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Thursday, April 21, 2016

The Bengal Lounge


As part of the makeover of Victoria's iconic Empress Hotel, they are retiring the Bengal Lounge. It will only be open for a short while longer so I was happy when family members suggested we have lunch there yesterday. I am sad to see the lounge disappear as it reflected an historical period well and was a great place to relax with friends and have a few drinks and some good food. The ambience was the colonial period known as "The Raj" when the British Empire was at its peak and the Queen Victoria was empress in fact, one of her titles being Empress of India. The Bengal lounge had some nice authentic touches, from the tiger skin over the fireplace to the punkah on the ceiling (visible in the photo - it's the odd shaped object hanging from the ceiling on the right side of the photo.)

3 comments:

JoJo said...

I remember Dr. Smith in Lost in Space referencing his punkah that he made Robot move to fan him off. lol It's too bad this lounge is closing. I can't believe they would retire such a great piece of history.

William Kendall said...

A beautiful space. Rather sad to see it go.

Sheila said...

Thanks for this, hope to be back one last time before it closes....good memories from the 60's and 70's...great photo!