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What to actually do there — amenities, dining and the walk worth taking

Pools, thermal baths, dune walks and where the half-board option is worth taking. A practical companion to the first three destinations on the list.

2026-09-22 · Como · Baden-Baden · Gran Canaria · Lausanne

One of the Lopesan pool complexes at Meloneras, Gran Canaria — A Lopesan pool at Meloneras. The amenities are half the price difference — worth knowing which ones you will use.

A cheap night in a good hotel is only good value if the hotel is one you actually want to be in. So here is the companion piece to the first three destinations: what the properties give you, what is within walking distance, and where paying for board makes sense.

Gran Canaria — the resorts are the destination

This is the one place on our list where the hotel is the holiday, and the amenity list is therefore the thing to compare rather than skim.

Lopesan Meloneras at dusk — palms, pools and a resort built to look like a village

A Lopesan dinner menu illustrated with the island's own landscapes

Lopesan Villa del Conde Resort & Thalasso from CHF 156 has six pools, five restaurants and the Corallium Thalasso centre — seawater circuits rather than a token treatment room. Five restaurants on site is the reason half board is worth pricing here: at most resorts it locks you into one buffet, and here it does not.

The Corallium thalasso circuit at Lopesan Villa del Conde — seawater rather than a token treatment room

Lopesan Baobab Resort from CHF 143 answers a different question. Nine pools and a lazy river, on a 72,000 m² plot, themed hard around an African village with a waterfall atrium in the middle. If anyone in the party wants to spend the entire day in water, this is the one.

The Lopesan Baobab lobby under its thatched roof, four storeys of it

Lopesan Costa Meloneras Resort & Spa from CHF 193 is the largest and the most conventional, and it is consistently the dearest of the trio despite being the least distinctive.

Loungers and parasols at Lopesan — the part of the price you either use or waste

The walk everyone should take

The promenade runs from Meloneras east to the Maspalomas lighthouse and the dunes reserve behind it. The dunes are protected landscape — genuine desert, a ten-minute walk from a buffet, which is a strange and excellent thing. Go at either end of the day. The middle of the day in summer is punishing and the light is flat.

The lighthouse is also where the resort stops being a resort and starts being a place with a life of its own. Boulevard El Faro curls around the foot of it — an open-air arcade of shops running to Ralph Lauren, Hugo Boss, jewellers and perfumeries, with a large Fundgrube for anyone whose interests are more practical — and the cafés and restaurants spill out onto terraces facing the water. Walk back west along the Paseo de Meloneras and it is one long run of beach bars and grill restaurants, most with a sea view and none of them in a hurry to give your table away at sunset.

It is noticeably smarter than the strip east of the lighthouse, and dearer to match, though the presentation earns it. If you have taken half board, this is precisely the reason to leave two or three evenings out of it.

The other direction takes you to Pasito Blanco marina, quieter, better for a long lunch.

The Maspalomas lighthouse from the beach — 56 metres, and you can see it from everywhere

The promenade at first light, before anyone else is on it

Baden-Baden — the water is the amenity

A different model entirely. Here the town is the resort, and the hotel is simply where you keep your things.

Baden-Baden is, to our mind, the pearl of Europe's bath towns — and it is not a close contest. Eleven of them share a UNESCO listing as the Great Spa Towns of Europe, and this is the one that still feels like a town rather than a monument to having once been one. The Romans found the springs and bathed in them; the nineteenth century built everything around them and then filled it with orchestras and gamblers. What is left is a single walkable valley holding thermal water, a casino, a serious concert hall, a river promenade through parkland, and the Black Forest beginning where the last street ends. Nothing is more than twenty minutes on foot from anything else. There is no resort gate to pass through, no wristband, no sense of being inside someone's property — you simply live in the town for a few days, and the water happens to be part of it.

Our first choice here, ahead of anything else in town, is Badischer Hof Baden-Baden from CHF 151. Not because it is the grandest address in Baden-Baden; it is not, and it does not try to be. It is the one we would book again without stopping to think.

Start with the thermal water, piped directly into the building — only a handful of houses in the town can say that, and it is the amenity actually worth paying for here. Then the things that do not show up on a booking page: staff who are warm rather than merely correct, rooms considerably better than the stars on the door would lead you to expect, a breakfast worth getting up for and a restaurant good enough that you stop looking for somewhere else to eat. The bar is its own idea rather than the usual hotel-lobby shrug, and it is the sort of detail that turns a good stay into one you talk about afterwards.

At CHF 151≈ €160 · $184 in its low season, you are barely paying for any of it.

The marble hall at the Badischer Hof, twin staircases climbing away under the glass roof

Then there are the two public bath houses, both walkable:

Friedrichsbad — the nineteenth-century Roman-Irish circuit. Textile-free, and a

genuinely fixed sequence of rooms rather than a spa you wander. Allow three hours.

Caracalla Therme — the modern one, swimwear worn, better if the first sounds like too

much commitment.

Know which you are booking. People get this wrong.

The Kurhaus colonnade at six in the morning, before anyone is about

The Badischer Hof garden frontage, the lawn running down to the trees

Otherwise: the Lichtentaler Allee park promenade along the Oos river, the Kurhaus and its casino, the Festspielhaus for concerts, and the Trinkhalle colonnade. It is a small town and all of it is on foot.

Steigenberger Icon Europäischer Hof Baden-Baden from CHF 164 sits on the Kaiserallee as the fuller-service alternative, at CHF 164≈ €174 · $199 low against Badischer Hof's CHF 151≈ €160 · $184 — a much smaller gap than the star ratings suggest.

Como — no pool, no spa, and five very different front doors

None of the Como places on our list is a hotel. They are apartments and guest houses: no pool, no spa, no restaurant, nobody to carry your bag up the stairs. The price reflects all of that. What you are buying instead is an address — and in a town this small, the address is most of the holiday.

Five of them sit within a few hundred metres of each other, and they are not interchangeable. Each has its own reason to exist.

Bello!Lake Como Suites from CHF 133 is the one with the view. Historic centre, facing the water, a short walk from the Duomo, and only three suites and two double rooms — so you are never one of two hundred. It is by a distance the most reviewed of the guest houses, which usually means a place is doing something people go home and talk about. It is also the most temperamental of the five on price: we have seen it as cheap as anything in Como and, on a typical night, dearer than all of them. Of everything on this page, it is the one where moving your dates pays best. If the point of your trip is to open a window onto the lake before breakfast, start here.

Vitrum - Como Luxury Suites from CHF 173 is for anyone who wants the old stones on their doorstep. Sixty metres from the cathedral, a hundred from the Broletto — you step out of the door and you have already arrived. There is a steam room on site, which for a guest house is a real indulgence. It scores the highest of the five, though on the fewest reviews, so read that as a promising sign rather than a settled verdict.

Alessia's Place from CHF 158 is the practical one, and we mean that as a compliment. Central, three hundred metres from the water, and right by the funicular up to Brunate — so the best view in Como is a five-minute ride from your own front door. One thing to watch: some units are rooms and some are studios with a kitchen. Those are two different holidays, so book the one you actually want.

Fitzgerald Building by "The House Of Travelers" from CHF 140 is the quiet corner. Seven hundred metres from the station, up near the Volta Temple and Sant'Abbondio, out of the evening crowds along the lakefront. The unit we track is fifty square metres with its own kitchen, which is a great deal of room for the money in a town this expensive. Take it if you want space, quiet, and a door you can close on the day.

Historical Suites by "The House Of Travelers" from CHF 133 comes from the same operator as the Fitzgerald and sits in the old town, and it is the one for a tight budget. On a typical night it is the cheapest of the five, and the address is every bit as central as the others. We will be straight about the catch: of the five, it also reviews the weakest — not badly, just plainly behind its own sibling — and inventory is thin, so it appears and disappears. If you are counting every franc it earns its place easily. If you are not, the Fitzgerald is the better room for a little more.

Not one of them will bring you breakfast. All of them put you inside a lakeside town you can cross on foot without ever needing a car — and that is the trade. You spend the money on being there rather than on the building you sleep in.

From the centro storico, everything is walkable:

Como Cathedral and the Broletto beside it
Basilica of Sant'Abbondio — eleventh-century Romanesque, usually empty
The funicular up to Brunate for the view back over the lake
The ferry dock at Piazza Cavour for Bellagio, Varenna and the lakeside villas
Como San Giovanni station, twelve minutes from Milan

An alley climbing away from the water, bell tower at the top of it

Most of these have a kitchen, which changes the economics of a week. Eating out every night in a lake town in season costs more than the room does.

The piazza in the late afternoon — the reason room-only works here

Lausanne — the hotel is the view

A fourth model. On Lake Geneva you are paying for a frontage, and the difference between paying a lot and paying a little for the same frontage is about four hundred metres of quay.

Hôtel Angleterre & Résidence from CHF 173 sits on the Ouchy waterfront in the building where Byron wrote in 1816. Beau-Rivage Palace from CHF 470 is the 1861 grand hotel in its own park along the same shore. The view is effectively identical; the price is not.

The Beau-Rivage Palace gardens in Lausanne from above, lake and Savoy Alps beyond

All four Lausanne palaces run Leaders Club, free to join, and we have measured it at 5.0% off at Beau-Rivage and 10.7% at Lausanne Palace.

Rewards programmes, where they exist

Worth two minutes before you book, because on some of these it is the largest single saving available:

Leonardo Advantage Club (Badischer Hof) — free, flat 10% off all online bookings.

Measured.

Leaders Club / LHW (all four Lausanne hotels, Seaside Grand Residencia) — free, member

rate shown on the engine. Measured at 5.0–10.7%.

H Rewards (Steigenberger Icon) — free, member rate shown; saving not yet measured.
Radisson Rewards (Radisson Blu, Gran Canaria) — free.
None at the Como apartments, the three Lopesans, or Brenners. On the Lopesans the

equivalent is a permanent site-wide promotion of 20–30%, already reflected in the prices we publish.

⚠ Every price on this site is the public rate. Where a club exists, the real number for a member is lower than what we show.

The rule underneath all four

Match the board to the place. In Meloneras, where the resort has five restaurants and the nearest alternative is a walk, half board is usually worth it. In Como, where you are surrounded by the town and have a kitchen, room-only is obviously right. In Baden-Baden it depends entirely on whether you intend to spend your days in the baths or in the town. In Lausanne, breakfast at a palace hotel is a genuine event and frequently the best-value meal you will eat there.

That decision moves the real cost of a trip more than the nightly rate does — which is why we record whether breakfast is included on every single price we track.

The rest of the roll

Everything else we came back with from this trip — ours, taken on the days described above. Click any of them to see it properly.

Gran Canaria

The big Lopesan lagoon pool, rocks and all

The lighthouse at night, with the moon where you would have put it

The Lopesan Baobab entrance, a cliff of timber poles four storeys high

Parasols scattered down the sand in the middle of the afternoon

Through the Lopesan arcade, first thing in the morning

The whole strip from above: pools, promenade, and the lighthouse holding the end of it

The thatched roofline at Lopesan Baobab, carved concrete and glass beneath it

The coast from the same spot, looking the other way

The Maspalomas lighthouse, 1890, floodlit against a blue hour sky

The coast south of the resorts, from a height

The same Lopesan pool from the shallow end, resort behind

Sushi on the terrace at Hotel Faro, a Lopesan Collection Hotel, with the afternoon still going

The Lopesan entrance at midnight, still lit like a stage set

Lunch under the palms at Lopesan, unhurried

A dunes-conservation sign on the promenade: your gaze, the only trace you leave

Lopesan Villa del Conde after dark, its frontage modelled on a Canarian town square

Bookmatched marble at Hotel Faro, a Lopesan Collection Hotel — the sort of detail that tells you where the budget went

The Lopesan Baobab atrium in daylight — stone chimneys, woven lampshades and a stage at the far end

Walking in to Lopesan Baobab between the timber walls — someone ahead with a rubber ring, which tells you what the day holds

Petits fours arriving at a Lopesan restaurant whether you asked for them or not

The courtyard and fountain at Lopesan Costa Meloneras, chairs out for the evening

The Maspalomas lighthouse and the Lopesan pools from above, end of the day

The same Lopesan row from the other side, mid-afternoon

A gilded figure against the dawn, the Lopesan pool still empty

The rooftop bar at Hotel Faro, a Lopesan Collection Hotel, looking back over the resorts after dark

Somebody's afternoon work on the beach, and it was better than ours

The lighthouse and its shoreline in the middle of the day

Lopesan Baobab after midnight, the atrium lit and completely empty

A table by the window at Lopesan as the light goes

Down the length of the Lopesan Baobab restaurant, mud-cloth on every table

The Lopesan plaza lit up after dark, which is when the resort is at its best

Sunset over the Atlantic from the promenade

The Atlantic doing what it does, a wake crossing it

Swimming distance across the Lopesan lagoon, if you are feeling ambitious

The causeway into Lopesan Baobab, palms either side and the thatched atrium roof ahead

Palms and the dry hills behind the coast

The infinity pool at Hotel Faro, a Lopesan Collection Hotel — the Maspalomas lighthouse right beside it, which is where the hotel gets its name

The Lopesan Villa del Conde lobby, built as a full-scale copy of a Canarian village church

Dusk over the Lopesan Baobab gardens — pools stepping down towards the Atlantic, and a new moon over the whole thing

Frangipani in the Lopesan garden, doing the smelling for the whole terrace

The African-themed dining room at Lopesan Baobab, laid up under a painted ceiling

The promenade running east towards the lighthouse

The causeway at Lopesan Baobab at night, lit along both edges

Palms, a Lopesan pool and the Atlantic beyond the lawn

A single palm against the last of the light, the Lopesan pool still warm

Baden Baden

The Badischer Hof terrace under the pines, waiting for the evening

The spa quarter from above — rooftops, parkland and the forest closing the view

Inside the Festspielhaus — the largest opera and concert house in Germany, and the reason to check the calendar before you pick dates

The Stourdza Chapel on the Michaelsberg, gold dome above banded stone

The Badischer Hof from its own gardens — 1807, and the first hotel in Europe to pipe thermal water into its rooms

Leopoldsplatz, where all of the town's traffic eventually meets

The Theater Baden-Baden, and a lawn already cut in March

Twin spires above the rhododendrons, and the first daffodils under them

The salon at Brenners, and the week's flowers

The lounge at the Steigenberger Icon Europäischer Hof — fire lit, football on, nobody in a hurry

A lounge built around its own columns, Badischer Hof

A Gothic spire over the old town, caught against a bright March sky

A room at the Badischer Hof, turned down for the night

Breakfast pâtisserie at the Badischer Hof — the stands come out at seven and are gone by ten

A bronze in the Lichtentaler Allee, the Museum Frieder Burda behind it

Brenners Park-Hotel on the Kaiserallee — the grandest frontage in a town built to be looked at

Sunrise over the Black Forest, taken from above the town at half past five

Festival banners along the shopping street in early spring

The park gardens and their fountain in late August

A Baden-Baden villa under a plane tree not yet in leaf

The Black Forest ridge above the town, with a paraglider off the Merkur

The Brenners entrance late in the afternoon (number plates obscured)

The Badischer Hof bar, still empty at ten in the morning

The billiard room at Brenners — red walls, a tapestry, and nobody playing

Looking down on the Kurhaus and the avenue of trees running away from it

'La Capitale d'Été' — a summer concert filling the Festspielhaus stage

Inside the Festspielhaus, Germany's largest opera house, a few minutes before the downbeat

The Badischer Hof from under the plane trees in the park

A baroque church tower over the old town, framed by the first blossom

The Trinkhalle colonnade and its painted arcades, crocuses out across the lawn

Coffee at the Museum Frieder Burda, branded down to the sugar packet

A spritz on the Steigenberger roof terrace at dusk, the Festspielhaus programme open on the table

The bar at the Steigenberger Icon Europäischer Hof, gold overhead and nobody on the stools yet

Badischer Hof terrace tables looking out onto the lawn

The Oos — the small river the whole spa town is arranged along

A horse-drawn carriage waiting in the Lichtentaler Allee, as they have since the town's first season

A salon at the Badischer Hof laid up for a spring reception, chandeliers and all

The Kurhaus portico — casino behind it, concert hall beside it

Brenners Park-Hotel seen from the park, before the trees come into leaf

A banqueting room at Brenners, laid and waiting

The Trinkhalle from the garden side, café parasols out

The Badischer Hof lobby, arranged around its staircases under the glass roof

A room with the town in the window — which is what the view costs you

The Easter Festival programme — the Berlin Philharmonic's spring residency, and the reason the town fills up in March

The Festspielhaus on an opera night, built behind the facade of the old railway station

Lake Como

Boats at their moorings under the mountains, the lake opening out to the north

A village restaurant with its name cut into the stone

A small white church above the road, eleventh-century underneath the paint

The far shore from the promenade, a seaplane on the water

Sunset over the lake from a garden in the hills

Braised beef at a village trattoria — the food here is heavier than the scenery suggests

The mountain wall opposite, lit for about ten minutes a day

The same square from the other end, in the middle of the afternoon

A cappuccino on the terrace, which is the correct way to begin

A friar in the Pinacoteca's collection, still watching the door

Low sun straight down the lake from the end of a jetty

The Broletto, Como's thirteenth-century town hall, striped in three colours of marble

Nothing but lake and sky, looking up the western arm

Boats and a jetty at the blue end of the evening

Lake Como from Brunate, the town at the head of the lake below the mountains

The lakeside promenade on a Saturday morning

Shuttered balconies on a side street in the centro storico

Sunset over the lake from the hills above Como

A quiet corner of the lakefront out of season, when the town belongs to itself

The cathedral front — Gothic below, Renaissance above, and nobody minds

A pink church front catching the last of the sun

In the Pinacoteca, out of the heat for an hour

A lakeside church with the boats pulled up in front of it

Golden hour on the water, a small boat heading home

The waterfront at Como, villas climbing the slope behind the moorings

A civic building off the main square, flag out

The Aero Club Como hangar — seaplanes have flown off this water since 1930

Last light over the Lombard plain, the lake already in shadow

Como's rationalist war memorial of 1933 — the town is a quiet pilgrimage for architects

Dinner on the lake — the kind of meal a kitchen in the apartment lets you skip or splurge on

The view back down over the lake from Brunate, above Como

Piazza Duomo, cathedral on one side and arcades on the other

The marina, with the mountains folding down behind the masts

A baroque church on the waterfront, bell tower and all

The bell tower again, from the lane below

Looking straight up a painted facade, which is how most of Como is best seen

Lausanne

Flowers going out in the Beau-Rivage hall before the day starts

The Grand-Pont, which carries the city straight over its own valley

The Palais de Rumine on Place de la Riponne — several museums under one Florentine roof

Ouchy in July — the Savoy Alps opposite are in France, and the lake in front is why the hotels are here

The Beau-Rivage Palace frontage from the garden terrace

The Beau-Rivage rotunda under its stained-glass dome

White linen, an orchid, and the terrace door left open — Beau-Rivage Palace

Wildflowers and a limestone peak on the way back down

Gardens, quay and water, stacked the way Lausanne stacks everything

Sailing boats in the long evening light, from the Beau-Rivage terrace

A pre-Alpine lake within easy reach of the city

The equestrian statue in the Beau-Rivage Palace park, the Château d'Ouchy behind it

The Beau-Rivage Palace from its own lawn at Ouchy, yellow awnings out against a July sun

The Beau-Rivage room key, and the garden it lets you back into

The pool at the Angleterre & Résidence — the cheapest of the four palace hotels, and it still has this

Geraniums and a flag on a chalet balcony, which is not a cliché if it is simply there

A concert hall under its rose window, piano waiting

The cathedral from the street below, all four hundred vertical metres of city underneath it

Gruyères advertising itself on the Beau-Rivage terrace — an hour up the line, and worth the day

Breakfast tables on the lawn at the Beau-Rivage Palace, nine in the morning

A Beau-Rivage ballroom being set for a summer wedding

The lake from the Beau-Rivage park, with the pines doing the framing

The cathedral front, the finest Gothic in Switzerland and still keeping a night watchman

Lake Geneva from the Ouchy shore, the Savoy Alps on the French side

The gallery running the whole length of the Beau-Rivage Palace

The #Lausanne sign at Ouchy, which everybody photographs and so did we

The Beau-Rivage Palace from the quay, every balcony facing the same way

A chalet in the pines, Fribourg pre-Alps

Lake Geneva from the Beau-Rivage, the French shore on the far side

The same water, with somebody else having had the same idea

A room at the Beau-Rivage Palace, with the lake in the window — which is what you are actually paying for

A pool terrace under the umbrella pines at Ouchy, cabanas and all

Alpine meadow and a handful of chalets under the ridge

The same figure from the lake side, with the boats behind

Breakfast on the balcony, Lake Geneva doing the rest

A plaque to Gabriel Fauré, who summered here and began 'Pénélope' in 1907

Lausanne cathedral on the ridge, seen across the rooftops

The Beau-Rivage terrace, and a poster for the Alfredo Jaar show at Plateforme 10

A pre-Alpine lake under limestone cliffs, ninety minutes from the city

The hotels in this piece

Lopesan Villa del Conde Resort & Thalasso

Meloneras · from CHF 156 · typical CHF 242

Lopesan Baobab Resort

Meloneras · from CHF 143 · typical CHF 245

Lopesan Costa Meloneras Resort & Spa

Meloneras · from CHF 193 · typical CHF 288

Badischer Hof Baden-Baden

Baden-Baden · from CHF 151 · typical CHF 196

Steigenberger Icon Europäischer Hof Baden-Baden

Baden-Baden · from CHF 164 · typical CHF 226

Historical Suites by "The House Of Travelers"

Como · from CHF 133 · typical CHF 146

Fitzgerald Building by "The House Of Travelers"

Como · from CHF 140 · typical CHF 173

Bello!Lake Como Suites

Como · from CHF 133 · typical CHF 263

Vitrum - Como Luxury Suites

Como · from CHF 173 · typical CHF 178

Alessia's Place

Como · from CHF 158 · typical CHF 208

Hôtel Angleterre & Résidence

Lausanne · from CHF 173 · typical CHF 285

Beau-Rivage Palace

Lausanne · from CHF 470 · typical CHF 548

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**1 / 191** A Lopesan pool at Meloneras. The amenities are half the price difference — worth knowing which ones you will use.

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