Burrow atop a bed so divine that Keats could pen poems about its lusciousness. Yes, you read right: Boston is for lovers, especially if you can swing a night in her premier boutique hotel, the exclusive XV Beacon Hotel.

As dignified as a fine Château Lafite, the 62-room XV Beacon shakes up Boston's blue-blood lineage with playful modern touches. While you'll find a number of...

This low-frills, family-run eco-inn in the French Pyrénées melds tasteful comfort and green-mindedness with storybook environs. The Orri is an old stone and wood farmhouse that was renovated into ten bright, warm-hued guestrooms with simple furnishings and plush bedding. Its library and other cozy sitting areas are as inviting as the huge fireside dining table around which guests...

Sitting at the base of the Aspen Mountain (Ajax to locals) gondola, the Little Nell is one of just three five-star hotels in Colorado. (The others are The Broodmoor in Colorado Springs and Ritz-Carlton in Beaver Creek.) The main hotel wraps around a stunning heated pool, and the adjoining bar is one of the hottest après-ski spots in town. Standard rooms feature 42-inch LCDs, Bose stereo...

You won't find any televisions or video games in the guest rooms at The Tyler Place Family Resort in northern Vermont, a stone's throw from the Quebec border. But you will find biking trails, an archery range, waterskiing on a huge lake, tennis courts, an arts-and-crafts center, and swimming pools on the property's 165 action-packed acres. It's summer camp for all ages at this...

The wrought-iron "kicking horse" sculpture adorning the stone fireplace here pays tribute to those who once explored this land without recourse to such lush digs. James Hector was on a 19th-century expedition, searching for a western route for Canada's first transcontinental railroad, when his horse hoofed him so hard that his compatriots dug him a grave. But he regained consciousness and...

The soaring centerpiece of this unique lodge is its cathedral-like great hall, made of towering cedar walls and 48-foot-high lodgepole-pine beams. It's a modern take on the Cree Nation's shabatwon (traditionally a more modest place made of teepees covered in moss and deerskin). It expresses the MoCreebec people's vision for their eco-lodge—providing a healing, sustainable spot...

These days, you can't swing your new-fangled, hydration-compatible backpack without hitting an ecolodge in Costa Rica, which is great news for eco-minded travelers. The vexing question is how to choose one. Rafiki Safari Lodge, a luxury tented camp 20 miles south of the tourist hot spots of Quepos and Manuel Antonio, is one of the best, particularly for wildlife-watching junkies....

Visitors to Binna Burra today follow in the footsteps of generations of "bushwalkers" in this part of southern Queensland. Since the early 1930s, Lamington National Park has lured nature lovers and scientists to its insanely diverse rainforests (there are five different varieties here). These intrepid explorers wove their way through ancient Antarctic beech and fragrant eucalyptus forests,...

The monkeys and sloths hanging out in this verdant tropical forest are onto something: warm, hilltop breezes and sweeping views of the cobalt Caribbean amidst 250 acres of virtually undisturbed rainforest in which to frolic. The only things better about being a guest in Samasati's treehouse-like bungalows are the (human) creature comforts—warm, wood- and window-lined rooms and inviting...

With relatively few people, a preponderance of diverse public lands, and a government sympathetic to conservation, Botswana is an ideal location in which to witness thriving populations of wildlife. One such spot is the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a 12-million-acre tract of desert and plains that is the largest conservation area in the country and one of the largest in the world. In years...