Egypt 2008: the Grand Hyatt hotel

Our hotel in Cairo was the Grand Hyatt (duh) which is an incredibly fancy five star luxury hotel. The hotel preferred by Saudi royals when they visit the city. The Four Seasons is right across the street, but although it's a little more expensive (so we were told) the service isn't as good. :-D The hotel was recently purchased by king Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia. So ... that's how much they like it, they bought it. ;-) King Abdullah wants the Grand Hyatt to be the best hotel in Cairo, the best in Egypt!! and for the service to be the best that anyone will encounter anywhere. He also wants no alcohol to be sold on the premises. :-D Funny story, I'll get back to that. Today's post is just to show some pictures from the hotel.

I already posted a picture of the view from our room. It was on the 17th floor and had floor to ceiling windows with a balcony that looked out across the river Nile.

These pictures were not all taken during the beginning of our stay - we also spent a day in Cairo before going back home and some of these were taken then. If that matters. :-)

The hotel. A pretty imposing building. That thing on the top right corner is their Revolving Restaurant. More on that later.

Trees and bushes surround the building.

The front entrance. That's Wael, our coordinator in Cairo, standing to the far left.

Of course, no 5 star hotel with any self respect can do without a water feature in the lobby.

Or some fancy chandeliers. They have three of these in the lobby.

Big stairs ... !! and massive marble floors. These stairs go up to the first floor where there are various meeting rooms and ballrooms and what not. While we were there we noticed both wedding celebrations and business conferences being hosted.

And extremely fancy elevators. They're super quick, you whoosh past twenty floors without hardly realizing it. This is CH trying to hold the elevator so I could take a picture ... she's all giggly because the doors kept closing and she kept almost disappearing on me. :-)

A couple of pictures from room 1831.

I should have pulled the curtains back so the view would have been visible in the background ... stupid me.

Of course we had an arrow in the ceiling pointing us towards Mecca. This is a civilized place we're talking about here. >:-)

A view from the downstairs terrace, on the shores of the Nile, out across the river to the Cairo cityscape. The purple thing is the Cairo TV tower - quite famous - and the other tall building is the Cairo Sofitel. (It looked nowhere near that good in daylight.)

So ... all in all, it was a pretty OK place to stay for a few days. ;-)