Beau-Rivage Palace

One of the last of Europe’s traditional grand hotels, Lausanne’s Beau-Rivage Palace recalls the days of aristocrats traveling by coach; from within the gardens of the hotel’s ten-acre grounds, pressed up against Lake Geneva, it would be easy to feel a little bit lost in time. Views are spectacular, with the better rooms looking over the lake and the French Alps, and the hotel itself is rather easy on the eye—though recently renovated, the exteriors remain faithful to the 1861 conception and the 1908 addition.

The rooms can hardly have changed much in the intervening years; if not for the televisions and the central air conditioning, they could pass as period reconstructions. This hotel predates the modern trend toward egalitarian room design, and the rooms vary widely in terms of space and orientation. Needless to say, the most desirable are on the lake side, looking out at the Alps from private balconies—so if the view matters to you, you may end up paying a touch more. Leisure activities include the full host of luxury hotel offerings and then some, from tennis, golf and sailing to reflexology, lymph drainage, and Chinese medicine.

The hotel’s Pic restaurant serves gourmet French cuisine with a view of the parklands and Lake Geneva, and a Parisian-style brasserie fills in for less formal duty. The Café Beau-Rivage is the more traditional social venue, with an intimate drawing-room atmosphere, and The BAR is billed as the place to see and be seen. Presumably this means something different in Lausanne than in, say, Berlin—there are plenty of hotels all over Europe for the would-be hipster, but the Beau-Rivage is one of the few remaining for the modern aristocrat.

How to get there:
Beau-Rivage Palace is approximately a 40-minute drive from Geneva International Airport (GVA).