NAIROBI SERENA HOTEL:

The Nairobi Serena is a quiet sanctuary in a flower-filled garden amid the noise and bustle of one of Africa's most dynamic cities. Shaded by jacaranda, bougainvillea and acacia trees, the hotel is a haven located just moments from the city's business centre and also from most of its attractions, including art and cultural institutions, shopping, nightlife and entertainment.

The Nairobi Serena Hotel has long been considered Nairobi's leading hotel for its standards of accommodation, food, service and amenities, and is a member of the Leading Hotels of the World. The elegantly designed bedrooms feature intricate timber works inspired by Pan-African designs and most have views of either Nairobi's skyline across Central Park or of acacia groves and lush gardens. The main restaurant, Mandhari offers some of Kenya's finest cuisine and the Maisha Health Club is the best in the country. The hotel also boasts up-to-date business services and exceptional conference facilities.

There are 183 air-conditioned bedrooms and seven suites, including the ultimately luxurious State Suite, and a whole range of different cuisines on offer ranging from Kenyan to Indian, Italian to Creole. Apart from its renowned health club, the hotel has a fantastic outdoor pool. Excursions on offer include game viewing at one of Serena Hotel's main Safari Lodges, visits to dance and cultural centres, and trips to the Great Rift Valley and the Lakes of Nakuru and Naivasha. For the business traveller, the hotel also offers full conference facilities and a business centre.

Rooms
All the comforts of home... Serenely elegant, essentially African and superbly equipped, the Nairobi Serena has the ultimate in room choices. All are appointed to the highest international standards and have been individually interior designed along pan-African themes.

Each room offers a 24-hour room service menu and is equipped with an electronic safe, air conditioner, mini-bar, hair-dryer, remote control TV (local channels, CNN, BBC, SKY, CFI, TV5, M-Net, SuperSport, MovieMagic) IDD telephone, Internet & E-mail connections. Mosquito nets are available on request.

Dining options:

Café Maghreb - a visual and culinary feast
Our relaxed and informal Moroccan-styled all-day café, which takes its inspiration from the Swahili word Maghreb meaning “west of the setting sun”, features a vibrant décor that reflects the jewel-hued stalls and bright-polished coffee pots of the Kasbah. As for the menu, it is international in style, reflects the best of eastern and western cuisine and features a globetrotting selection of themed menus throughout the week. It also allows for al fresco dining with views over the shimmering waters of the pool.

The Mandhari Experience (By Jane Barsby)
Lapis blue water shimmers over Moroccan mosaic while a loggia-shaded terrace tumbles wax-green creepers and trumpet blooms. Blurred outlines of trees suggest meandering park paths and beyond both rise the lilac-grey skyscrapers of down town dusk. You could be anywhere. But if you had to make the choice – it probably wouldn’t be the centre of Nairobi. Yet this is the terrace of the first-floor Mandhari Restaurant, the finest of the Serena Hotel Group’s restaurant line-up and the flagship of her culinary fleet. Here you can dine al fresco and by candlelight, whilst watching necklaces of headlamps thread the city’s arteries, lights switching off floor-by-floor in glittering office towers, and searchlight beams from incoming jets piercing the skies over Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

Inside the Mandhari Restaurant it’s a different landscape altogether. As you might expect given that the name means ‘landscape’ in Swahili. Here the entire length of one wall is taken up by a hand-carved fresco in all the soft coffee, cream and rose pinks of Kisii soapstone. It actually depicts the knuckle-dent outline and wooded slopes of Nairobi’s famous Ngong Hills but it could just as easily be a medieval frieze in a Tuscan monastery. Elsewhere there’s a draped and mirrored Bedouin tent for the intimacy of private dining and a wall of windows onto the balmy darkness of a Nairobi night. The effect, with candle glow lighting, lavish draped tables, stiff starched napery and the lush tinkle of a grand piano is civilised, chic and encouraging. The menu should make good reading.

Which it does, being both international eclectic and essentially Kenyan. Choices include, for starters, Carpaccio of Ostrich, Escargots Ravioli Tossed in Truffle Oil, Fettuccine in a Gorgonzola Sauce and Crab Chowder with Lemon Grass. The entrée choices are even harder to make and range from Saddle of Gazelle with Poached Pears to Fillet of Pork Coated in Chestnuts and served with a Tamarillo Sauce, with all manner of ingenious vegetarian options in between. As for the seafood, choose from Black Bass Baked with a Lemon Soufflé, a bewildering selection of seafood, lobster and big-game fish choices and some simple but luscious Jumbo Prawns that come sautéed in garlic and butter alongside a mound of aromatic rice with a side dish of al dente vegetables and fresh-cooked local spinach. ‘All that glitters is not gold’ when it comes to descriptive menus? True, but the Mandhari delivers on its promise and the ingredients are allowed to speak for themselves, being neither hidden behind sauce nor over presented in glaze, gratinée and garnish. As for the wines, the selection is slick and the service light-handed. And, in the unlikely event that you have any appetite left after sampling the best of the above there is also a daunting dessert trolley laden with chocolate seductions, fruit concoctions and torte to tempt the most rigorous of pudding refusers. Tempted? You should be, for the Mandhari is not only a class act, but also a hard one to follow.

NAIROBI:
What once was a remote railway outpost has become the largest city between Johannesburg and Cairo and is Kenya's capital city and the world's safari capital. It has long been the commercial centre of Eastern Africa and one of the world's cross-roads with its international airport servicing most of the world's airlines. Kenya's capital city has risen in a single century from a brackish uninhabited swampland to a thriving modern capital. Nairobi is a city that never seems to sleep. The entire town has a boundless energy, and is a thriving place where all of human life can be found. This is a place of great contrasts where race, tribe and origin all become facets of a unique Nairobi character. Some of the places to visit whilst in Nairobi include; the National Theatre, Phoenix Theatre, McMillan Memorial Library, Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Parliament Buildings, Nairobi National Park, the Snake Park, National Museum, Bomas of Kenya (for traditional dancing and tribal villages), Nairobi Races (horse racing on Sundays), and the National International Show (August/September/October). Nairobi also has several modern cinemas in the city centre and two drive-in cinemas.

The City Market on Muindi Mbingu Street is worth a visit if you are shopping for curios. Depending on how good your bartering is, you can get a good bargain be it soapstone carvings, wood carvings or other handicrafts. The city has not lost its sense of the past, with an excellent museum and the historical home of Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa open to visitors.

From the wildlife to the nightlife, Nairobi is a city unlike any other. With a fantastic music scene, excellent international restaurants and an endless and colourful array of shops and markets, there is plenty on offer for the visitor.