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Saturday, August 28, 2010

The Hotel des Milles Collines





We moved into the Milles Collines on Thursday, July 29. I was of a mixed mind about this. On the one hand, I couldn’t stand our room at the St. Paul. Perhaps if it had been clean, perhaps if the showers had worked, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps….

From the moment we arrived at the St. Paul, I was asking the Sister (not Linda, the nun who was in charge) if there was a room with an ensuite washroom available. She kept saying no. Originally I had asked her and she said if one came available, I could have it for the difference between the cost of our current room and the cost of the new room. That gave me reason to believe that a space would open up, but one never did. I will tell you this: if I ever went back to Rwanda, I would consider staying at the St. Paul, but only if I could have a room with a washroom in it. Then I would go to the Nakumat, buy a bucket and a pile of cleaning supplies, and I would clean that room to within an inch of its life. If I went with a friend, I would let the friend use my bathroom. The St. Paul is very inexpensive. The room that Linda and I had cost 8,000 Rwandan francs/night, which is about $15 per night. The room with the washroom was 20,000 rf, which is about $40/night. I think the Milles Collines is too expensive, almost $200 per night, and I have discussed this rate elsewhere in my blog.

We arrived back in Kigali from our stay at Butare and the waterless Centre Bethanie in Kibuye at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon on the 29th. We were originally going to go to the St. Paul and then get our stuff and go up to the Milles Collines, but luckily some people needed money and asked to be let off at the Nakumat so they could go to a foreign exchange so we got out there and strolled over to the Milles Collines.

It was a hot day (no surprise, being July in Africa, just three degrees south of the equator), and we were quite bushed after walking up the hill to get there. Even though the Milles Collines touches on the back of the property that the Nakumat and the Union Trade Centre sits on, you still have to go uphill to get to it. First you have to go downhill from the Nakumat to the traffic circle, then go right at the first arm (after the arm that the Nakumat is on) of the traffic circle and then go up the hill to the Milles Collines, and then it is still uphill through the Milles Collines parking lot to get to the hotel. Linda and I approached the desk and were happy to discover that the people who were working on the desk spoke English, even though we addressed them in French. It made the check-in so much easier. Linda explained that we had corresponded with them by email (actually it was Leslie, as I mentioned in a previous post), they gave us our room, and then we went upstairs to check it out.

Well. What a difference between the St. Paul and the Milles Collines. I nearly wept with joy. The room was clean, we had a balcony that overlooked a lovely pool and green gardens. It had air conditioning that could be adjusted to suit. We could see the traffic circle. We were not too far from our friends at the St. Paul.  The bed was comfy (sadly, we had to share a bed, and there was lots of space in the closets, but the piece de resistance was the bathroom: it was large and clean, it had a tub and shower, a sink in a large counter and a toilet. And it was just for us.

We went back down to head over to the St. Paul to get our stuff. As we were walking through the parking, one of the taxi drivers there asked if we needed a cab. We asked how much it would cost to go to the St. Paul, wait while we picked up our stuff, and then come back to the Milles Collines. He said 2000. We said ok. So off we went. I put my timer on as soon as we arrived at the St. Paul. We told the driver we would be ten minutes. In the ten minutes that we were there, we were able to throw all of our stuff into our large suitcases and get out. Luckily we had organized our stuff when we came back from the safari weekend. Even though we were leaving to go away for three days the very day after we returned, we took some time to organize, partly because we were considering going to the Milles Collines on the day we came back from the safari. We left our soccer equipment and school supplies behind because we knew we would be back at the St. Paul every day to meet the bus to go places.

Once we got back to the Milles Collines we put our clothes in the closet, and our toiletries in the bathroom, and we relaxed in the cool air conditioning. A little voice inside my head was giving me a bit of a hard time about it, but I managed to enjoy myself nonetheless.

Did I mention that breakfast was included? Because we are early risers, and because we had to be at the St. Paul in time to go off in the bus at 8:30 a.m,. we were at breakfast as soon as it opened for business at 6:30 a.m. And what a breakfast it was! I won’t go into detail about the breakfast at the St. Paul, except to say that I only ever ate one piece of pineapple in the four mornings I was there, and I was very much grateful for having had the foresight to bring a jar of peanut butter and a box of ryvita crackers because that makes a great breakfast. We also had good sized container of dried apricots and a similar container of roasted almonds to munch on. The St. Paul breakfast consisted of hot dog buns, coffee (or as one person from the trip last year called it on facebook “or whatever the hell that was”) hot water, tea bags, fresh fruit such as pineapple, and an omelet from time to time. I don’t eat omelets, so breakfast was kind of limited for me.

Let me tell you about the breakfast buffet at the Milles Collines. For starters it was in a gorgeous room that was open to the elements along one side, so it was like eating on a balcony. It had a great view of Kigali and all of its hills. For seconders, the décor was quite nice. Finally, the food was fantastic, plentiful, and organized in a logical way. The first station that you would encounter as you came in the door had fresh croissants, chocolate croissants (ok so the French and Belgian influence had some advantages), honey buns, plain buns, scones, little meat pies (I didn’t eat the meat pies), grilled pineapple spears and other fresh fruits. There was also a selection of fresh breads and cheeses and cold cuts at this station. Farther along you would come to the omelet station. Here you could have an omelet made to your own specifications: there were all sorts of ingredients that you could have added to your omelet, from cheese to onions to different kinds of veggies to meat.

Then there was the hot table, and under different covers you could find roast potatoes, cooked veggies (including that Rwandan favourite, spinach), waffles, pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs, cooked ham, etc.

Farther along still, there was the cereal and juice station. Here you could find any number of little boxes of cereal – the same cereal that you would get at home, but with different names: Frosted Flakes, for example, were called Frosties. There was granola here, and yogurt and four different types of fresh squeezed juices – mango juice, tangerine juice, pineapple and another juice that I was never able to identify.

We had attentive servers who brought us our tea and coffee every morning. There was a selection of jams, butter (not for me!) and marg on the table, and also some nutella. Linda snagged the jams and nutella on the first day and put them in her purse. We took them to the St. Paul with us and put them on the table for our chums to use, if they liked. People were grateful for the jams, and again, I felt a little guilty.

I was feeling a little awkward about leaving the St. Paul and I was hoping that no one would notice that we had left. That is not as far-fetched as it sounds. We could have been at the bus every morning, and we could have wandered off in the evenings, as many people did, and no one would have been any the wiser. No one was marking us present or absent in the evenings, and as long as we were at the bus on time everything would have been fine. Linda, however, told all sorts of people that we were moving, so most people knew. On the third morning we were there, the Sunday morning, I woke up feeling colossally guilty about it, so it was lucky that we were going to church that morning, and I was able to release a little of that guilt during the service. I was looking at the breakfast buffet, and as I forked a few spears of grilled pineapple onto my plate, and set them aside my fresh croissant, I actually felt pretty dreadful. I contemplated my guilt as I was pouring my tea out of a lovely china tea pot. But by then I had had a shower with warm water in a really clean bathroom, so I determined that my feelings were more of a kind of sorrow for my group mates. Lucky it didn’t last overly long, as I would have hated to become too maudlin at such a nice hotel. I would not have wanted to ruin such a good breakfast.

At any rate, because the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, people were asking us about the hotel. Rich suggested that he might go to the Milles Collines for one night or over to the Chez Lando, which is a nice hotel, but on the other side of town. Some people actually did make the move. Graham and Jeff, who roomed together at the St. Paul came over on Monday and got separate rooms, and Colleen and Daniel, a married couple on the trip came over to the Milles Collines also came on Monday. They spent two nights at the hotel. Apart from the fact that Colleen and Daniel had a mosquito in their room, everyone enjoyed it very much. On the last night, the Tuesday night, Tina Ford and Darla came to the Milles Collines. Graham managed to finagle a great room rate for all of the newcomers, but despite his best efforts, the hotel refused to budge on the price that they gave Linda and I, which was about 50 Euros/night more than the others paid, which cheesed me off. For the last two mornings that we were at the Mille Collines we had a big group (six of us on Tuesday morning and eight on Wednesday morning) for brekkie, and it was really quite pleasant.

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