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If our featured Mandarin
Oriental hotels are a bit too high on the luxury ladder for your
wallets, The
Kimberley Hotel is a great find, just a block or two off busy Nathan Road in Kowloon’s colorful Tsimshatsui section.
On arrival, I was not at all
impressed with the entrance. It was just a big open hallway between
stores.
Then I realized that the hotel itself began up an escalator on the
second
floor. Waiting to greet me behind a long front desk, paneled in
exquisite
woods, was a very courteous staff who smilingly attended to my
registration and
questions.
A piano player held forth in
the cozy cocktail lounge behind me. Hallways to my right led to the
main dining
room and two specialty restaurants.
We took an elevator to my
twentieth floor Junior Suite. This is next to the top in room
categories
available, and I was immediately pleased with my choice. As a business
person
traveling solo, I found the layout ideal, but it would have done just
as well
for a vacationing couple. Entry was into a small sitting room with a
sofa and
coffee table. A flat screen TV covered the opposite wall over a desk
with
phone. The minibar was underneath. A wall unit in the sitting room
contained a
small fridge, microwave, hot plate stove, sink, coffee/tea maker and
exhaust
fan. The closet concealed a safe. In the bedroom were two
queen beds, another TV, and a table holding a Nintendo game player. Two
more
telephones resided by my queen bed and in the well-appointed bathroom
with its
gleaming gold fixtures.
Service
was impeccable. One call to
ask how to work the air-conditioning
and shower brought a battalion of housekeeping and
maintenance
people to my room, who quickly solved all my problems.
Both breakfast and a dinner
in the buffet restaurant were quite pleasant, and the food was good. I
am not a
big fan of buffets, so the waiter brought an a la carte menu. It never
hurts to
ask. The hotel also has more formal Chinese and Japanese restaurants,
plus
several meeting rooms. When I asked for a reasonably priced place
nearby for
dinner, front desk staff directed me across the street through an alley
to
Knutsford Terrace…a wonderland ‘restaurant row’ serving a wide variety
of
ethnic foods, and especially busy on Friday nights.
The idea is to stroll past
all the restaurants, many offering patio service, and compare their
menus and
prices. The British Pub’s fare was in Chinese, which I found rather
amusing.
During my cruising, I found a great seafood spot that served quite
affordable
half plates. As I sat on a terrace draped in twinkling fairy lights,
just below
the very popular Russian restaurant, I feasted on Alaskan salmon,
Italian
spinach pasta, crusty French rolls and New Zealand wine while a
constant people
parade passed by. Hong
Kong is
definitely a
crossroads of nationalities, both in
food and faces.
The Kimberley Hotel’s
location is convenient to shopping, museums, parks and night markets.
Rides on
the Star Ferry across the harbor to Hong Kong Island are real bargains, especially for
seniors
who don’t
have to pay at all! The street floor entry to the hotel has several
shops, plus
a tour desk where I signed up for a very interesting guided tour into
the New Territories on my last afternoon, before heading
to the
airport.
Special Internet rates for
The Kimberley Hotel begin at $110 per room per night plus 10% service
charge
and currently 3% government tax. Offered with this rate is a 20%
discount on restaurant and room service meals. The rate for my Junior
Suite is $359.
A
two-night Business Package offers breakfast plus the 20% meals
discount, airport transfer, late check-out and
other
perks. www.kimberley.com.hk
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