• 1. Where to Stay
• 2. Where to Eat
• 3. What to Do
• 4. Insider’s Tip
• 5. An Oddball Day

The restaurant at East features an Asian fusion menu, including a full sushi bar.   (Photo: Courtesy East)

Chicago architect Jordan Moser designed the full-on visual assault that is East (from 150 euros). The high-heeled locals and the visiting jet set congregate in the rollicking, multistoried lobby, where you can choose from 250 drinks.

Bed down at the Park Hyatt (from 250 euros), a brilliant conversion of a handsome fin de siècle warehouse in the city centre where you will be happily subjected to discreet service and access to the city's best wellness facility, Club Olympus Spa & Fitness.

The lakeside Raffles Vier Jahreszeiten (from 220 euros) has nineteenth-century elegance and an obsequious Swiss-trained staff to go with its four restaurants and reputation as the country's best hotel. Eat at Haerlin, which has one Michelin star.

By contrast, it's all willfully 21st century at the nearby Matteo Thun–designed SIDE (from 215 euros), where an eight-story asymmetrical atrium sheathed in frosted glass and backlit with azure neon tubes lurks behind a gray steel-and-glass façade.

(Photo: Courtesy of 25hours)

Equally minimalist but far less pricey are the rawboned, high-design digs (Brionvega TVs, Flos lamps, Living Divani daybeds, Philippe Starck Eros chairs) at 25hours (from 101 euros; from 61 euros for guests under 26), located in the burgeoning Ottensen district.

Published on Oct 11, 2006 as a web exclusive.