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Keeping up standards
Tempus fugit, and all that. Suddenly, four years have flown by – where did they go? – since The Budapest Times spent a few days at the Palais Hansen Kempinski hotel in Vienna almost immediately after...
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Eye Kandy
Earls Regency British film director Carol Reed said of Sri Lanka that “the whole island is like a technicolour film set”. Technicolour isn’t our favourite film stock, being rather garish, and Reed is...
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Beside the seaside
Turyaa Kalutara resort Slowly, deliberately, a Sri Lankan man is climbing the long thin trunk of a palm tree. Ropes have been tied around the trunk to give him hand-holds and foot-holds but it is still...
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Memories are made of this
Ramada Hotel, Colombo Sri Lanka lays out its welcome mat as our big bird, flight QR 200 from Budapest, descends to Bandaranaike International Airport at Colombo. The mat is woven from the green fronds...
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Held captive by splendour
The classic British TV series “The Prisoner” follows a former secret agent who is abducted to a mysterious coastal village resort. Where is it? Who captured him and why? Who can he trust? Why is he...
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Getting the right royal treatment
A hotel is a hotel and a palace is a palace, you say, and a hotel that calls itself a palace is giving itself something it must live up to. Although Malta’s Corinthia Palace Hotel and Spa may have...
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Making capital in the regions
Fortuitously, Jamaican fast man Usain Bolt’s hotel and the arena where he will race in the 100 metres in Ostrava, Czech Republic, look to the casual eye to be almost exactly 100 metres apart. If Bolt...
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Left, right and centre
Sofia may not be among Europe’s most fashionable capitals, but a capital it is, and well worthwhile with a good sprinkling of stately buildings, pretty parks and monuments from its 2400-year history....
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Wish you were here: Balkans, 2016
Cow bells can be heard outside when we wake after our first night in Bansko, Bulgaria. Going out onto our hotel room’s verandah, we find that the bells actually belong to 100 or so sheep, tended by a...
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Room with a view – a mountain view
“Dobro utro. Iskate li da tancuvame?” we say to the waiter in the Hilton Sofia breakfast room, having learnt a few phrases before arriving in the Bulgarian capital the night before. This is supposed by...
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365 days of pampering, come rain or come shine
Budapesters are well aware that the Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace is not just one of the city’s most magnificent hotels but one of the city’s most magnificent buildings, full stop. Four Seasons is...
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War and peaks
We knew a fellow, an Englishman in fact, who once, standing amidst the magnificent mountain scenery of Bad Hofgastein, Austria, uttered the scornful observation that “once you’ve seen one alp, you’ve...
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365 days of pampering, come rain or come shine
Four Seasons Hotel Ritz Lisbon Budapesters are well aware that the Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace is not just one of the city’s most magnificent hotels but one of the city’s most magnificent...
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Slovenia dreaming
In a blissful dream, we drive over the border to an enchanted land where we stay at a smart hotel in a charming castle. The castle is on a small and pleasant island inhabited only by slender...
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Hilton Hotels & Resorts for people with well-worn passports
Hilton at Resorts World Bimini Hilton Budapest is a city landmark with its uninterrupted and up-close Danube River views, but in the bigger picture it is just one of Hilton Hotels & Resorts’ more...
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Keeping company with national heroes
Corinthia Hotel St. George’s Bay north of Valletta When Admiral Lord Nelson’s famous Column in Trafalgar Square was refurbished and resurveyed in 2006, it was found to be 4.4 metres shorter than...
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From Casablanca to Kecskemét
Somehow the outside comes inside with you upon entering the hotel’s revolving door: five 10-metre palm trees in pots dominate the large lobby, water flows in two ornamental pools and birds flutter and...
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Bird, bard inspired businessman
Seagulls are flying outside the window of our eighth-floor hotel room. Nothing unusual in that, normally, but this is a Mövenpick hotel and this particular bird has a special place in the history of...
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Rising star in hotel sector
The receptionof the Hotel Riverside in Prague CPI Hotels is one of the largest hotel groups in the Czech Republic, with a portfolio of 27 hotels. It would have been a name largely unknown in Hungary...
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Reaching for the heights
Asked in 1923 why he wanted to climb the then-unconquered Everest – a considerably riskier prospect in those days – British mountaineer George Mallory offered the immortal retort, “Because it’s there”....
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