Rosewood Hotel Georgia 1927 Lounge Dining Room VancouverRosewood Hotel Georgia
It’s the final morning of a quick trip to British Columbia and it dawns on me that I have to check out of Vancouver’s Rosewood Hotel Georgia later that day but still haven’t taken a bath. It is my personal policy that if my accommodations include a soaker tub, I have an obligation to use it.
Most people take evening soaks to release the tensions of the day. I am here to tell you there is nobody stopping you from drawing a bath for yourself before you’ve even had breakfast. As hundreds of commuters just a few dozen feet below scurry down the sidewalk to their offices, I fill up the tub, shake a generous amount of citrusy bath salts into the steaming water, load up a heart-wrenching drama on my laptop and have the most therapeutic sob and soak. I’d wisely turned on the heating element in the marble floors before I got in. This is the height of luxury.
Why you should visit
The historic Hotel Georgia has had many lives in its 97-year history and this current one, following a major renovation earlier this year, might be its most elegant. The hotel came under the ownership of the Rosewood Hotels and Resorts in 2011 and the room count was slashed in half to build expansive luxury suites and create “the perfect romance getaway spot,” says Paul Li, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing. This year it closed for a further upgrade to the whole facility.
The focal point of the suites are the bathrooms: Mine took up almost half the square footage, with a vanity flanking each side of the space as well as a spacious shower, roomy bath tub and an opaque glass-walled water closet.
The hotel is so centrally located that it’s an obvious choice for guests exploring the city, but with its soothing palette of grey with jewel-toned accents, herringbone hardwood floor and that sprawling bathroom, the suite could also be a glamorous cocoon in which to hide away.
The focal point of the renovated rooms is the luxurious bathrooms complete with soaker tub.The Rosewood Hotel Georgia
The refurbished lobby has the traditional, timeless aesthetic favoured by a lot of historic luxury hotels: heavy on the marble, gleaming restored millwork, neutral seating comfortable enough to sink into for a few hours. During my mid-November stay, the grand fireplace cast an inviting glow as staff hung up garlands of pine and shiny gold and cranberry ornaments while guests huddled together chatting boisterously. It was warm, cheery, but a bit too loud for me. And so after breakfast on my final day, I got on the elevator and rode up a few levels to an oasis of silence.
The test of a good spa is that when you exit a treatment room, you should be completely disoriented. You should be so blissed out by the treatment, darkness and ethereal spa music, that you don’t know what time it is, where you are or what it looks like outside. This was my experience after my two-hour Tides treatment at Sense spa. And after being exfoliated with “salts of the earth and sea” and seaweed extract and then wrapped in algae and glacial clay, my skin was so radiant and baby-smooth I felt worthy of a blue ribbon at an agricultural fair.
Room for improvement
The suites are tasteful and elegantly appointed.Rosewood Hotel Georgia
The hotel is tricked out with a lot of brilliant tech integrations: Bluetooth Sonos speakers in each room, and lights at foot level set to motion-sensors so you can make middle of the night trips to the bathroom without fumbling to turn on a lamp. Unfortunately, the tech I most wanted to work – the wireless charging pad built into the nightstand – did not. I placed my phone every which way on it, removed it from its case and it would not charge. There were no accessible electrical outlets by my bed so I had to leave my phone on the other side of the room to charge it.
Part of the renovation earlier this year was to the 1927 Lounge restaurant in the lobby, where I ate my first night surrounded by clusters of office workers enjoying after-work dinner and drinks. The server-recommended Wagyu beef dumplings and the octopus served over a poblano cream sauce were too rich, too greasy and after eating both, I desperately wished for something green and acidic to cleanse my palate. There wasn’t a single salad on the menu. I chased my heavy meal with what I hoped would be a refreshingly citrusy lemon entremet, but it was so cloyingly sweet that I – a dessert fiend – pushed it away after just a few bites. Given how acclaimed Hawksworth Restaurant – the fine-dining restaurant on site – is (it was just named the best hotel restaurant on the continent by the World Culinary Awards), I was surprised by the mediocrity of the meal at 1927 Lounge.
Since you’re in the neighbourhood
Some will tell you you need to trek out to Gastown, Little Italy or the East Side to find a good bakery but just around the corner from the Rosewood Hotel Georgia is perhaps one of the best purveyors of viennoiseries in the city: Beaucoup Bakery on Dunsmuir Street. Any one of their pastries (my favourite was the ham and cheese croissant) paired with a cortado makes for a simple, decadent breakfast. Then head over to the nearby Vancouver Art Gallery for the stunning colonialism-themed exhibit by New York painter Firelei Báez, on until mid-March.
The take away
The best parts of the Rosewood Hotel Georgia are the ones where the sights, sounds and smells of the outside world are blocked out: Whether you’re holed away in your suite cycling between the king-sized bed and the tub or zoning out in the spa, letting someone slather your limbs with glacial clay.
A friend, who grew up in Vancouver, summed it up well in a text she sent the evening I arrived. She told me she hoped it wasn’t raining but then added that it didn’t matter – I was staying at the Hotel Georgia.
Rosewood Hotel Georgia, 801 West Georgia St., Superior King rooms start at $763 a night. rosewoodhotels.com
The writer was a guest of the hotel. It did not review or approve the story before publication.
