurs the line between indoors and the park outside. The bar in the middle of that atrium is the obvious place to settle, but the all-seasons rooftop has the city view. Guest rooms run to warm wood and deep navy. It's a thoughtful place to sleep in Cincinnati's oldest neighborhood.

The 315-foot copper-toned tower has been a Coral Gables landmark forever, and the hotel underneath it leans hard into Old World Mediterranean grandeur without apologizing for a second. Rooms are quietly elegant, the grounds are tropical and unhurried, and the pool holds 600,000 gallons, which feels like a flex until you're actually in it. A professional gym, a French restaurant, and a lobby bar round out a property that moves at a slower, more deliberate pace than Miami proper.