We only recommend rooms we've slept in. Below: ten hotels, from a plaster-and-lemon suite above Ravello to a wooden cabin in Norway where you can hear the fjord think. Written for the couple that reads the room before the reviews.
A 12th-century palazzo above the Amalfi coast. The Belvedere terrace at breakfast is the whole point; the room service can be anything you like once you've had it. Book the Belvedere Suite for anniversaries; a Junior for anything else.
A ten-riad compound wound around three swimming pools and a rooftop that catches every evening. Nine bedroom styles, all of them designed by Vanessa Branson. Book Souk Suite for its balcony over the medina; Chleuh for the deepest bath in the city.
Fishermen's rorbuer converted honestly — wooden floors, red exterior, a very warm bed and a mountain in every window. Book Havbua for the private hot tub over the water. The kitchen at the lodge is worth two dinners.
Antique Javanese houses reset in a river valley outside Ubud. Ask for the Copper House — a spiral-glass tower rising out of the jungle — or the Riverbend house if you'd rather hear water than birds. Breakfast is served river-side and takes as long as it takes.
A hidden garden a taxi ride north of the tourist grid. Twenty-six pavilions, one onsen, and a stillness that most Kyoto hotels aim for and miss. Book the Deluxe Room in Pavilion 3 for the view of the moss walk.
Behind an ivy-covered arch on Place des Vosges. Not the ninth arrondissement, not the marble palaces near the Ritz — a small manor with a private garden, a wood fire in winter, and the best breakfast pastry in the Marais.
The one with the pool that hovers over the Med. Old-money quiet, new-money crisp. Take the sea-front Junior Suite, not the Presidential — the smaller rooms have the better light. Do lunch at Le Cap, and go swimming before it.
Six rooms in a Manuel Aires Mateus renovation of an 18th-century townhouse. Whitewashed limestone, oak floors, one very good breakfast served communally. The kind of hotel where you accidentally make friends with the couple across the table.
A black church, a black beach, a small hotel with a very good kitchen. The rooms are simple; the view isn't. Book at least two nights so you can sit through one full round of Icelandic weather without missing everything.
Ten palapa suites at the quiet end of the beach. No televisions, plenty of hammocks, a very good kitchen that will feed you ceviche whenever you like. Ask for Suite 3 — the one closest to the water — and leave the golf cart parked.
A hotel makes the list if the room is quiet, the bed is right, the bathroom has a real door, and at least one meal on the property is genuinely worth staying in for. We do not accept comped stays, and we don't recommend rooms we haven't slept in ourselves.
A single hotel — the room number we booked, the meal we ate twice, the reason we'd fly back.
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