Hotel Salam

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If you can snaffle one of the rooms on the upper floors, especially one that faces south towards the Niger River, you'll discover a unique perspective on this low-slung city whose delightful location between river and hills is only apparent from above. In addition to the excellent rooms, you'll find on the sprawling premises numerous gift shops, a swimming pool, tennis courts, bars and restaurants.

If you get up early enough, you may even be able to beat the rest of Bamako to an English-language newspaper or magazine (eg, International Herald Tribune or Newsweek ) which are scarce as gold dust in this resolutely Francophone city. Service is also professional. In short, there's everything here that you need (and probably many things that you don't