A Good Day for Vacay
July 4th marks the first of many long weekends you'll take this summer, some authorized, others not, but taken anyway due to your certainty that nobody will realize you're gone. To help your cause, Thrillist has rounded up these four accessible getaways where you can forget about work and sip yourself down some BACARDI® Mojitos.
21 C Museum Hotel, Louisville, KY: This 90-room hotel & spa doubles as an overstocked repository of works from living artists -- even the bathrooms have won design awards (staying in a museum = no need to visit a museum). Hit Proof on Main for Tuscan-inspired American grub, and a sculpture-topped bar lorded over by Louisville's 2008 Iron Bartender winner -- an award given for creativity, quick-thinking, and the ability to completely ignore guys who think waving $5 merits faster service.
Harbor Beach Marriott Resort & Spa, Ft. Lauderdale: The Harbor boasts two reefs and four dive sites right off its quarter-mile private beach, plus yachting, tennis, golf, spas, high-class restos, and a beach bar. They've also just kicked off a service that'll send a BACARDI Cart-pushing mixologist up to muddle mojitos in your room -- for those times when you're too lazy for diving, yachting, tennis, or putting on clothes.
Eagle Ridge Resort & Spa, Galena, ILL: Upscale rustic retreat offering everything from a 200 acre lake, to hot air ballooning, to horseback riding, to a golf course feted by Golf Digest as one of America's best. Drink-sipping can be accomplished in either the meat-tastic Woodland's Restaurant or Spikes, a converted silo with views that will inspire awe, and a Friday fish fry that will inspire you to never eat anything not fried again.
Hotel Sax, Chicago: If you don't feel like driving/flying/sprinting madly 'til you drop, Sax sports one of Chicago's velvetiest drinking dens (The Crimson Lounge), plus insane package deals (the rocker package offers VIP Foundation Room seats, an acoustic guitar, and tube socks), and Microsoft-powered rooms where Xbox stations are stacked over premium mini-bars -- because a Guitar Hero without a premium mini-bar is nothing but a Guitar Zero.