Sometimes you just need to rise above it all, and the InterContinental's tower gets you there. It's not in the jumble of the center city, but among the mansions and parkland of the Diplomatic District, where evenings are quiet and the views down to Lake Geneva are simply sensational from the lake-facing rooms. The full-service hotel is set up to support conferences, which gives its spaces the size and breadth of a grander hotel. The HQ-and-museum campus of the International Red Cross and the United Nations complex are both a 5-minute walk away, and while there aren't many non-hotel restaurants nearby, when it's time to get into town, the frequent city bus stops right outside the hotel (at a stop named InterContinental) and you'll be there in 10 minutes. To make that simple, guests all receive free transit cards that are good for the whole of Geneva—all you have to do is step on any bus you want and go.

Rooms and attentive service meet an expected international corporate-hotel standard that Americans will recognize as familiar and comfortable, and while the furniture leans toward plain and utilitarian blond woods, the bathrooms have tubs, which are a disappearing breed. When you look out the window and see the mighty Jet d'Eau reaching for the sky in the middle of the panorama below you, you'll have a sure sense of Geneva and how it fits into the Alps beyond. In the summer, the hotel's ample, heated outdoor pool provides welcome amusement, especially on Sundays, when everything in the city shuts down.