The Best Hotels Near Perle Oban Hotel, by the Record
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A sleek boutique hotel in a Victorian port town that built its reputation on being a jumping-off point for the Hebrides rather than a destination. The Perle leans into both sides of that tension: rooms are contemporary with a nod to Highland roughness, the bathrooms have high-pressure rain showers, and there's a spa named for the Scots Gaelic word for sea. The Oban Brasserie and LULU Lounge handle food and cocktails when the scenery has done enough work.
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A private island hotel on the western coast of Scotland, reached by its own bridge rather than a seaplane or a speedboat. Nine holes of golf suggest the mood here: unhurried, old-fashioned in the right ways, with a fireplace in the lounge and antiques in the corridors. The outlying suites and cottages outrun the main house on space and quiet, and the landscape beyond the windows is about as unspoiled as Scotland gets.
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Loch Linnhe sits right outside the window, which does make it hard to complain about much else. This small country-house hotel in the tiny hamlet of Port Appin has eleven individually decorated rooms with wood furnishings and floral wallpaper, a kitchen leaning on local Scottish produce, and afternoon tea in the lounge. The surrounding Highlands do the heavy lifting scenery-wise, and the hotel is quietly content to let them.
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Two Inverlochy Castles stand near Fort William, one a 13th-century ruin up the road, and one a Victorian castle hotel where you can actually sleep. The rooms are enormous because nobody ever carved them into modern-sized boxes, and the days still run on the old rhythm: fishing and shooting until dusk, then a lavish dinner in one of two dining rooms. The plumbing has been modernized; almost everything else has not, which turns out to be the point.
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A 2,000-acre working farm on a quiet Highland loch, Monachyle Mhor is a boutique hotel that can't quite decide if it's a farmhouse, a treehouse, a glamping wagon, or a pine cabin with a wood-burning stove, so it went ahead and became all of them. The restaurant leans on what the farm produces, and scones with cream appear at the bar at any hour, which is the correct policy. Salmon fishing, foraging, and a bracing loch swim are all on the table.
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Tartan in seemingly infinite variations covers every surface, and the halls are lined with beyond-life-sized portraits of bearded, kilted men in what the hotel cheerfully calls a gallery of skulduggery. This resort on Loch Lomond leans into being unapologetically Scottish, with a spa, two golf courses, 250 single malts at the bar, and views of the Trossachs that look almost improbably painted.