The Best Places to Stay and Do in University South & Downtown North

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.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

The facade reads like a Mediterranean villa that took a wrong turn in NorCal, but step inside el PRADO and the postmodern quirk gives way to a genuinely sleek boutique hotel. The guest rooms are the surprise, styled closer to a small European luxury property than anything the surrounding tech-park sprawl would suggest. Palo Alto can feel anticlimactic as a destination; this is one of the places that makes it less so.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A tranquil inner garden courtyard sits at the center of this boutique hotel in downtown Palo Alto, which builds its whole identity around the idea of an urban ryokan. Japanese-inspired interiors keep things grounded while the rest of Silicon Valley's hotel scene leans toward the safely corporate. It's a genuinely calm place to land in a city not exactly known for them, and the Michelin Guide includes it among its selected hotels.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels