Tài Khoản Khách
ngày 2 tháng 10 năm 2024
These days Taj has been quite aggressively promoting their ten palace hotels. I, in fact, get an email almost twice a month. Out of the ten, Taj Usha Kiran Palace at Gwalior is closest to us and an easy drive away. Moreover, last time when we were at Gwalior (almost two years back), the property was closed down for renovation. This time when another Gwalior trip appeared in the horizon during the Independence Day long weekend, I wasted no time in booking a Palace Room. That was almost five months ahead and I think we managed a reasonably good rate. We were also celebrating our anniversary and both our kids were travelling. About 10 days before the trip, I noticed that our Palace room had been auto-upgraded to a Historical Suite. This was a pleasant surprise, as the property only had 3 such themed suites and now I was very curious to know their details. The webpage for the suites said little and so I tried to get in touch with their GM Tanika Taneja over email. She forwarded my email to Dhruv Chawla who signed as the duty manager. I guess he had no clue of this upgrade, so he mentioned something like it is “based on availability at check-in”! He also forwarded me the web link for their Historical suites when I asked for more information, which of course was of no use. We arrived at the hotel at about 11 AM after driving for 5 hours. There was an outer entrance to the palace where we were first stopped and got out of the car. They took our luggage for security checking. I then assumed that we will be perhaps taken to the front porch via some carriage as I had seen in some review. But no, the security guys promptly handed the keys back and we were to drive to the porch ourselves. This extra luggage screening stop thus made no sense. As we stopped near the fountain, no one was initially there. The welcoming drum was not beaten, nor the big horn blown but eventually as we waited an executive came down the stairs to take us inside. There was no proper valet here and we would be parking the car ourselves from here on. We were taken up the stairs to the lobby past the bust of Maharaja Jayaji Rao Scindia. At the lobby there was a significant presence of cops that day while the GM was there too, perhaps preparing for some Independence Day ceremony. However, no one greeted us for a while till Teresa Shaw appeared who introduced herself as the FoM. She mentioned how our allotted Maratha Suite was the most beloved of the three Historical Suites and that it also included a very nice sit-out. As the room got ready our hopes went high again and we followed the same executive who had greeted us at the porch. As we walked toward the room I asked her a bit about the history of the palace and all she could tell us was when it was built and who did it! The room no. 105, Maratha suite, was right there at the ground floor behind a large heavy-looking door accessible via an old-school key attached to a rather large metal key ring. The first
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