The Best Hotels Near Graduate by Hilton Storrs, by the Record
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A hand-beaded tapestry the size of a small house greets you in the lobby, and it's a fair preview of the scale of everything that follows. Sky Tower is the hotel at the heart of Mohegan Sun's sprawling casino complex, which means your neighbors will be here for the slots as much as the river views. The New England countryside and the Thames sit just outside the glass; you may not notice, given that roughly four dozen restaurants and a spa are also competing for your attention.
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Burnished brass and oak detailing carry the harbor's palette indoors at this boutique hotel on the Mystic River, where many rooms look out on sailboats drifting past at a pace that makes you feel guilty for checking email. A heated seasonal pool and landscaped terraces keep the mood easy outside, and the seaport's museums and shipyards are a short walk when you remember you're supposed to be doing something.
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Three thousand five hundred acres in Rhode Island, which sounds like a typo until you're fly fishing or clay shooting before noon. The Preserve is a wilderness resort built around outdoor pursuits, with lodging that runs from contemporary townhouses to off-grid tiny homes. Evenings go to cedar hot tubs and the spa. The country's longest indoor shooting range is here, which is either the selling point or the detail that makes you call a different hotel.
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Perched on a bluff above Watch Hill with the Atlantic laid out below, Ocean House is a Victorian resort that feels like someone's very grand great-aunt never quite let go of the Gilded Age, and you're glad she didn't. Croquet lawns, a private beach, and rooms done in a quietly luxurious register that earns its Forbes Five Star without announcing it at every turn. Open year-round, which the old summer-colony crowd never managed.
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Shingled walls, porches aimed at the water, bocce on the lawn, and a private beach on Quonochontaug Pond: Weekapaug Inn has been a summer retreat on Rhode Island's southern coast for as long as anyone's grandparents can remember. Antiques and coastal touches fill the rooms, sailing and bird-watching fill the days, and the whole thing holds a Forbes Five Star without feeling the need to remind you of it. Old New England ease, genuinely unforced.
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The red-brick facade on Westminster Street is old Providence; the 47 rooms inside are decidedly not. This luxury boutique hotel keeps things intimate by local standards, with enough style to make that feel intentional rather than accidental. Rooms come with curated book bags on request, which tells you something about the clientele. The rooftop bar and a modern Italian restaurant mean leaving is genuinely optional.