We’re sitting in the windowed gallery of the dining room, waiting for our cooked breakfast to come. I’m fascinated by all the tableware. Each piece of chinaware has on it the hotel’s emblem, a pattern with leaves. The cutlery is silver plated, as is the milk jug, and every item has the hotel emblem engraved on it, including the little butter knives. It’s a genteel traditional elegant western style, and as far as I can remember, the only other hotel I’ve ever stayed in with the same feel was the Imperial Hotel in Delhi. Yesterday we’d looked at all the memorabilia in the corridors and rooms - photos from bygone days with westerners in Edwardian dress, a row of seven or eight early twentieth century hotel buses, ballroom dancing in the banquet hall. There are entries
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