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Helwan, the Week-end Resort of Cairo 349
New Hehvan has, however, a very charming hotel, the
Al-Hayat, run on rather ncwh"nes,and constructed, regardless
of cost, by a grateful Russian baron, whose son was cured
here.
Sunset over the Pyramid Field is one of the great assets of
Helw^n, and the Al-Hayat is built, to take full advantage
of this, on the highest point of the town. It has charming
terraces to capture the view, and gardens to escape the
wind—always a thing to be reckoned with in the desert.
They are still in the making, and therefore improve almost
month by month.
The hotel is built in rather a quaint, if not intelligible
Oriental fashion, and about the most pleasantly furnished of
any hotel I have been in. Its rooms are like luxurious rooms
in a private house. There are plenty of baths, but the
installation of hot water left something to be desired when we
were there : and the height of the hotel is very fatiguing,
because the lift does not take you all the way up ; and you
are always losing the way to your bedroom, because there
are so many different staircases and passages.
To make up for this it is easy to get away from people, if
you want to be alone to read or write, and the restaurant is
admirable. The food seemed to me more recherche, the
menu more varied and original than in most Egyptian hotels.
You felt as if you were dining in a first-class London club.
The Tewfikieh Palace, another of the hotels, was a palace
of the Khedive Tewfik, and has therefore a charming Oriental
air about it. But its position down on the flat by the race-
course and golf-links seemed to me much inferior to that
of Al-Hayat for any one except a golfer, since no place, not
even Helwan, races every day. For golfers, of course, it is
very charming to be able to step right out of your hotel on
to the links, especially such sporting and novel links as those
of Helwan.
The other large hotel, the Grand Hotel, is run by the
George Nungovitch Company, and claims to be the first-class
hotel of Helwan. But I cannot see that it has any advantage
over Al-Hayat, except that you are with the crowd of the