The Inn at Laguna Beach

"Best New 2025 You’re watching the waves as they roll in. Pacific Coast sunshine floods your room. You’re listening to the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty on vinyl, and you feel the smooth nubbiness of a rattan carpet on the soles of your bare feet. Close your eyes and you might think you’ve been transported to the best damn time and place of all—a southern California surf town in the early 1970s. Which is exactly how hotel owner John Grossman and his team want you to feel. In renovating a dreamy piece of real estate between the beach and the Pacific Coast Highway, they’ve created a super-relaxed tribute to this cradle of West Coast surf culture—without succumbing to nostalgic kitsch. Summer is endless, after all."