Hotel Review: UAE: Park Hyatt Dubai

Alluring by Day, Dazzling by Night — In a city swimming in flash and pizzazz hotels, the Park Hyatt Dubai need not scream: poised along the city's river-like creek, and nudging the city's exclusive Dubai Creek Golf and Yacht Club, this whispering seductress easily beckons those who want style without neon, class without brash, fun without the frat boys yukking it up. The Arabesque hideaway of blue domes and white cubes and palm-shaded pools stands out as the place to not see and be seen — or perhaps we should say the places. Because the Park Hyatt, darling of discriminating locals and savvy out-of-towners alike, feels like two.

From first cup of coffee on pier-hugging terrace, the day here gleams with soft light — falling on bone-white buildings, catching on sunbleached sails, streaming through key hole arches and colored angles of Moroccan glass, beaming through flower-threaded lattices and dancing atop glistening tile domes. While the sports-minded may be pulled towards the city's premiere greens next door, hours may be whiled away lounging about amid elegance which envelopes like a soft shawl as one gazes out at the waterway's "traffic" of wooden dhows, nibbling on the layers of honeyed, nut-studded delectables served up with high tea, and literally drinking in the air – subtly scented with an intoxicating wood, spice and vanilla fragrance custom-made by Paris perfumeur Blaise Mautin exclusively for here. Before day disappears, one must slip off to Amara, a hideaway within the hideaway: every treatment room in this chic boutique spa boasts private garden, where one can escape to the tranquil shaded terrace for an outdoor rain shower under the sun – after a Shiffa rubdown with organic oils from sapphires and balm from a thousand crushed damascene roses; best to book well ahead, as this is one of the few places for Shiffa treatments, the doctor-designed line so naturally addictive it's sweeping the Gulf.

As dusk adds a violet hue to sleek white-wrapped guest rooms, one sets off to discover a whole different hotel, this one glowing, layered in warm shadows, and shimmering with flickering candles, lining even the halls — lending a sense not of a frenzied urban hotel, but one own's romantic private club. Toss back aphrodisiacs, such as freshly-shucked oysters, under the dramatic canopies of the waterside balcony where Dubai twinkles like an Arabic Manhattan, and only a few steps away, you can delve into the full gourmand experience under the soft swirls of color in French-influenced Traiteur, a split level paradise (with see-through wine cellar towering above), that's a sensual treat whether savoring grilled fish, meat or fowl so tender it falls off bones. Scents of fragrant lemon grass and basil float through the window-wrapped Thai Kitchen, in Café Arabesque kebabs sizzle from glowing coals, after dinner drinks beckon from the lanterned arches of the Lounge. As shadows grow longer and inky darkness pours down from the skies, wander back through the flickering lanyrinth of halls to sink into a bath in the round designer tub (only one stylish touch of the glass-lined bathroom of space-age shower, stone counters and porcelain sinks) – and enveloped again in the haunting scent of Blaise Mautin (captured in bubble bath, soaps and creams), drift off to float-away bed. Upon awakening the next morning, with soft light streaming in and the birds singing from water's edge belying the fact that you're actually in a city, the smell of fresh coffee from the terrace calls one to explore yet again the hotel by day, a setting just as fetching, but so different that one may wonder if you just dreamed the hotel by night.