Take the vintage elevator up to view it from the top. Even if you don’t stay in the palace wing, you’ll have to make a point of checking out the grand stairwell at the center, with its wrought-iron balustrades and sky-blue cupola. We were in an eclectically decorated three-room suite in the palace, directly overlooking the Gateway arch-a magical view, as you watch the sun set on the Arabian Sea beyond it. At the high end there are some fascinatingly quirky ones, including the Ravi Shankar suite, decorated with photos of the Beatles in India: George Harrison took lessons from the sitar master here. Every room is decorated differently, drawing from Mogul, European, and Anglo-Indian styles.
How about the rooms? There are 55 rooms and suites between the recently refurbished old palace building and a modern tower wing (stay in the palace if you can!). But some parts of the hotel are off-limits to non-guests, so you quickly leave the bustle of the lobby behind. Because the Taj is such a landmark, there are tourists and locals who come and go from the hotel’s restaurants, shops, and bars, as well as the daily Heritage Walks around the property.
What's the crowd like there? Well-heeled internationals and well-to-do Indian families. (Security is extra tight, as the Taj was the site of a terrorist bombing in 2008.) You enter the sumptuous lobby, with its clusters of seating warmed by the glow from blood-orange silk lampshades, carried forward on the delicious scent of florals and spices-the signature Taj fragrance that’s piped into all the public spaces (I meant to ask if I could buy a bottle it was that bewitching). When your taxi pulls up through the throngs of families and tourists who choke the roads near the Gateway to India arch and you’re ceremoniously welcomed by doormen in traditional silk kurtas, you have that pinch me feeling of Wow, I’m really staying here? You’re in good company, as everyone from George Bernard Shaw to Barack Obama has spent the night here too. First impressions? First, you take in the outside: The Taj Mahal Palace is a 1903, gray-and-white stone, red-domed wedding cake of a building that stands over Mumbai’s harbor.
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