A month ago, I paid a visit to two distinctively different Californian hotels, one in Newport Beach, the other in Manhattan Beach.

The Newport Beach hotel, the newly opened Lido House, occupies the space formerly occupied by the city's City Hall building. The hotel design was intended as a Californian take on the traditional Shingle style architecture of the Hamptons and Cape Cod, some 3,000 miles away, all blazingly white whites and deep blues. Charming ornamental mermaids and nautical imagery were everywhere: the first thing I spotted in my room was an impressive (and heavy) octopus sculpture.

Read the full article at Forbes.com