United Kingdom

Edinburgh feels like you’ve been transported back three hundred years just walking the Royal Mile — castle on the hill, elegant Georgian buildings everywhere. The Balmoral Hotel has been the city’s landmark address through all of it. Glasgow gets overlooked next to its more dramatic sister city, but it’s spent decades regenerating out of its industrial past into something with its own distinct character — Dakota Hotel fits right into that story. And Belfast surprised us the most: a genuinely difficult history, decades of ethnic and religious tension, and now one of the UK’s better city-break destinations — the Bullitt Hotel among the reasons why.

In London, Quilon holds a Michelin star for Indian food, in a dining room that mixes watercolor paintings with modern, casual design. And Sky Pod Bar sits 155 meters up one of the city’s tallest buildings, wrapped in a garden, with 360-degree views — the first stop we made before Big Ben or Buckingham Palace even entered the itinerary.