A flashlight on hand at the Four Seasons Sultanahmet in Istanbul.
What has the Four Seasons Sultanahmet in Istanbul not thought of? I’ve already written about its coffee delivered with wake-up call, a practice worthy of its own little post by thiefhunters. There was so much more.
Four Seasons Hotel perfection
The flashlight was a nice touch. The bedside drawer was ajar when we arrived to alert us to the availability and location of the flashlight, which rested on fleur-des-lis drawer liner to match the fleur-des-lis rug. Never mind that we all have flashlights built into our smartphones. But… is the Four Seasons hinting to frequent power outages? Or do they know that a flashlight beam makes it so much easier to find a dropped contact?
Espresso ready any time in my room at the Four Seasons Sultanahmet in Istanbul.
Instead of the old Mr. Coffee, our room had an espresso machine. When we had our coffee in the afternoon, it was accompanied by a sampler of perfect baklava which had appeared on our table.
The fruit bowl was particularly beautiful with its luscious appealing bounty. Even more so was the plate of fat fresh figs we received later.
Have your coffee with luscious baklava, delivered in the afternoon. We also got a bowl of exquisite fresh figs.
Breakfast in the gazebo-like greenhouse in the hotel’s courtyard was simply the best. The choices, the quality, the ambiance, the service, were all top notch. There were gorgeous local cheeses paired with a variety of golden honeycombs, wonderful olives, Turkish simit, the sesame-covered bagel-like bread.
In the bar we had a variety of unique cocktails, traditional Turkish tea, and raki, the aniseed-flavored Turkish liqueur, similar to the better-known ouzo. The presentation of all the drinks was just… perfect.
The breakfast gazebo in the courtyard of the Four Seasons Sultanahmet in Istanbul.Tea in the bar at Four Seasons Sultanahmet in Istanbul. Beautiful presentation of raki, the local anise liquor, to which water is added.
Four Seasons wakeup call comes with coffee delivered to your door.
Four Seasons wake-up call: great morning!
I recently had the great fortune to stay in the Four Seasons Hotel in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district. The hotel is perfect. And, you know, I stay in a lot of hotels. A lot of good hotels, too. Rarely do I find perfection. Granted, perfection is expensive.
Requesting a 5 a.m. wake-up call, I was told there’d be coffee at my door when the phone rang. Wow! Wonderful! The concierge, a young man, said that Four Seasons had held a contest last year: what can we do to be different, beyond expectations, really stand out? Something like that. Coffee-with-wake-up-call was his submission. He said—proudly—that it’s now a practice at all Four Seasons Hotels. I’ll confirm that after my next stay at a Four Seasons.
At five o’clock in the morning the phone rang. A real human said good morning. And on a table outside my door, as promised, I found a tray with a cozy-covered thermos of coffee and to-go cups. All this in addition to the fact that the room contained a nifty espresso machine. Brilliant.
I was happy to discover that all three windows opened in my beautiful room at Hotel Luna Baglioni. So many hotels seal up bedroom windows, forcing guests to rely on air conditioning.
My room at the gorgeous Hotel Luna Baglioni on St. Mark’s Square in Venice.
This hotel, right on the edge of Piazza San Marco in Venice, was near perfect in every way. (I won’t gripe about the concierge’s bad restaurant recommendations.) Snuggled within the thickest, most luxurious bed linens ever, flanked by Fortuny chandeliers, I could almost forgo the streets of Venice for the comfort and ambiance of this room. Almost.
The windows opened from the top, tipping down slightly—just enough to get a little breeze going. It was both the heavy curtains and the window hardware that prevented a wider opening.
I had a daily battle with housekeeping: I’d leave the windows and curtains open. Housekeeping would slip in and close the windows and curtains.
One day I returned after breakfast, re-opened the layers of curtains, and re-opened the window. Lo! It opened sideways, and all the way!
WTF??? Is this my room? I felt almost dizzy with confusion, having opened this very window repeatedly with a different outcome each time.
The window tips down from the top. Notice the handle is vertical.
Turning the handle to a horizontal position opens the window horizontally. Brilliant!
Closing and opening the window a few times, paying close attention, I figured it out. Notice the handles. Straight up opens the top. Turning the handle further to the horizontal position opens the window sideways.
What complicated hardware! I rushed around to try the other bedroom window and the one in the bathroom. Both worked the same way. I like it!
Dozens of tiny pellets were in and on the dry toilet before it was flushed.
The mysterious case of the dirty toilet
This time, the “hotel” is my own six-star guest room. We’d been away for six weeks and it was summer in the desert. The water in the toilet had dried up.
In the midst of some unrelated home improvements, the plumber wanted to check the toilets for leaks. I brought him into the guest bath and immediately noticed some spots on the closed lid. Opening the lid, I was repulsed to see a large number of tiny brown pellets in the bottom of the dry toilet. And all over the toilet. On the seat, on the rim, on the tank top.
My knee-jerk reaction: “Oh, disgusting!” And I flushed it. Stupid. Would have made a much more dramatic photo if I hadn’t.
At first I wondered if someone had been in my house (possible) and messily dumped something into the toilet (highly unlikely). What else?
What’s in and all over my toilet?
After a visit from the friendly family entomologist, mystery solved. It’s… oh, ick… cockroach poop. There were many intruders—or one that stayed for a long time.
When the toilet water dried up, direct access was opened from the septic tank. The trespassers took full advantage of the new expressway and invaded, looking for food and water. My six-star accommodations being spotless, their exploration proved fruitless and they departed.
My plan of attack, or is it defense, will be to deploy a team of flushers to attend regularly to my toilets when I’m away on extended travels. And maybe a little strategically placed diatomaceous earth.
NIGHTMARES, ANYONE? These curtains look ordinary at first glance. Who scrutinizes the design on hotel room curtains? But your eyes have registered the subtle depiction that your conscious mind has failed to process: insects are crawling up the drapes.
Nightmares, anyone? Insects crawling up bedroom curtains.
Bugs in hotels
Later, the insidious images creep into your cognizance. You’re sleeping—or trying to sleep—and from from the depths of your subconscious rise ugly apparitions of insects—giant insects—marching upwards. They’re frolicking among… what are those? Larvae? And the larvae begin to metamorphose, and the juveniles become adults, and the adults swell to the size of full grown boxers, all brown, marching, swarming up the curtains and on to…
In your drowsy agitation, something touches your skin—a corner of the pillow case, a lock of hair, the antenna of an oversized beetle. Your eyes fly open. Now every dark or bumpy thing in the room looks like a creepy-crawler: the handles on the windows, the drawer pulls, a hook on the wall, and—is that a shoe or…
Hallucinations in hotel rooms are as unwelcome as bugs in hotels. Why did this brand-new, otherwise fabulous villa in Florence choose an insect motif for its bedroom curtains?
Larva: The active immature form of an insect before its metamorphosis to adulthood. Suitable as a motif for bedroom curtains.
“Overlooking the pool” at the Esplanade Hotel in Fremantle, Australia
Hotel speak
“Welcome! We have a lovely room for you in our resort wing, overlooking the pool!”
Reality: Yeah, directly opposite the looming parking garage. True, there was a little pool down there. Actually visible if you lean over the balcony.
That’s hotel speak at the Esplanade Hotel in Fremantle, Australia.
We ran into a couple of cops in the lobby. They’d been summoned because of noisy guests. Is this a common Australian thing? The last time we stayed at an Australian hotel, two years ago, we couldn’t sleep until the people in the room next to our checked out—or were arrested—sometime after daylight broke. The hotel’s paper walls projected every groan, cry, and vulgarity uttered by our neighbors, and of course their fighting, shouting, wall-punching, and door-slamming. That was the Sydney Ibis Airport Hotel.
To be fair, I have to say that, besides very creative hotel speak, one thing at the Esplanade Hotel in Fremantle greatly impressed me, especially for a hotel “of this calibre.” Its breakfast buffet, which was pretty much on par with the sad state of American mid-range hotel breakfasts, included a total do-it-yourself delight: an industrial-sized juicer and an array of carrots, ginger, and apples. Magnificent!
The Mysterious Case of the Uninvited Hotel Room Night Visitors
“UNBELIEVABLE!” our friend Donny said when we unexpectedly met in the morning. “Bizarre! I must have had ghosts in my hotel room last night!”
Though we hadn’t seen him in more than a year, nothing mattered but last night’s hotel experience. Donny was beside himself. It was twilight zone.
Two of my favorite things when traveling:
1. Being invited to dinner at someone’s home (rare).
2. The unplanned meeting of friends from elsewhere (more common).
Bob and I were staying at an exceptional hotel in Guatemala City, the near-perfect Westin Camino Real. Donny was staying elsewhere. His story tumbled out.
He’d checked into his hotel late the night before after a long flight. He went up to his room and, without much messing around, went soon to sleep.
In the morning, he found:
• A broken glass on the floor;
• One shard of glass in the trashcan;
• A small towel on the floor;
• Two empty soda cans moved from the desk to the bathroom;
• His Kindle still plugged into the extension outlet, but:
• The extension cord now unplugged and stretched across the floor in a perfectly straight line.
Uh, huh, I teased, it was the woman you brought up with you! Donny wasn’t in a humorous mood. He was truly mystified. Ghosts were the only explanation he could think of. He was spooked.
You drank too much, I tried. Did you drink on the plane?
“I had a drink in the lobby,” Donny recalled. A welcome drink. “But I’m a drinker,” he said, “a drink is nothing for me. That’s not it.”
Hmmm, a drink in the lobby. What kind of hotel was it?
I’m going to say that Donny’s drink was drugged. Possibly with scopolamine, aka Devil’s Breath. It was an inside job. After Donny collapsed in bed (without washing up, I note), an employee with a key entered the room and searched for cash. The would-be robber knew how long the drug would take to knock Donny out and when he could safely enter the room.
Donny’s wallet was in his pants pocket, and the pants were on a chair. The wallet was searched and replaced—Donny had traveled without cash. No credit cards were taken. Nothing from his suitcases. His perp was looking for cash, and only cash. In Guatemala, the average monthly salary is less than $300. Had something obvious been taken, Donny’s Kindle, for example, there would have been accusations and immediate trouble. Cash… who’d notice?
Let’s say Donny’s drink was spiked. The thief had done this before and knew how soon he could enter. He rummaged through Donny’s wallet, then bumped into the desk, knocking over the two drink cans and the glass. He glances at Donny, who’s out cold. He picks up the two cans and a big shard of glass and takes them into the bathroom, where he grabs a face towel, intending to sweep up the glass and soda dribbles. But he hears something—Donny stirs, or maybe he hears a colleague in the hall. He freezes, then flees.
The only puzzle remaining is the electric cord. Donny had bent under the desk to plug his Kindle into the multi-outlet extension cord that was on the floor. He stood and placed his Kindle on the desk, and noticed that it wasn’t charging. He bent again and flipped a switch on the extension cord, confirmed that the Kindle was charging, and left it.
Also, the Kindle had not charged more than 10% or so, meaning the plug had been pulled shortly after Donny fell asleep.
Donny did not wake up groggy or foggy-headed. He noticed the broken glass, missing soda cans, and towel right away. His thought process was as follows: Did I do that? No, I did not do that. Was someone in here? No, I would have woken up. WTF? A ghost?
Since nothing seemed to be missing and he had an early checkout, Donny did not mention the mystery to the hotel staff. Anyway, he’s not a confrontational type. Also, any hotel can find itself with a rogue employee.
My drink-drugging theory was novel to him, but a better hypothesis than ghosts, which had been all he’d come up with. Anyone else have a theory? Or some possible logic about that extension cord?
At USC’s Radisson Hotel, a masterknocker on every door.
Masterknocker knock-off
University of California’s official hotel for the parents of its college students is run by Radisson Hotels. Each room door at USC’s Radisson Hotel has this handsome door knocker. I call it a masterknocker.
We had a huge suite at the Eurostars Grand Marina Hotel in Barcelona. Surrounding the spacious bedroom, there was a sitting room, an office, a giant closet full of blond wood drawers and cabinets, and a multi-room bathroom. The suite had 12 sliding doors within it.
That’s why I had to laugh when I found the soap. Look how tiny it is! About an inch by an inch and a half!
To be fair, I should say that the personal products in the bathroom were plentiful, of high quality, and even tied up with a bow. But what made the strongest impression on me? The ridiculous bar of soap!
You can see three sliding doors and four rooms here.
Here’s another hotel oddity. The Marine Plaza Hotel in Mumbai got it a little wrong. The nice fabric shower curtain is on the inside, and gets soaked. The clear plastic curtain liner hangs on the outside.
Is there some logic I’m not getting? Are all the bathrooms done like this?
I’m not complaining—the hotel was otherwise nice enough. Just… the odd things I find in hotels! It never ceases to amuse me.
