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| Executive Travel: Moscow |
Best Hotels
Elizabeth A. Crowley
12/01/2005
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The  Swissotel Krasnye Holmy, which opened last summer, is owned
by hotelier Raffles. Each of the 235 rooms in the 34-floor edifice comes with
high-speed Internet service. They also feature bathrooms with heated floors. The
hotel boasts the largest average room size in the city. The 19th floor houses an
open-air terrace and executive club lounge, which offers complimentary
breakfast, light snacks and beverages all day for guests in Swiss Business
Executive Club rooms and suites. A boardroom adjacent to the lounge seats eight
people.
Hotel amenities include a sauna, pool, exercise room, beauty salon
and private spa treatment rooms. The top-floor City Space Bar and Lounge boasts
stunning views of Moscow, perfect for gazing across the skyline from your
southeast vantage point as you sip a vodka martini.
Hotel Baltschug
Kempinski, positioned on the river across from the Kremlin’s church steeples and
the colorful onion domes of St. Basil’s, is an 1898 structure designed by
architect Alexander Ivanov in the neoclassical style. After several
incarnations, including a stint as a dormitory for the official state tourist
agency, Intourist, the Baltschug underwent extensive renovations between 1989
and 1992. Today it is owned by German hotelier Kempinski and has a business
center open 24 hours daily that rents computers and video cameras.
The
hotel’s namesake restaurant offers a Sunday linner, a feast that takes place
between lunch and dinner. Guests in the Kremlin or presidential suites can opt
for the Butler suite package, with a personal valet and a BMW sedan at their
disposal. The hotel’s saunas were built on the same ground that once housed the
municipal baths in which Ivan the Terrible’s bodyguards soaked.
Next
door to the Bolshoi Theater and facing the Kremlin is Le Royal Meridien
National. The hotel’s facade dates to 1902, when architect Ivanov designed the
221-room hotel in the eclectic style for 1 million rubles. The staff will remind
you that Vladimir Lenin occupied room 107 for a week in 1918.
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