Innsbruck

Innsbruck is the rare place where the mountains come right down into the streets, look up from the baroque old town and there is a black run above you, not on a postcard but on the skyline. The Nordkette cable car climbs from beside the Golden Roof to over 2,000 metres in about twenty minutes, which makes lunch in the city and an afternoon on serious snow the same day's plan rather than two trips. This is the Tyrolean capital, a working city that has hosted two Winter Olympics, with mountains on every side. Most ski towns are villages pretending to be more; Innsbruck is a city that happens to have alpine terrain hanging over its rooftops.

We fly here because the choice between a city weekend and a mountain weekend is a false one, and Innsbruck is the proof. Some people want a long lunch in an old town and some want a steep run before dark; here the cable car settles the argument in twenty minutes. The best weekends don't ask you to pick, this one starts with a city and ends above it.