travelswithalice

September 05, 2012

Revisiting the Grand Hyatt HK

We arrive at the Grand Hyatt in Hong Kong late in the evening, just off a16-hour flight from New York.

First order of business, Moët at the Grand Club. It's great to be back after a week at the NY Hilton where the lounge is like a diner at breakfast and a sad sad place at night.

In the morning, I wake up, unaccustomed to a beautiful break of day. Jet lag has its benefits.

Lunch with Stuart at the Grand Cafe. For me, fish fillets and rice noodles with coriander and ginger, in a bowl of steaming fragrant flavorful broth. For Stuart, wholewheat spaghetti with eggplant sauce, which he wolfs down with utter delight before rushing off to see Kitty at Kow Hoo to order a new pair of shoes.

At the Grand Club again, waiting to go to the airport for my flight to Manila.

The lounge is luxuriously quiet. I watch the various watercraft plying Victoria Harbour: a Star ferry to Kowloon, another ferry leaving the Wan Chai jetty, lots of small boats, tugs, barges, floating cranes. I'm glad I'm here now while the harbor is still wide enough to accommodate all this traffic.

I avert my eyes from the ugly reclamation sites and try not to think of a future when this beautiful waterway would have been reclaimed and redeveloped out of existence, shrunken into a river and of no use to anybody.

Scott brings me a macchiato and stops to chat. He's thinking of bringing his family for a holiday in New York but his friends tell him his son would probably enjoy California more.

Scott runs the lounge with near-military precision.

Hotels are mostly only places to stay on one's travels. There are hotels though that manage to be more than that- they become home. For the past eight years, the Grand Hyatt has been our home in Hong Kong. And the Grand Club has been my living room. It's where I read, wrote, chatted on the phone, entertained friends, and most especially, just lazed. Under the benevolent, warm, friendly care of the good people of the lounge, especially and for the longest continuous period, throughout all those eight years, Scott and Maggie.