Migratory Musings: Asian Adventure: Fairmont Peace Hotel, Shanghai

Fairmont Peace Hotel by night

Originally known as Sassoon House, it was built by Sir Victor Sassoon in the late 1920s and thus has wonderful art deco appointments. From 2007-2010 it was closed as the Fairmont hotel chain took over and renovated the building and they did quite a lovely job.

Lobby

The doors and surrounding woodwork on the ground floor are a very dark brown but this makes a nice contrast to the soft yellow light that reflects off the glass and marble surfaces.

Main Front Door

Once you pass the alcove with the front desk you enter an atrium with a vaulted glass ceiling.

Looking from the front desk alcove (at right) into the atrium

The atrium with its beautiful glass vaulted ceiling

The glass vaulted ceiling

And on the walls are these huge tin scenes of the surrounding area, which is called the Bund. The term "Bund" means an embankment, levee or dam. It comes from a Persian word through Hindustani and the word may very well have been brought to Asia by immigrating Jews from Baghdad, like the Sassoon family. Locally the Bund is a waterfront area on the Huangpu River, which is just across the street from the hotel. In the photo below the Fairmont Peace Hotel is the tall building with a pyramid top. To give an idea of the size of this art piece, I'd guess the top of the frame is at least 8 feet above the ground.

The giant tin art piece. The Fairmont Peace is on the right side with the pyramid roof.

To get an idea of how elegant the hotel is, here are some shots of a couple of ground-level hallways.

Ground Floor Wing leading to the back door

Ground Floor Wing leading to the elevators

I imagine that when restoring a building like this there is a lot of discussion about what to modernize and what to keep the same. While there were several elevators, they were all quite small and not particularly fast. The bellmen had to wait for an empty car because there was no way to get more than one other person in the elevator beside the bellman and his cart.

Guest Floor Hallways

Exiting the elevators on the guest floors, you stepped into an elevator lobby with soft lighting and thick carpets that cushioned every step between the elevators and the hallways. The carpet was so thick that if you had a four-wheeled piece of luggage that you could normally walk beside, you had to drag it behind you on this carpet.

Second Floor Elevator Lobby

A waiting area was directly across the hall from the elevator lobby.

Second Floor waiting area

The hotel itself is in sort of an A-shape though with an extra "crossbeam". The elevators are in the shorter crossbeam.

Hotel Layout

To reach my particular room I turned right out of the elevator lobby and then right again down the hall.

Guest Floor Hallway

Fairmont Guest Room

As we walked down the hall to our room I noticed that there were roughly twice as many doors on one side of the hall as the other though I didn't think about what that might mean. But once we stepped into the room and later as I looked at the hotel map above I realized that while our room wasn't classified as a suite it might as well have been. I suspect that before the 2010 renovation our room was actually two smaller rooms and that since the view was of the inside courtyard someone wisely decided to combine two rooms into a single unit to make up for the lack of a view.

When first stepping inside, we were in a little foyer between the bedroom and the bathroom. There was a cabinet with a coffee machine and the whole coffee/tea setup as well as a mini-fridge.

Foyer Cabinet with Coffee Machine

Coffee/Tea Service and Mini-Fridge

On the left was a pocket door that led to the giant bathroom. I think this bathroom is larger than my master bedroom at home! Stepping inside, the first door on the left is the toilet.

Toilet room and Bath Robes

And the other door houses the walk-in shower. I was prepared to be a little disappointed in the shower based on our other hotels. This one had a hand-held nozzle that couldn't be adjusted all that high up. The other option was the rainfall shower head and I'm not a huge fan of those as they usually provide a gentle rain and not a downpour. I'll happily admit that I was wrong here. This was the best rainfall shower I've ever had, period. You've also heard me complain about nowhere to prop my leg to shave but there was a bench in this shower as well. If I ever design my own bathroom, the shower will be modeled on this!

My favorite hotel shower, ever

Across the far wall of the bathroom were two large sinks each with plenty of counter space on top and storage below. It seems I failed to get a photo of that but in the picture below you can see one of the sinks at the side and reflected in the mirror. At the far end of the bathroom was a large soaking tub. In the bottom of the photo below you can see a bit of the gold chaise longue that was against the wall. The photo is taken from where the pocket door from the foyer opened and on the far side of the chaise you can see the doorway where a second pocket door opened into the closet.

The toiletries were by Le Labo.

The closet was also quite large with a luggage rack, clothes rack, shelves for shoes and the safe. On the other side of the closet was this small dressing table with the hair dryer in the box.

Closet with shelves and the safe

Dressing Table in the closet

The closet had a pocket door on the other side that led into the bedroom area. After the twin cots on the boat, these two queen beds felt like heaven. Although there was only the one nightstand between the two beds, at least it had several electrical outlets on it.

Fluffy queen beds

In the corner of the room was a desk which had several more electrical outlets. And we enjoyed being able to relax on the sofa instead of sitting on the bed.

Sofa and desk

Between the two sets of pocket doors in the bedroom was the entertainment center.

Entertainment center (left) and looking through the closet into the bathroom

While not everyone in our group got these rooms, even the "regular" Deluxe Rooms were larger than the other hotels and they had actual views!

The Area

As mentioned above the hotel is located across the street from The Bund, which is on the Huangpu River. Across the river are many office towers and at night these buildings were lit up in a spectacular way, just as we'd seen in other cities.

The Bund by day...

...and by night

Our first night we wanted to visit the Bund, which meant we needed to step out of the hotel and turn left. But the pedestrian traffic was so thick we just went with the flow and turned right, following the crowd down to a street corner where we could cross over and go with the flow on the other side of the street. Despite the fact that it was a Sunday night there were people everywhere and there were sections of the street closed to motor traffic. I guess when you consider that there are 24 million people in the Greater Shanghai area just a small fraction of those folks can make an area seem busy in a hurry!

Lounge

Like many hotel chains, Fairmont has a loyalty program and they call theirs the President's Club. I'm not sure what a premium membership in that club is supposed to offer - or if I was in the right spot or not - but the signs indicated that this was the lounge and it wasn't impressive in the middle of the afternoon. Granted this was not at a meal time when food may have been set up but it seemed to be little more than a quiet place to sit and read or work. There were a couple of staff members around but they didn't seem to mind me taking pictures.

Fairmont Peace Hotel Lounge

Peace Hall

I happened to find the Peace Hall which seems to be a ballroom or banquet hall. I'd guess they were setting up for a wedding.

The Peace Hall getting all set up

Spa/Pool/Gym

The lobby of this area was quite relaxing. The spa is open from 10 AM to 11 PM, which I thought was terrific.

Spa Lobby

While the pool is small, at least they put in a skylight to allow natural light.

Small pool but nice skylight

There were a couple of different fitness areas. One looked to be for yoga or stretching.

Yoga room

The other room had cardio and weight machines.

Treadmill and bikes

Treadmills

Elliptical trainers and a universal machine

Hand weights and benches

Weight machines

The breakfast buffet was not as extensive as at some of the other hotels but there was plenty to eat.

The Art Deco is just so cool and I really loved seeing it. As usual I had trouble getting the room cool enough. We'd set the thermostat all the way down but I never got cold.

But the shower! I'd stay here again for that alone!

Migratory Musings

Friday, July 27, 2018

Asian Adventure: Fairmont Peace Hotel, Shanghai