Amanda Hyndman, RVP for Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group and GM of MANDARIN ORIENTAL HONG KONG, says she gets continual praise for the bedroom of suite 1926. Why? It’s a corner suite and the bathroom faces Central, with the sitting room, at right angles to it, looking over what is left of Victoria Harbour to Tsim Sha Tsui on the mainland. The bedroom, in between, is in the apex and it has no windows. Brilliant. It feels as if it were a private yacht with upright vertical walls joined at 190° rather than curved junctures in its stateroom. It surely makes for a perfect sleep for anyone.
To be honest. Preview sleeping in suite 1926 with a simple Sunday supper in the hotel’s Grill. Start the meal with superb homemade sourdough – an olive oil trolley has seven choices, that including chef’s infusion of herbs in Spanish oil. Try a Winter salad, followed by New Zealand ‘First Light’ grass-fed Wagyu M7-9 ribeye, plus a glass of Goulée Cos d’Estournel 2017. Naturally sleep later came even faster than immediately.
Why don’t more developers site bedrooms in corners? Who needs big windows by the bed, unless of course we are talking Indian Ocean or French Polynesia? Come to think of it why are bedrooms seldom ‘odd shapes’?
There was a fairly plausible Wild West wagon in Beijing some years ago but Girlahead never went back so she can’t remember which Sheraton it was, There’s the 300sq m Sassoon Suite, #800, at FAIRMONT THE PEACE HOTEL in Shanghai, the one-time office of Sir Victor Sassoon – the suite still has no less than 25 windows overlooking The Bund. (If you’re staying there, by the way, do not miss the Old Shanghai Jazz Band, playing nightly as it has done for decades down on the ground floor – social media hero Tiffany Dowd’s grandfather Vic Won Cumyow starred for many years.)
What else is there to list? An ice hotel and a tree hotel would be obvious candidates, as would the underwater suites at ATLANTIS THE PALM DUBAI. In London, THE GORING has the bedroom the now-Princess of Wales slept in the night before her wedding and in Paris L’HOTEL boasts that Oscar Wilde died there. In Manchester, the English rather than the Vermont one, THE MIDLAND, then all of one year old, has a suite where a Mr Rolls first encountered a Mr Royce in 1904.
The four-poster in room 430 of ASHFORD CASTLE in Ireland’s Co Cong is so tall that the ceiing has to be 1.5 times usual height – there is a mezzanine behind the four-post magnificent, with space for a second bed. Perhaps every ‘unusual room’ should make the most of its story.
