Castle Rental

A restaurant dinner is fine. A hotel ballroom is forgettable. But a milestone — a 50th birthday, a retirement, a 25th anniversary — deserves something your guests will be talking about for years. Here are five places within two to three hours of New York City and Philadelphia where you can do exactly that. Whether your group is 15 or 90, intimate or sprawling, the places on this list have one thing in common: they make the occasion feel as big as it actually is. No. 1 — Hillt

Most people assume renting a castle is a European-only experience — something you plan around a trip to Scotland or the Loire Valley. What fewer people know is that there's a genuine castle vacation rental less than two hours from New York City, in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. And it sleeps 44 people.

Every year, thousands of people search for 'rent a castle for the weekend' — and most of them assume the results will be out of reach, overseas, or both. The reality is more interesting. There are castle rentals within a 2-hour drive of New York City, and they're more accessible than you'd expect.