colorado springs to denver with no traffice is an hour and fifteen minutes, with traffic (and there will be traffic) its closer to an hour and 45 minutes at times. to get to boulder from south denver add another 30 minutes on top of that.
Alot of hotels have a "view" of the mountains (even downtown denver hotels). It just dePends on how close you want to be. I presonally would rather stay in Downtown Denver/Chery Creek, more shopping and art/sightseeing places. Colorado Springs is nice and peaceful but to me nothing special. The cheyenne Mountain zoo is nice, but Denver Zoo much bigger and nicer, royal gorge, cave of the winds and garden of the gods nice, but not really near eachother and more of a once you are there ok I seen it. I stayed at garden of the gods for an hour and that was too much,it's like ok red rocks, yaaaaay, oh look more rocks that look like the other rocks. and im born and raised in Denver and love nature. lol We've stayed at the Antlers hilton just last year and actually thought it was a great place if staying in the springs. in town, has a nice pool and workout room, as well as microbrew resturant in it.
But if you stay in downtown you will be less drive to boulder, which going to a CU game traffic will be bad so add even more time for that as well as the piss poor parking situation in Boulder for football games. but doentown you have zoo and museum in the same (city) park, shopping galore, tons and tons of resturants, microbrews etc... In golden you can tour Coor brewery, in loveland you can tour budweiser, or go to ft collins and tour new belgium brewery (but this is 2 hours away from denver). Cherry creek is a nice area to shop and play. You can walk around and visit many art galleries and shops.