Breakfast is served each morning around one of the 2 swimming pools
During our time in Nairobi, we stayed at the Holiday Inn. This used to be the Mayfair Court hotel, which enjoyed it’s early heyday in 1940’s colonial Kenya.
The hotel, now owned by the Holiday Inn group, is unlike your ‘typical’ Holiday Inn city hotel (as you can see by the photo’s) and has been refurbished and renovated over the years, yet it still manages to capture the charm of a bygone era. The bedrooms and main hotel areas are all set in & amongst lush, tropical gardens.
The hotel, now owned by the Holiday Inn group, is unlike your ‘typical’ Holiday Inn city hotel (as you can see by the photo’s) and has been refurbished and renovated over the years, yet it still manages to capture the charm of a bygone era. The bedrooms and main hotel areas are all set in & amongst lush, tropical gardens.
The covered walkways between the main hotel areas & the bedrooms all weave through the lush gardens It is a great family friendly hotel, located away from the city centre yet close to a selection of shopping centres and restaurants in a cool, leafy party of the city. The rooms are spacious and equipped with everything you would need for a comfortable stay & it also has 2 in-house restaurants, curio shops, a business centre, 2 swimming pools, gym and a hair & beauty salon. The hotel staff are exceptionally warm, friendly and helpful which can actually be said of all the local Kenyan people.
The hotel has a Koi pond which is also home to a tiny turtle !
One of the main attractions for us (since becoming parents, that is !) is the in-house “Spur” steak house restaurant. “Spur” is a South African franchise and serves really great food – aside from the usual steaks, seafood, salads, soups, chicken etc they also serve a large selection of Mexican food which I always opt for as it’s not something I’d usually make at home & hubby always goes for the steaks or burgers and of course they have a great kiddies menu, too. This particular Spur has both an outdoor & indoor kiddies play area – a huge novelty for my daughter as these are unheard of in our part of Tanzania.
The gardens are lush & tropical. Nairobi can get very hot in Summer, & can sometimes feel a bit humid, too.
The hairdressing & beauty salon is where we all go and have our hair cut during our stay. I usually treat myself to a few other things, too – this time I had a 2 hour pampering session along with a manicure and pedicure whilst hubby looked after our daughter (“You can order a milkshake from room service !”) with colouring books and TV in the room. After 2 hours though, he appeared in the salon (looking slightly ruffled !) with our daughter at his side, saying that she was really desperate to see me, and would I be much longer ?!
This was the view from our bedroom - looking out over the Koi pond & beautiful gardensSo - that’s the Holiday Inn Nairobi for you. I hope this blog post doesn’t read too much like one of those travel reviews (!!) but seeing as I get quite a few visitors via Google who are searching for info on travel/hotels/food in East Africa, I thought that putting it all down might be helpful to prospective visitors, too ;)
(Thanks to everyone for all the emails you've been sending me, my Inbox is overflowing with over 100 emails at the moment - not all blog related ! - I promise to get around to replying to everyone during the course of the week).
