The 20 Best Hotels in Charleston, From Harborfront Cottages to Gilded-Age Inns | Condé Nast Traveler

"Though quite close to the city, this inn feels worlds away, and that's the point. Guests enter on a dirt road, past impressive horse stables and sprawling live oaks, through a coded gate, and pull up to a cluster of ivy-covered, design-savvy structures, with the Ashley River just beyond. A pathway connects the inn to the famous "Butterfly Lakes" of America's earliest landscaped gardens, Middleton Place , which clearly is the main draw here. After the daytime tourists have left, you have the grounds to yourself, to chase sheep or tiptoe past groggy juvenile alligators or get lost in a maze of camellias." - Allston McCrady