To be truthful, there were only two mad hotels on our trip. Most of them – barring the one in Whistler which was kind of old, and the one in Kamloops which was just basic because Kamloops doesn’t have anything better – were pretty nice, and all other than the one in Kamloops were five star because we booked a premium tour (and paid through the nose for it.) A few of them were in the Fairmont Hotel chain, which caters for the high end customers. So it was a peek at a lifestyle we’re not familiar with, while not particularly wanting to living like that all the time (I mean, turn down service? Chocolates on the pillow every night? Does any of that really matter?)
Our favourite hotel was the first one we stayed in – the Fairmont Waterfront at Vancouver. It’s a new hotel, very large and gracious with amazingly nice and helpful staff. It was a pleasant surprise to find we were staying in Gold class, which gave us lots of perks including a free breakfast and free canapĂ©s in the evening which were more than sufficient for a light meal – a real boon to two tired, jetlagged travellers too. It also had incredible views across the water towards the mountains, and a beautiful rooftop garden with beehives (they serve their own honey) – most of the Fairmonts have rooftop gardens.
The room was large and comfortable and swish. But what makes the Fairmont Waterfront a mad hotel is this:
That’s a TV imbedded into the bathroom mirror. A TV in the bathroom mirror. Oy. (When it was off, the mirror looked normal.) Who the hell needs this?
Sadly we only had one night here before being moved to the allegedly swisher and more famous Rosewood Hotel Georgia up the road. We were very annoyed to have to wait over an hour to check in although we’d arrived at 4pm, and another half hour for our bags to be brought. The room was enormaou and the bathroom was – no joke – bigger than our master bedroom at home. But it just wasn’t as lovely as the Waterfront. View was nothing as amazing either:
That’s the Vancouver Art Gallery, where a demo was being held that Sunday.
The next mad hotel was the Fairmont Banff Spring. Mad because it was just so very over the top 🙂 :
but also because the builders faced it the wrong way around (much to the dismay of the owner). So the back of the hotel has this view, not the front:
The room here was very small but we were warned and we coped. And the shopping mall made up for a lot 🙂
The hotel in Jasper was a lodge. Not a mad one, just a bit on the inconvenient side if you were carrying luggage. But it was quite scenic:
Despite the rating the rooms were not that great, and they were poorly lit. The location is all and appeals to golfers and horse riders though. I was pleased to see this – a room named after Mary Schaffer, one of Canada’s most important explorers, and a woman:
The really maddest hotel of them all was the one at Vernon. The Sparkling Hill resort is so called because it’s owned by one of the Swarovski family of crystal fame. And there were crystals everywhere:
Crystals in the backs of chairs, on the wardrobe doors. Even a crystal ‘fire’ in our room!
The room itself was lovely, open plan with a window wall looking out onto the pool and down onto the valley below. The spa facilities were also damn extensive, but Doug and I just spent the day – which was hot – jumping from the indoor pool, which we had to ourselves, and the heated whirlpool. It would have been boring after a day, but a day there was quite nice.
Dunno what this was doing there though 🙂
No more mad hotels, as the rest were unremarkably comfortable. So concludes the epic blog posts about our trip to North America 🙂