Waldorf Astoria

What Waldorf Astoria does well is show up with the thing you didn’t ask for. Five minutes after we got into our fireside room at the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach in Orange County, the housekeeper knocked with mezcal margaritas. At the Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam you choose a scent at check-in and they spray it in your room at turndown — one night we came back to it and to two glasses of whiskey.

Amsterdam is six canal palaces joined into one 93-suite hotel on the Herengracht, one of the city’s main canals. Its chef, Sidney Schutte, came in with one rule — he ran all of the food in the building — and his restaurant Librije’s Zusje had just taken a second Michelin star when we stayed in 2015. The Rome Cavalieri keeps over a thousand pieces of art on its walls, from the 16th century to now. We got there off a 6 a.m. flight from the Maldives to find our room wouldn’t be ready for another seven hours, so we spent them in the Grand Spa — asleep by the pool in robes, then about five seconds knee-deep in the cold plunge. That pool cost 18 euros a person when we stayed, hotel guest or not.

The Waldorf Astoria Maldives is a manmade island 3.5 kilometers long, with more than 100 villas and ten places to eat. You get there by yacht in 40 minutes, not a seaplane. The dressing room in our overwater villa had a glass floor, so we watched fish while we got dressed. Our boys were 1 and 3.5, and the kids’ club staff learned their names and their favorite toys. The Waldorf Astoria Dubai is the odd one out — out on Palm Jumeirah, ten minutes from the nearest hotel and twenty from the nearest restaurant. Ask for a top floor: the palm on one side, the Burj Al Arab and downtown Dubai on the other.