The Cavalier Hotel is one of those hotels that’s also a destination in its own right. The stately landmark in Virginia Beach—which is surprisingly Virginia’s largest city—first opened in 1927 atop a hill about two blocks off the beach. This location in the quieter north end feels a world removed from the kitsch shops and forgettable chain hotels at the heart of the tourist zone. Clarence Neff Sr., a regionally known architect, used Flemish bond bricks to design a building that evokes both Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and some of the great Palladian country houses in England. This is appropriate, given the hotel’s name, as well as Virginia’s rich history. Supporters of King Charles I at the time of the English Civil War in the mid-17th century were called Cavaliers by their opponents, the Roundheads. Many of those aristocrats also settled in Virginia, the first English colony in the New World. …