Every harbour city has one rooftop that appears in every listicle. It has a dress code, a minimum spend, a photographer, and a forty-minute wait — and, very often, a view partly blocked by the building it is competing with.
We look for three things instead: an unobstructed sightline to water, a lift that runs past 23:00, and a room that will seat eight without a reservation fee. That combination is almost never the famous one. It is frequently the hotel next door, on a lower floor, with a worse lift and a better angle.
The exception is when the famous rooftop genuinely is the best view in the city. It happens. When it does, we book it at 17:30 on a weekday, which is the one hour it is neither empty nor unbearable.