Indiblogger meet is always fun and when they organised the first of it's kind, meet as Anup from Indiblogger informed, - a preview of hotel, in the same hotel, it was bound to be fun. And when it's for one of the most grand Hotel in Chennai, ITC Grand Chola, the seats were bound to fall short and the registration for the event were full even before half of the bloggers from Chennai got to know about it. It was good that Indiblogger increased at the last moment the number of seats from 70 to 75 and I got to be in the most beautiful event so far from Indiblogger "TreatsForTweets"....
But before I go further with the fun part of the event, let me give you some interesting facts about the most beautiful hotel in town.
A Sustainable Design:
Opened as the world's largest LEED-certified platinum (Highest in the category) green hotel, is 100 per cent powered by renewable energy. It recycles all its water and generates sustainable energy, through wind farms in Salem (Tamil Nadu – India), for the whole of its electricity needs.
The Architecture:
ITC Grand Chola is themed after traditional Hindu architecture of the Chola Dynasty. This architectural theme is reinforced with 462 pillars, most of them with hand-carved design work. The hotel has over 1 million square feet of marble with 57 varieties of the stone. The intricate stonework in the building was created by 4,000 artisans from Mamallapuram who worked on site.
The hotel is comprised of 600 rooms, which include 522 rooms and 78 serviced apartments. The hotel has a total of 10 food and beverage destinations, including the Peshawri, which serves cuisine from the Northwest Frontier, and The Royal Vega, a vegetarian restaurant. Others include Madras Pavilion, Cafe Mercara, Nutmeg, Cheroot Lounge, Pan Asian, Modo Mio, The Pub and Tranquebar. The Leisure facilities will include a 23,000-sq-ft Kaya Kalp Spa, outdoor pools, gyms for each of the three wings, and a shopping area.
Now coming back to the event... The huge hall, where the event was happening was stunning and the arrangement of seats gave us lots of room to move around. Now I could understand the reason for less number of people invited as the ITC Grand wanted to give us lots of room to move about and not to cramp our Indiblogging style...
This was proved to be true as later on Anup got us to make the biggest blogger train and chug along the whole hall...
The event started, right on time IST and we have had great presentations from GM and other dignitaries of ITC Grand and then it was time for our usual 60 seconds of fame..
This time atleast I got a chance to talk, unlike my last Indiblogger meet at Hyatt. Anyways, once every one has had his/her share of limelight, Anup got into his grove with clarion call of hurr... and pump-ed up the jam with getting every one to form a human train... Once every one has hitched on to it and settled, we were asked for a repeat performance of UN Chief - Ban Ki-Moon. Yes! do the gangnum style and here is the result...
But that was not the end of the story, for our master of ceremony - Anup. He dangled some great treats from the ITC Grand Team and masterfully guided us to one of the biggest musical chair that I have had ever seen....
My group was assigned smiling Ms. Neelam, who were thoroughly patient with our exhuberance and unceasing question and comments.
Here are some images from the tour...
The Haiku Gang...
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| A beautiful concept of iPad to control all your electrical and electronics in a well appointed room |
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| Iconic Egg Chair and a Haiku team member... |
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| Get.. Set.... Click |
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| Dashing... |
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| The perfect pose.... |
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| Souvik - our another host |
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| Juke Box - An interesting addition |
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| An exhaust traditionally hidden in a kollam/ rangoli like structure in one of the restaurants... |
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| I was thrilled to find this M F Hussain Painting from the Old Chola Sheraton - This is now valued at Rs 10 Million |
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| And the beautiful decor... |
... attentive to all our questions and queries.
Finally we were back to our hall and waiting for the results of our tweets... and the winner are ...
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| The Poonam Pandaya Gang.. |
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| Siraj |
Here I am signing off from our Team Haiku...
____________
Shashi
ॐ नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya
Did you guys go to roof top?
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