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The Mosul Hotel is not quite the bee's knees - the Oberoi and the Nineveh are the real top places, but we couldn't find either of them and it took a couple of hours of negotiation by my Information Ministry escort to secure three gloomy rooms in the Mosul.
The marble clad lobby looks down a grassy hillside to the Tigris. In the evening, it's alive with small children wandering around the central fountain, teenage girls whispering and teenage boys waiting for their fathers to allow them some action. Older men and women sit on the sofas around the edge of the lobby, smoking and drinking tea. There's a cavernous restaurant and an entertainment programme of big-name singers and musicians each evening at 9pm in the ballroom.
The rooms don't live up to the lobby - peeling wallpaper, grubby carpet and broken electric sockets. I wonder if we were given low-grade rooms reserved for bodyguards and delegations from the Information Ministry who turn up unannounced on the busiest day of the year without a reservation. Or maybe the rooms are just tatty.
A single room for one person is 6,000 dinars ($4.60) unless you're a non-resident foreigner, in which case it's $44 (57,200 dinars). Breakfast is included. |
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