One&Only One Za'abeel

When The Link was lifted into place between the two towers of One Za'abeel, four lanes of traffic kept moving underneath it. It is 230 metres long and 100 metres up, and it runs 67 metres out beyond the main tower, which makes it the longest cantilevered building in the world. The hotel's restaurants are inside. The best seat belongs to La Dame de Pic, the Michelin-starred French one, which has taken the cantilever itself: no tower beneath it, only the 100 metres down. The rooms are glass from wall to wall, so the skyline comes with them, and many look straight at the Burj Khalifa.

Recommended for a city break that has to please two generations at once, since the hotel splits itself neatly between them. Children have the fourth-floor garden pool, Balinese in style, with a section of its own for them, a space-themed kids' club for four- to twelve-year-olds beside it, and babysitting for the evenings. Adults have the infinity pool, more than thirty floors up on a timber deck, and the Longevity Hub, the spa run with Clinique La Prairie, where a sauna and a hammam are the gentle end of the menu and cryotherapy and IV drips the other. The airport is fifteen minutes' drive, so the last dinner on the cantilever need not be an early one.