Reviewed: Miraflores Park Hotel, Lima

The rooftop pool at Miraflores Park Hotel

Miraflores Park Hotel

Seven-foot-tall glossy covers of Vogue magazine and glamorous offerings by acclaimed Peruvian designers line the polished lobby of the Miraflores Park Hotel: it’s two days until Lima’s Fashion Week, and this is the venue for Vogue’s prestigious party.

Miraflores Park Hotel in Lima
Miraflores Park Hotel

And why wouldn’t it be? Residing in the capital of Peru's trendy Miraflores district, observing the wide expanse of hazy ocean from a cliff-top position, the Miraflores Park Hotel couldn’t be better placed.

A few yards away, cut into the cliff-side, a shopping mall stuffed with boutique stores, cafés and restaurants bubbles away late into the evening. Above it, a leafy park is alive with family picnics and strolling couples, and bobbing in the water below, a large shoal of surfers are anticipating their next wave. This is Lima at its most alluring.

While holidaymakers find ample activity in easy reach, the Miraflores Park Hotel is also extremely well-suited to business travellers: sleek, spotless and running like clockwork, it has meeting facilities and a fully equipped business centre complete with translation and secretarial services.

Post-meeting drinks can be conducted in the cosy Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde bar on the ground floor, and fine dining is nearby in the adjacent Mesa 18 restaurant. This stylish eatery fuses traditional Peruvian flavours with contemporary dining, and encompasses a classic restaurant decked in white and black, as well as a plant-strewn and heated outside seating area.

Filling up on bread before you’ve even ordered is the main danger – the dark-grained walnut rolls are particularly moreish. Seared slices of tuna with fava beans and yellow chilli make for a light and refreshing starter, while the gelatinous marigold-marinated salmon chunks offer something a little different, if a little sweet for some.

Mesa 18 restaurant at Miraflores Park Hotel
Miraflores Park Hotel

Unless staying in one of the most expensive suites, the rooms at the Miraflores Park Hotel aren’t particularly remarkable – perhaps lacking the wow-factor typically associated with other Orient Express hotels – but there is certainly nothing to complain about. A filled fruit bowl is a nice touch, and there are the requisite flat-screen TV, king-sized bed and rain-head shower to enjoy.

Upgrading to a junior or presidential suite will reward you with the likes of in-room spa baths or saunas, first-rate views, and even an outside terrace with a private plunge pool.

But for those with a standard room key-card, it is the top floor of the hotel that impresses most. Here, guests delve into a generous breakfast buffet in the glass-walled Observatory restaurant (take care though, as during our stay two people walked straight into the spotlessly polished glass doors). With the city stretching out to your right, and the ocean to your left, this is a lovely spot on a sunny Lima morning – made all the more enjoyable by the mounds of bakery-fresh pains au chocolat and fresh fruit.

The luxurious presidential suite
Miraflores Park Hotel

Sharing the rooftop with the Observatory is a pool that would surely be deemed fantastic in anyone’s reckoning: deep and spacious with breathtaking city and sea views, this is the kind of pool you’d expect to find adoring rolling hotel grounds, not perched atop a building.

Those able to peel themselves away from the water and the surrounding cushioned sunloungers can work off over-indulgence in a fully equipped gym, and reward themselves with such pampering treats as a 90-minute Peruvian heated stone massage in the onsite Zest Spa. But nip back outside in time for sundown – watching the sun dip behind the ocean from the best pool in town is a real treat.

Miraflores Park Hotel Avenida Malecón de la Reserva 1035 Miraflores, Lima 18, Perú Tel: +51 (01) 610 4000 www.miraflorespark.com Double from £175 per night.