• 1. Where to Stay
• 2. Where to Eat
• 3. What to Do
• 4. Insider’s Tip
• 5. An Oddball Day

The 9 Beaches resort   (Photo: Courtesy of 9 Beaches )

A colorful colony of summer-camp cottages (if your summer camp once moonlighted as a luxury hotel), Horizons & Cottages’ thirteen individual bungalows (from $315) are terraced into a lush green hillside overlooking the sea. Each comes with a maid who cooks full English breakfasts in your private kitchen; there are also nine rooms in the main house, all designed with a distinctly Bermudian palette (think lots of pink). Get the kinks out of your swing on the nine-hole pitch-and-putt.

If you must have a full-size course within walking distance of your room, the Fairmont Southampton (from $219) maintains a par-3 eighteen holes. Occupying a former 100-acre estate overlooking an outrageous pink-sand beach, the nearly 600-room hotel also has all the restaurants, shops, and beach-club goodies you’d expect from a big-box resort.

After an extensive—and expensive—overhaul a few years back, Elbow Beach (from $249) was acquired by Mandarin Oriental, which among other renovations reopened the Deep Lounge & Club, one of the few after-hours places that still exists on the early-to-bed island. Splurge on one of the stylish, sea-level cottages, with private doors that open right on the sand.

The 9 Beaches resort (from $185; $305 over water) imports a South Pacific flair to the mid-Atlantic in the form of over-water cabanas on stilts—a Bermuda first. These soft-sided cabins resemble safari-lodge tents—albeit with air-conditioning, wi-fi, and nautical-themed interiors.

Published on January 3, 2006 as a web exclusive.