Turkey Travel Guide
Tags: NYT Reviews / Istanbul Hotels / Boutique Hotels / → All Tags
The NYT Wants You to Get Thee to a (Turkish) Nunnery
In this weekend’s travel section, the NYT checked in to Tomtom Suites in Istanbul, a newish 20-suite boutique hotel housed in a restored 1901 building that once was home to French nuns, and decided Hamlet’s infamous slam—“Get thee to a nunnery”—could be the hotel’s “fun-loving invitation” or slogan.
Highlights:“Tomtom Suites addresses the partier’s paradox: how to find a crash pad within striking distance of a night-life district that isn’t overrun by noisy lager louts,” the NYT writes, describing the location as a five-minute walk to nightlife-heavy Istiklal Caddesi. Spacious suites have contemporary touches (wooden floors, “high-tech gadgetry”) injected with “Turkish touches” (hand-painted ceramics, tubular harem-style tasseled cushions). The bathroom has a Philippe Starck-designed bathtub with underwater jets as well as Molton Brown spa toiletries. The top-floor breakfast terrace serves a tasty morning spread.
Tags: Turkey Hotels / Luxury Hotels / → All Tags
Mardan Palace Is Wacky, Glitzy and Has A Vacustyler
Any hotel that uses Mariah Carey and Tom Jones for its opening entertainment is bound to offer a few surprises, and the Mardan Palace in Antalya, Turkey, does that and more – a whole lot more, if a recent Daily Mail review is anything to go on.
The review throws a bunch of crazy superlatives around right at the start, calling the Mardan Palace the brashest, wackiest and glitziest resort they know. And then the amazing facts begin: the bowls in the Italian restaurant cost $840 each, the cutlery bill for the hotel was $28 million (which seems a little hard to believe, but...) and the hotel's private beach includes $1.7 million worth of imported white sand, much of which will need replacing every year.
If money's no object, then you can have a heck of a lot of fun at the Mardan Palace. There are professional divers to help you explore the hotel's own reef, bathrooms with gold-plated sinks, a chocolate fountain at breakfast and a Vacustyler in the spa which is a kind of shrink-wrapping machine originally developed to help the circulation of astronauts.
Surprisingly, there are some relatively affordable room rates — we found a Premium room in October at €260 ($370) a night and even an Executive suite was only €480 ($680), although all the bookings from October 15 onward are blacked out — so get in quick for your glitz and brashness at this price.
Tags: JW Marriott Hotels / Marriott Hotels / Turkey Hotels / Hotel Construction / Green Hotels / → All Tags
Marriott Will Take A Second Helping Of Turkey, Please
Typically, Ankara was thought of as a supplement to a vacation to Istanbul, although it's Turkey's capital. But as Ankara grows to become its own important international business city, Marriott is ready to throw some weight behind the city with a J.W. Marriott in the Sogutozu district, due to open in October 2010. It will be Turkey's second Marriott hotel, but a first to have the "J.W." initials, meaning it's going to be a bit nicer than your average Marriott.
But why is it so special? Well, the 24-floor, 400-room structure from RMJM Architects will be super sustainable, with the building's complete design considered for maximum energy savings:
The hotel will bring innovative sustainable design to Ankara and will include a unique design of vertical stone fins that will act as solar shading devices on the east and west facades. The glass curtain wall uses environmentally friendly materials such as high-performing, low-e coating and tinting that contributes to the reduced solar heat gain. Plentiful bamboo trees and vegetation will be included in the landscape to offer additional shading at the site.
Despite these fancy eco elements, the above rendering of the building doesn't look like anything out of the ordinary; no crazy futuristic flourishes here, as green building finally catches up with taste. And just in case Ankara, and not Hawaii, is the wedding destination of your dreams, the hotel won't be all business as they're planning a wedding pavilion, a spa with indoor and outdoor pools, and three specialty restaurants, for wining and dining your guests with a lower environmental impact than your typical hotel wedding.
[Photo: RMJM Architects]
Tags: NYT Reviews / W Hotels / Istanbul Hotels / → All Tags
NYT Pops Into W Istanbul for Some Turkish Delight
Until the W Barcelona officially pops its cork this fall, the W Istanbul remains Europe’s only W Hotel. The NYT’s Fred Bernstein checked the place out recently, so we thought we’d compare his observations to those of HotelChatter’s Shira Levine, who just last month filed her own review of the “crazy sexy cool” spot. Overall, the two agreed on much.
Highlights: “There is no perfect spot in Istanbul — the city is too vast and complicated — but the W’s comes close,” Bernstein says. (Er, Levine put it differently: “W Istanbul is located on an attractive but weird corner where there is a complicated traffic pattern.”)
Tags: Turkey Hotel Guide / Istanbul Hotels / Intercontinental Hotels / Hotel Breakfasts / → All Tags
The Ceylan Intercontinental Is a Decent Hotel with An Excellent Breakfast Buffet
Last week Shira Levine spent a few days getting her Turkish Delight on in Istanbul, Turkiye ("Turkey is a bird; Turkiye is the country") and checking out the transcontinental Eurasian city's hotel scene. Any questions about where to stay in Turkiye? Send 'em to us and we'll have Shira answer them for you.
First Impressions
It's nice when a medium hotel surprises us with doing things right we weren't even expecting. That way there is some balance to our disappointment when something isn't right. Istanbul's Ceylan Intercontinental Hotel is one of those hotels. While it's been awarded five stars, our feeling is that it has a five star quality in a very 1992 kind of way. Nevertheless, the lobby is classic. It's wide open and bright with shiny and gilded decor and dramatic stairs that lead to some good early morning dining.
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Turkish Delight: A Former Prison is Now a Four Seasons Hotel
Last week Shira Levine spent a few days getting her Turkish Delight on in Istanbul, Turkiye ("Turkey is a bird; Turkiye is the country") and checking out the transcontinental Eurasian city's hotel scene. Any questions about where to stay in Turkiye? Send 'em to us and we'll have Shira answer them for you.
By director Oliver Stone's "Midnight Express" film portrayal, if there is one notable Turkish site to skip over it's the inside of a Turkish prison. But if it's the inside of a Neoclassical jail conversion and that jail conversion happens to now be a Four Seasons, we learned that staying a few night doesn't compromise sanity, just bank accounts.
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Turkish Delight: The W Istanbul Brings The Crazy Sexy Cool
Last week Shira Levine spent a few days getting her Turkish Delight on in Istanbul, Turkiye ("Turkey is a bird; Turkiye is the country") and checking out the transcontinental Eurasian city's hotel scene. Any questions about where to stay in Turkiye? Send 'em to us and we'll have Shira answer them for you.
With Istanbul the first European country to bag a W Hotel, we knew there wasn't a chance in Turkish prison hell that Starwood would mince on the fabulosity for W Istanbul. Especially when the location is in the renovated Akaretler Row Houses of the exclusive Besiktas district. Back in the 1870s those row houses served as the housing for Sultan Abdülaziz's staff of the nearby Dolmabahçe Palace).
So at just over a year old things are looking pretty trendy as expected. 50 Cent recently stayed in the Exteme WOW Suite. In June NIN will arrive and they have apparently booked a few of the MEGA suites.
Tags: Turkey Hotel Guide / Istanabul Hotels / → All Tags
Turkish Delight: A Gypsy Wooden House
Last week Shira Levine spent a few days getting her Turkish Delight on in Istanbul, Turkiye ("Turkey is a bird; Turkiye is the country") and checking out the transcontinental Eurasian city's hotel scene. Any questions about where to stay in Turkiye? Send 'em to us and we'll have Shira answer them for you.
To experience a city like Istanbul, where just two bridges in the Bosphorus connect the continent of Europe to Asia; or where Islam intersects with Christianity and Judaism; and the ancient world juxtaposes a more noveau way of life, it makes total sense that President Barack Obama chose this complicated city as his first to visit.
This week while we recover from slinging back one too many Turkish coffees and raki shots, we'll share our take on post Ottoman-era hotels, totally 80's corporate chains, and the majorly renovated contemporary and luxe slick stays.
Not to mention we'll give the lowdown on how we survived a Turkish hammam, didn't completely destroy our credit in the Grand Bazaar and Spice Market, and how to deal with the never ending probing by Turkish men who ask: "Where are you from? Do you want to come into my nice store?"
Tags: Celebrity Scoop / Mariah Carey / Hotel Openings / Hotel Opening Rates / → All Tags
Mariah Carey Lends Her Diva-ness to Turkey's New Mardan Palace
When you're opening up a ridiculously expensive, lavish, opulent hotel — whether the place is in Dubai or Dallas — you want to bring out the biggest of the big guns when you're selecting your celeb starpower for the opening. Someone who is well-known to have the most discerning tastes; someone whose reputation for accepting nothing less than the best and finest goes unquestioned. That is: you may want to bring in a Diva. Yes, with a capital D.
And who screams Diva more than anyone? Um, Mariah Carey. Duh.
Page Six tipped us off to the news that Miss Mariah spent her Memorial Day-ish weekend with her husbie Nick Cannon in Turkey, where she was paid a hot $1.5 million to sing at the opening of the Mardan Palace Hotel in Antalya last week (where the other half of the entertainment was covered by Tom Jones). The Mardan Palace is supposedly touted as Turkey's first luxe destination resort, boasting an amphitheater, a botanical garden, a fleet of luxury cars, insane water features, and a massive spa.
Rates at the Mardan Palace start at 260 Euros, and — bonus — some beds at the hotel have already been slept on by Sharon Stone, Richard Gere, and Heidi Klum, who were flown in for the massive opening gala as well.
Tags: Snapshot / Edition Hotels / Hotel Hype / Hotel News / → All Tags
This Is What the 7-Star Edition Istanbul Will Look Like?
Um. No, thanks.
This is the rendering for the proposed Edition Istanbul which will be the first ever Edition Hotel to open in December from the seemingly unholy union of veteran hoteliers, Bill Marriott and Ian Schrager. The building is currently undergoing a 100 million Euro renovation from an office building into a 7-star hotel which will have 80 guestrooms, all suites.
Please, pretty please, spend a lot of that money on the interiors. Please.
Tags: Edition Hotels / Hotel Hype / Istanbul Hotels / Bill Marriott / Ian Schrager / → All Tags
Top That! Edition Hotel Will Open in Istanbul in December
UPDATE: A rendering of the building is now pictured after the jump.
South Beach, DC, Honolulu, Istanbul. What do all these destinations have in common? They have all, at one point or another, been designated the location for the very first Edition Hotel, the new luxury hotel collection spawned by Bill Marriott and Ian Schrager.
Last we checked, Edition Honolulu would open in sometime in 2010. The Edition DC project was starting to look rather unlikely and we've got no idea what happening with Edition South Beach.
But now there's been an announcement that Edition Istanbul will open before all these other jokers on Dec 15, 2009.
Tags: Killer View / Capadoccia Hotels / Swimsuit Issue Hotels / → All Tags
Is This What the Swimsuit Models Saw?
We are suckers for a room with a killer view. We find that we are even more likely to forgive some minor hotel inconveniences if we can stare out the window at something pretty--yeah we are that shallow. Let's help out our fellow hotel mavens by uploading rooms with killer views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. We will feature our favorites in this space from time to time. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number of the hot view.
Our baby bro Jaunted has been all a-flutter over the latest Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue--but not just because cover girl Bar Refaeli was splashed along the side of a Southwest plane. No, because some of those bikini photoshoot locations are very cool. Like Capadoccia, Turkey.
We found this snapshot from Flickr Member Deepgoswami of the view from the Kismet Cave Hotel. Of course, you have to look past the house with the solar panels but in the background you can see some of those fairy chimneys or rock formations specific to the area.
As for the hotel, it bills itself as a "romantic boutique hotel" for couples. Indeed, it's intimate with only 8 rooms but also affordable as rooms start at 60 Euros a night. Sorry, we don't think the swimsuit models will be waiting for you in the rooms.
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