The Al Bustan Palace - a review

Picture from Google

Recently I stayed at the Al Bustan Palace and figured I'd write a little review for anyone considering a trip there.

The service in the hotel is great. I drove up to the front door of the hotel and before I knew it the doors were being opened to my car and the bags removed from the trunk - the pampering had begun! Walking into the main lobby, I was greeted by this sight:

Picture from Google

That is a pretty impressive chandelier! At check-in, we were then escorted all the way to our room and given some history on the hotel on the short walk. Once we got to the room, the man then showed us around the room and handed us our welcome pack. Two minutes later, the door bell rings and it's the bell-hop with the bags.

The room looked like this:

I didn't take any pictures of the bathroom, but one thing I do have to say here is the soap was great. I'm unashamed to say I took the complimentary soaps home with me - they were simply huge and really, really good!

All the usual stuff was there for a hotel of this stature, including a really nice cotton dressing gown :)

The balcony outside was pretty small, but served it's function really well:

And when I saw the view... well I had to go for a walk around the grounds to explore!

The blurb that came with our welcome pack boasted of a private 1 KM beach, I think that's a bit of an over-estimation but perhaps I'm wrong. I didnt take any pictures on the beach or around the pools because I didn't want to offend any of the other guests, but Google is my friend, and here's a picture of the fantastic infinity pool, and the beach:

After a nice walk around the hotel, I went back into my room to find a nice little gift waiting - a seriously delicious chocolate fudge cake. It was not finished... but it was really, REALLY nice! I'm not quite too sure why we got the cake, but free cake is free cake...

After an exhaustive cake-eating session, a swim was in order to cool down... so it was off to the main infinity pool for an hour or so's swimming. I found the pool was not really very deep, but I guess you don't need it to be deep if you're just swimming laps. Unfortunately my attempt to swimming laps soon devolved into a competition in who could do the best hand-stand in the water. After completing my first hand-stand (which I think was pretty good), the fountains in the pool started up. Naturally I figured that because of my outstanding hand-stand skills the pool was showing it's appreciation, but apparently it was just a case of fortunate timing!

Back up to the room to have a shower and get ready for dinner, and I saw that the room-staff had been in to the room again to turn down the bed. Complete with a Patchi chocolate as well. All this chocolate!

The rest of the stay was just as nice, but I'm not going to review the restaurants here.

I really enjoyed my stay, and I hope the pictures of the room are of use to some of you!

le fin.