Kimpton Hotel Palomar Phoenix

The pool

• 3rd-floor rooftop pool
• Downtown Phoenix skyline
• Cabanas
• Eden Rooftop Bar

Why it's on the list

A 3rd-floor rooftop pool at the Lustre garden, open to a sweeping downtown Phoenix skyline with cabanas and the Eden bar alongside. Downtown's most reliable rooftop swim, and the one that reads least like a resort.

The stay

The Palomar is the city-Phoenix one — a 242-room Kimpton that opened in 2012 anchoring CityScape, downtown's dining-and-entertainment block, with Blue Hound Kitchen & Cocktails downstairs and the brand's nightly social hour in the lobby. Staying here means skyline over saguaro: Chase Field and the Suns' arena are on foot, and the blocks below actually have a pulse after dark, which downtown Phoenix could not always claim. At $$$ it's fairly priced for the address — the pick if the trip is games, shows, and restaurants rather than spa days, with the trade-off that the third-floor deck is an urban rooftop, not resort acreage.