Chocolates on the Bed Table every night - Radisson is Doing it Doha Style

I stayed in the Radisson Blu, Doha for five days (four nights). Resident in Dubai, I was in Doha to do some product training for new staff and our dealers for next quarter launches. Rooms were really comfortable - I travel quite a bit in GCC and stay mostly in 4 and 5 star depending on the market we are going into so when I say comfortable I mean no unexpected things, cleanliness, right sort of pillows and a choice of a harder and softer pillow material, a good blanket for the weather at hand, soap, shampoo, towels provided - the basics, really. I Chose Radisson as one of our approved hotels in Doha, the company uses it for to accommodate all of us and it was booked by the travel agency we use - FMC Travel.

The breakfast was good. The omelette station was good. One thing - the omelette was still very hot when I tried to eat it - not the omelette's fault of course. I would say I am a bit jaded when it comes to considering the quality of hotel breakfasts because I eat a lot of them from various hotels in a year. And I'm sure many readers/guests may have same feelings about this. I can step by step remember what I took every morning because the offerings are so similar from Buffet to Buffet - bread table, take a bun and a tart, cheese table - seek out the brie and cut a good wedge, ignore the fruit due to my tendency towards acid re-flux. Pass the omelette table, greeting the omelette chef, but not ordering after burning my tongue on the first day - sorry my dear omelette chef sir. Put my bread tart and cheese plate down, and get approached by Filipina offering Coffee Tea of which I choose coffee and head to hot section of buffet and see: french toast and maple syrup, grilled half tomatoes, miso soup of all things, sauteed mushrooms, chicken sausages, beef sausages, chicken burger, beef bacon, baked beans in tomato sauce, hash brown, "foules medame" and scrambled eggs. Of all the hot dishes during the week the only one changing daily was the egg offering. One day scrambled eggs, another day sausage frittada, another day veg frittada. Again it was all good taste and all but I have become a little jaded with similar buffet offerings in so many of the GCC hotels.

Of the six bars, lounges and night clubs, I sampled two - the sports bar and Bubbles. Big big Kudos to the fit Russian singers in Bubbles and their live band really connecting with their audience and belting out Sharde "Smooth Operator" among a host of other cover songs, dancing up on the Mezzanine floor while I and other guests joined in heartily from the main floor appreciatively with head bobs, knee drumming, and tipsy sing along, toasting and applauding the lovely ladies upstairs, me downing Stella on tap and eating tender chicken fingers with dipping sauce as my supper. Nice way to let go of a day of training in Doha. Meantime, on another night in the sports bar, the name of which is Sherezad I sat with colleagues and discussed the done day while drinking Heineken on draft and eating chilly cheese fries - with curly fries instead of straight. Result was the dish was pretty salty. Also the combination is quite heavy and the portion quite big - I ended up sharing half of it with colleagues - went good with beer of course so no one complained too much of the saltiness.

I like Radisson for its heritage too. I have stayed there before back in 2006 so 11 years later it was nice to see that this anchor hotel is still going strong in Doha. Nice touch was the two chocolates every evening put by house keeping - a little thing like that was actually a really nice touch, I thought. Also when I took a branded pen from the room - it magically reappeared.... not all five stars do THAT anymore. Thanks for the pen(s) I'll do lots of advertising for you - I promise!
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