The Roxbury

When we were young the Catskills were where our grandparents vacationed. But now, with flying growing more dehumanizing by the year, car-trip holidays are back in style. And it can’t be a coincidence that hip country hotels like the Roxbury are opening in unlikely places — this one in the town of the same name, just under three hours from New York City, a few miles to the north and west of the famous town of Woodstock.

The Roxbury breaks the mold a bit — the colonial house might put you in mind of a bed and breakfast, and the adjoining motel building is a low-profile pre-modernist classic. Rooms, however, are anything but traditional, with design themes that range from the vibrant and contemporary to the flamboyantly retro. The idea here, clearly, is not minimalism but a sort of maximalism, throwing the usual boutique clichés out the window. Plenty of hotels call themselves “playful,” but few have anything that even begins to approach something like the Roxbury’s Archeologist’s Digs suite, with its secret passageways, its Mayan Temple–inspired bedroom, its fish swimming in a saltwater aquarium alongside the glass-walled shower, and more than a few details that are simply beyond description. (Can’t find the bed? Try pulling the life-size Mayan idol’s nose ring and all will be revealed….)

At the same time, the Roxbury honors the boutique-hotel conventions that really matter. Bathrooms are stocked with top-shelf bath products and Egyptian cotton towels, while the bedrooms are fitted with all the proper technology. And no country escape these days is complete without a spa, in this case a need that’s more than adequately fulfilled by the Shimmer Spa. It’s a perfect country bolthole for a weekend in, or a base for exploring the outdoors of upstate New York — one thing it’s not is a traditional old-style Catskills resort.

Smaller hotels like The Roxbury fill up quickly. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, contact us and we can help.

How to get there: The Roxbury is located approximately 3 hours by car from New York City.