The Varsity Hotel & Spa

The rooms at The Varsity are ranked like a college, from the Graduate Double up to the Senior Fellows Suite, and here promotion buys what it ought to: a view. The hotel is seven storeys on a quiet lane off Bridge Street, a glass-topped wing beside a restored bonded warehouse. Floor-to-ceiling windows give the rooms Midsummer Common, the river or the old roofs of Jesus and St John's. The lower floors have less to look at, so book up the ladder. SIX, the brasserie, is on the sixth floor, which explains the name, and has the city through its windows. Above it is the roof, laid with artificial grass and open in the warmer months, weather permitting, where Cambridge's only rooftop bar looks out to a horizon the fens keep flat in every direction.

Recommended for grown-ups who want the old centre on foot from the door. Children are allowed and cots are free, but there is no pool and no kids' club. Magdalene and the river are a couple of minutes away, Market Square under half a mile. Anything further is a bicycle ride: the hotel lends them, and guests have taken them out to the water meadows at Grantchester. Then there is the spa, with eight treatment rooms and a hot tub looking over the Cam, where the punts go by and somebody else does the poling.