KOHALA COAST, Hawaii - From my balcony (mine for two nights), I inhale the moist breath of the sea. The trade wind rustles the curtain and carries the heavy scent of sweet blossoms. Below, a gentle surf spreads white lace over the sun-warmed sand.

Farther out, the green-blue Pacific is cresting, collapsing, cresting.

I'm staying at Mauna Kea Beach Hotel - the grande dame of resorts on the Big Island - and what it offers guests more than anything else is a view with a room. Indeed, when Laurance Rockefeller (brother of Nelson) opened the resort in 1965, he banned televisions from the rooms.

The Mauna Kea faces one of Hawaii's most beautiful white-sand beaches, and the hotel seems to be, as Rockefeller intended, part of the land. The Kohala Mountains, including the snow-capped Mauna Kea volcano, rise in the background. The open-air, landscaped lobby has fluttering birds, fish ponds with fat Japanese carp, and banisters of Hawaiian koa wood.

The Mauna Kea reopened in spring, after suffering extensive damage in the 2006 earthquake. There have been a few concessions to modernity - televisions and Internet access - but its essential charm is intact. Fully 80 percent of its guests are returnees. Many of them have their "own" rooms, and are allowed to help out preparing meals in the kitchen.

Although it was closed for two years, 85 percent of the staff, some of them the fourth generation of their families to work here, are back on the job.

While the hotel's classic exterior design remains, there are major changes in the guest rooms, which have been enlarged and given luxurious interior furnishings, upgraded bedding, ocean-view bathrooms, and a host of the latest in entertainment amenities. Bathrooms have super-size baths, wall-less "rain showers," soaking tubs, and private balconies.

World-class dining is available at the Manta restaurant, and the hotel offers three weekly dining experiences: a traditional Hawaiian luau on Tuesday, the clambake on Saturday, and the Sunday brunch.

While the Mauna Kea is a one-of-a-kind gem, there are hotels and inns throughout the Hawaiian islands, if you know where to look, that preserve and nurture the memories of old Hawaii. There is one for every taste and every budget.

Hotel Lanai

From an old wicker chair on the lanai at the Hotel Lanai on the island of Lanai, I survey downtown Lanai City (pop. 2,500). A grassy square the size of a football field is lined on all four sides by all-purpose groceries, cafes that cater to local tastes and budgets, art galleries, official buildings, and churches. Tiny tin-roofed wooden cottages are huddled, neat and neighborly, along narrow quiet streets. They are humble and square, but brightly painted and surrounded by flowering trees and ornamental bromeliads.

The Hotel Lanai, indeed all of Lanai City, looks much as it has since 1923, when James Drummond Dole, the pineapple czar, built it as a retreat for company visitors to his pineapple plantation. Today, visitors can stay at one of two luxury resorts on the island for $350 a night, or they can stay at the rustic old Hotel Lanai for less than a third of that. If you do, you won't get a pool, air conditioning, or a TV. What you will get is the charm of a day gone by.

In an old plantation setting, the Hotel Lanai sits on a knoll just above the town and inhales cool breezes from the surrounding Norfolk pines. The rooms are tidy, each with its own bathroom, with wooden floors, four-poster beds, and ceiling fans. Each features Hawaiian quilts, distinctive furnishings, and artwork from Lanai Artists. It's under new management, the rooms have been remodeled, and it has an excellent restaurant operated by famed Maui chef Beverly Gannon.

Royal Hawaiian Hotel

From my table, I watch kimono-clad servers shuffle noiselessly through the chime of tea cups and the muffled tinkle of cutlery. They present tiny plates with finger sandwiches, scones, and pastries that look like impossibly perfect photographs from an expensive cookbook. Snatches of Mozart and Bach waft over from an eight-string classical guitar and a shakuhachi flute. Trade winds blow from the Pacific to the runaway exuberance of the tropical garden.

This is "Royal Tea," a tradition stretching back 82 years, when the world reckoned time in days and weeks rather than hours and minutes, and when hotel guests arrived on lei-strewn steamships accompanied by their servants and their Rolls-Royces.

The hotel opened in Honolulu in 1927 and almost immediately was dubbed "the Pink Palace of the Pacific" because it was painted the color of Pepto-Bismol. Indeed, nearly everything at the hotel was pink: menus, napkins, tablecloths, ashtrays, salt and pepper shakers, staff uniforms, bedspreads, writing paper, robes, slippers, towels, soap. Guests arrived in a pink limousine and called room service on a pink telephone to order pink champagne and pink beer.

Today, the Pink Palace, which reopened in January after extensive renovations, is dwarfed by the high-rise hotels and shopping malls of Waikiki. But it remains an oasis of grace and gentility. The rooms are luxurious and combine rich, imported fabrics with indigenous materials and cultural artifacts. Guests are welcomed with traditional Hawaiian leis, chilled towels, and fresh Hawaiian fruit. The lobby has koa wood desks, classic Hawaiian artwork, and brilliant tropical botanicals.

Another iconic hotel is just a few doors away. At the Moana Surfrider - the "First Lady of Waikiki" - they've been serving tea (it's not a drink, but a ritual) since it opened on March 11, 1901. It, too, is recently renovated, and its traditional porte cochere entrance draws guests into a revitalized lobby featuring hardwood floors and new furniture and lighting fixtures.

Hotel Hana-Maui

From my lanai, I see the sun drop into the Pacific like a coin. Soon, the day is just a pink memory on the eastern horizon. Then the night deepens, and the sky begins passing out stars, one by one. I can hear the roar of the surf and see it froth in the moonlight.

Since it opened in 1946 on 30 glorious acres at the eastern tip of Maui, between the Pacific Ocean and the lush slopes of the Haleakala Volcano, the Hana-Maui has been one of the world's prized travel experiences. Amazingly, 80 percent of its guests at any given time have been here before. Much of its appeal comes from its isolation, its closeness to nature, and its subdued luxury.

But there is also a congenial staff that greets guests as though they were being welcomed back - whether they are or not.