Spicers Potts Point

Only three of the twenty rooms at Spicers Potts Point get the balcony. The hotel is three Victorian terraces of the 1870s and 80s on Victoria Street, painted a creamy sage, and the ornate wrought-iron balcony across the front belongs to the Victoria Terrace Suites alone, each with lounge seating out in the open air above the street. Everyone else has the back of the house: a courtyard garden, and beside it the Garden Room, lit from a skylight, with vines hanging down and chairs the colour of sea glass. Breakfast is served there from half past seven until ten, à la carte, and runs to buttermilk pancakes or vanilla porridge with fresh berries.

Recommended for couples who want a quiet residential street to come back to, with the harbour close enough to make a day of it. Kings Cross station is five minutes' walk, Circular Quay and Hyde Park five minutes by car, and Potts Point's own cafés and restaurants are on foot. There is no pool and no spa, and for exercise the hotel arranges access to PE Dept, a gym nearby, for a fee. The evening can start at the honesty bar beside the Garden Room, where shelves of Aperol are kept for spritzes on the house, and a cocktail can go back to a terrace. The paintings are Australian: John Olsen's abstractions of the harbour, and Martine Emdur's swimmers, sun-dappled under water and a good deal less dressed than anyone else in the house.