Air Conditioning

What you are seeing here is the main "meeting room" of the hotel. Now please remember, this is not a reconstruction of the hotel... we are actually standing inside the 200 year old building and seeing the results of six years of restoration. This "arabic room" is where traders would come in, remove their shoes, and drink arabic coffee and tea while discussing their trades. Many hundreds of trade decisions were reached over the last two centuries standing where we are when we took this picture.

This second photo is the open-air ceiling over the arabic room. In keeping with tradition, we were surprised to find that they kept the open-air idea. There's no glass in the ceiling here, so when it rains, guests get to become ONE with nature.