The Four Season Aviara is beautifully located on a plateau overlooking the ocean and the Batiquitos Lagoon and wildlife preserve and 30 minutes north of San Diego. The surrounding rolling valley cradle an Arnold Palmer signature golf course -- one of the top-ranked courses in America.
The introduction to this low-profile Spanish-style hotel is a wide, long drive, circular porte cochere, smiling doormen and a marble entrance full of soaring palms interspersed with antiques and art.
Vivace, the main restaurant, offers ocean and lagoon views through floor-to-ceiling windows. The menu features Northern Italian specialties. Less grand and more family-friendly is the California Bistro, which serves breakfast and luncheon buffets and Sunday surf and turf specials. Meals are laid out in a large, open room full of elegant country accents, smart plaid fabrics and warm wood detail. Views gaze out onto the golf course, but most people dine on the terrace. The poolside grill offers a Pacific Rim menu and deckside service with views of the Batiquitos Lagoon. The restaurant at the Spanish Colonial clubhouse caters to the golf crowd with breakfast, lunch and cocktails. Tea is served in the lounge in the afternoon, and cocktails and musicians entertain in the evening.
Golf is the principal diversion here, but a large free-form pool and a whirlpool provide alternative fun, and six lighted tennis courts reached by shuttle include a stadium court for the occasional tournament. The fitness room proffers high-end equipment, and extensive spa services are offered in more than two-dozen treatment rooms.
Updated a few years ago, the impeccably maintained guest rooms are classic Four Seasons abodes, with subtle traditional overtones and contemporary flourishes, floral and striped fabrics blooming against butter-yellow walls and soft beige tones. The last of the armoires are being replaced with bureaus supporting new plasma-screen TVs.
The rooms also provide big desks with task lighting, dual-line speaker phones, voice mail, data ports and recently added wireless Internet access. Coffeemakers, minibars and triple-sheeted beds topped with plump pillows and duvets are standard. The baths have marble vanities, dual basins, heavy-duty chrome fixtures, deeply contoured soaking tubs, heavy robes and glassed-in stall showers.
All rooms open to large terraces or balconies with fine wooden furniture. Exposures determine rates. The least expensive moderate rooms measure a large 540 sq ft. Superior rooms are the same size but face the gardens, and deluxe rooms are on the upper floors and have French doors opening to the balconies facing either the pool or courtyard. The large suites are stunning.
24-hour room service, turndown and twice-daily maid service are standard. Pets are permitted.
