Up on the 31st is part of the Hilton Hotel, and it’s as posh and swanky as you’d imagine it to be. Plenty of comfortable armchairs, where you can relax and have a cocktail. The furniture is as classy, the lighting as soft and perfectly ambient and the waiters as diligent and friendly as you’d expect from this international hotel. But they’re not the reasons you go there. Aptly named, up on the 31st is perched atop the towering Habtoor tower that houses the hotel and as such gives what must be the best vista of sprawling Beirut that it’s possible to find. Of course for this sort of opulence you do have to pay a bit more.
BY: JAMES HAINES-YOUNG