This is a hotel that makes you feel as though you are visiting a close friend's villa in Tuscany, and you just don't want to leave.

Checking into the Sorrento Hotel in Seattle -a member of the prestigious Preferred Hotels and Resorts consortia- is easy, made more so by the genuinely welcoming staff. Checking out is much, much harder.

No, the hotel and its staff don't try to hold you hostage, it's just that once there, you absolutely don't want to leave. Checking out means returning to the real world, a world of fast food, fast cars, a harried way of life. A stay at The Sorrento brings you to a quieter, slower pace. It doesn't feel like a hotel so much as a sojourn to a dear friend's Tuscany villa, a friend that you are loathe to bid goodbye.

This charming boutique hotel atop Seattle's First Hill has taken its vintage building and resurrected it to exacting 21st century standards. The Tuscan-inspired structure and Italianate architecure remain intact, the clubby atmosphere of The Fireside Lounge is reborn with rich fabrics and deep, comfortable furniture, and the guestrooms and suites express lushly elegant surroundings.

Each room at The Sorrento has been recently refurbished, adding marble facing to the bathrooms, new softgoods and carpeting, and bedding that is simply extraordinary. Suites have been given a sleek new line of furniture for their salons, black enameled coffee tables which commingle with traditional armoires and brocade-upholstered armchairs. The majority of the hotel's guestrooms are suites, or mini-suites, or junior suites. Most of the rooms are unique in shape and size, determined by the quirky architecture of the 90-year-old building.

Imagine, though, arriving weary and looking forward to a good night's sleep in a clean and comfortable bed. Imagine being led to a guestroom that holds a bed so beautiful that you would almost prefer to sleep on the carpeted floor than to muss it. The beds at The Sorrento are visual works of art. Climbing into one is akin to defiling the Mona Lisa.

Each bed is custom made with layers of wool and foam and pillowtopped brocade. The sheets are 600-thread Frette linens from Italy. Rows and rows of down pillows are topped with a fluffy down comforter, specially treated to be hypoallergenic, which is clothed in a sparkling white linen duvet cover. Once snuggled into this elegant cloud, it takes a most compelling reason to get out.

Most of the bathrooms are small, but they are exceptionally well designed. Now clad in white and gray marble, many have windows for natural light. The hotel's shampoo, lotion and shower gel bottles are unique refillable glass cubes. (They don't seal; trying to take one could be hazardous to one's luggage.)

In a city known for its coffee, The Sorrento has chosen an Italian brand for its in-room coffee makers, which happen to be classy Bodum French presses. Each room features a "coffee bar" including a water boiler, complimentary coffee, the Bodum press -complete with directions on how to use it- a selection of fine teas, and cream and sugar.

Views over Puget Sound are available in some of the rooms, although not many. There is a function room on the top floor that does offer a grand panorama of the Sound and its ferries and islands; it's a beautiful high-ceilinged space, very popular with local businesses for meetings and with wedding parties for receptions.

A visitor checking in for the first time might note that the reception area, lined with lustrous dark paneling and filled with fresh flowers, seems underfurnished for a hotel lobby, although it's quite spacious. There are a couple of chairs near a newspaper rack, a table with a chess set a few feet away near the elevator, and a chair with a small side-table, but it doesn't resemble a contemporary hotel's lobby. A first time visitor might not notice that just beyond the reception area is a room divided from the entry with potted palms and a swagged curtain. Welcome to The Fireside Lounge, which functions as lobby, meeting place, tea room, livingroom and mid-city getaway for all who enter. A peek into this gorgeous space creates the sensation that one has left the 21st century behind, and has fallen through the rabbit hole into a genteel remnant of the past.

A recent refurbishment has created an extraordinary environment which seems to cobble together Victorian-era design with contemporary comfort. At once a welcoming lounge with deep leather chairs surrounding a large and ornate fireplace, it's also a room that offers intimate corners for private conversation, or open spaces for small-group interaction. It's lush, and elegant, and so RICH. It's one of the most romantic rooms I have ever seen. In Seattle's blustery winter rain, enjoying an Irish coffee or even a cup of hot cocoa in front of that fireplace, nestled into a leather chair or plush divan, has to be one of the most perfect urban respites ever devised. The locals know this; their only problem is that after cocooning there, they have to venture out to their cars and go home. Hotel guests just have to amble to the elevator.

Unless, that is, they are hungry.