The Best Hotels Near I 5 Sensi, by the Record
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A Michelin-starred country inn tucked into Mercantour National Park, where the summer terrace looks straight up at the peaks and winter dinner happens under timber rafters beside a fire. The chef grows much of what he cooks, makes his own pasta, bread, cured meat, and ice cream, and runs a daily carte blanche menu built around whatever is ready. The wine list leans natural, the service leans cheerful, and there are snug guestrooms if leaving feels like the wrong idea.
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Five rooms in a mountain village inn at the foot of Mercantour National Park, each with a private terrace and views that make you forget you packed a laptop. The team spent over a year reviving a building that had been empty for decades, furnishing it in vintage and custom pieces. The kitchen, which holds a Michelin star, runs a daily-changing menu built around local producers and the inn's own permaculture gardens.
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The hotel sits directly on the Casino square, which means the view from certain suites is essentially Monaco's most theatrical postcard. This is a grand palace hotel in the old European sense, renovated carefully enough that the Belle Époque bones still show without feeling like a museum. Alain Ducasse's Le Louis XV is downstairs, Cédric Grolet does the pastries, and the rooftop pool exists for people who have already seen everything else.
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Mexican folk art hangs in the lobby of a French Alpine hotel, which tells you most of what you need to know about Barcelonnette's odd and endearing history of emigration to Mexico. Azteca leans into that story hard, with decorative pieces throughout the common areas and a handful of themed rooms alongside simpler contemporary ones. The older wing has more atmosphere. Breakfast is an event, and they do afternoon tea too.
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The zigzag silhouette on the Monte Carlo skyline belongs to this Fairmont, a 1970s modernist tower that has aged from awkward into something approaching landmark. It's a large luxury hotel, renovated to a polished, if conservative, finish, and the rooms that count are the ones with wraparound sea views. Nobu occupies the building, a rooftop pool terrace sits above it all, and a spa done in white and sky blue handles the aftermath of the good life.
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No gilded taps here, which in Monaco qualifies as a design statement. Columbus is a hotel that quietly sidesteps the principality's usual arms race of marble and excess, going instead for clean lines, restrained neutrals, and a residential calm. Suites have actual sitting rooms and balconies over the gardens or sea. The Place du Casino is still close, so you're not exactly roughing it, just sleeping somewhere that doesn't shout about it.