What I saw next took my breath away and I was grateful that I still had enough sight to appreciate it. I did know that the hotel was twenty‑one storeys high, but the scale of this building was visible from the inside as well as out. There was an absolutely cavernous atrium, extending to nearly the full height of the building. In the middle of this wide, open area there was a hollow column running from top to bottom. Around the outside of this column, four glass capsules slid smoothly up and down, ferrying people to the various floors. At each level, a walkway connected the lift column to the gallery running round the inner perimeter of the building. All the bedrooms and function rooms ran around the outside of the building and were accessible from the galleries. To add to the magica
