Word: hotelful
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...driver and I left the petroleum announcement and headed back toward the Hamra Hotel, we saw a dusty cloud rising deep in the neighborhood to our right. "Perhaps a mortar into the Green Zone," he suggested. We tried to find out but the phones were already jammed. We had almost arrived at the rear access road to the Hamra when the second bomb exploded, near the Babylon Hotel. We had driven by it just minutes before, and our car jumped. We sped closer to the rear checkpoint of the Hamra compound, where the security guards were already out in full...
...live and work near the Hamra Hotel compound, where many foreign journalists live and work. On Monday, my main assignments for the day were positively mundane: first, to get a plumber to fix the burst pipe at the office, and then head over to the oil ministry, where Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell were signing a 20-year deal to develop a supergiant Iraqi oil field. The agreement had been heralded as a cornerstone for the future of an Iraq safe enough for investors to unload tens of billions of dollars, perhaps one that would see Iraq surpass Saudi...
...Babylon, so we decided to make a fast break for the front entrance of the Hamra - not knowing we were headed toward danger. As we drove up to where we could see the front checkpoint, we arrived at the opening scenes of the third bombing of the day. Hotel guards were in a five-minute standoff they would lose, firing their AK-47s at a gunman on the other side of the checkpoint. My driver slammed on the brakes, put the car into reverse and wove around cars, people and concrete barriers, right up to the entrance of the hotel...
...BlackBerry fly out of my hand as the blast brought down much of the hotel ceiling all around us. Outside, dust was clogging the air, rising from the homes outside the Hamra, private residences that had crumbled into rubble. As the dust swelled we shuffled into the basement. Gunshots continued. I shielded my eyes to see a little girl, maybe 5 years old, bloodied in the face and moaning, being carried down the stairwell to an employee exit from the hotel. It was then I saw my hand covered in blood from the tiniest of cuts from flying glass. Guilt...
...thankfully there has also been wonderful preservation. Last year, Palm Springs' Riviera Hotel, psriviera.com, once the retreat of Sinatra's Rat Pack and other stars, reopened after a stunning multimillion-dollar renovation. The Ace Hotel, acehotel.com, an energetically revamped motel, also reopened in 2009 and has become one of Palm Springs' trendier hangouts. If chilling out by its poolside on Sunday afternoons to the sounds of a DJ counts as architectural tourism, you can be sure the pastime will have plenty of takers...