The reason we went to Zimbabwe instead of Zambia for our trip to view the Victoria Falls, was because I absolutely insisted on staying in the Victoria Falls Hotel, also known as “the grand old lady of the Falls”. It’s a five-star Edwardian style hotel built in 1904 and evokes all the best memories of the colonialist era without any of the racist stigma linked to that time period.
Gareth and I slept in a huge four-poster bed, where room service served us our morning tea on a silver platter. During the day we wandered the halls, investigating little nooks and crannies, finding comfy chairs and bookcases hidden in unexpected places, admiring the framed pictures of bygone days and peering into open rooms to see if they were just as nice as ours was. We spent hours sitting in the Bulawayo room, just reading a book and soaking up the ambiance in the company of portraits of such well-known South African personalities as Paul Kruger and Barney Barnato. We had high tea on the veranda in the afternoon while watching warthogs frolicking on the perfectly manicured lawn, the spray from the Falls just visible in the distance, and at night, when the lights go out and the stars twinkle from the clear African sky, we sipped cocktails in the Stanley room and dressed up in our best evening wear for a six-course meal in the Livingstone room.
To say I loved our two-night stay there is probably the understatement of the year.
Click here for more posts in the African Adventure 2011 series. Labels: Africa, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
