Nisbet Plantation Beach Club

If waking up to waves caressing white sand is your priority, choose the friendly Nisbet Plantation Beach Club; the rest of the inns are high up in the forested hills. Built in 1778, the great house of the club is the ancestral home of Fanny Nisbet, the Nevisian society widow famously wooed (and later… more abandoned) by the dashing Lord Horatio Nelson—there are plaques all over the island, and even a museum in town, dedicated to Lord Nelson. Twenty-two cheery yellow cottages dot the gently sloping lawn, which grandly unfurls itself toward the picture-perfect beach. Though it’s technically on the Atlantic Ocean side, the iridescent water is nearly as mellow as the Caribbean. After dinner, slide into the beachside hot tub, and watch the stars crawl across the sky. Closed August through early October.