Tag Archives: Gifts

Echoes of the Past Enchant Istanbul Hotel Guests

The Pera Palace Hotel, in business since the late 19th century, retains its Old World panache, captivating patrons with elite amenities and Belle Epoque charm

By Randy Mink

Just about every major European city has a historic luxury hotel that begs nostalgia-minded folks like me to come take a peek or maybe bed down for a night or two. I tend to make a beeline to such hostelries—those with a story to tell and grand trappings to go with it—even if it’s just for a brief walk through the lobby or to soak up the ambience over a drink in the bar.

In Istanbul, the Pera Palace Hotel started life in the 1890s when the Turkish city (then called Constantinople) needed a place suitable for hosting wealthy passengers arriving from Paris and other points in Western Europe on the Orient Express, the luxury train made famous by English author Agatha Christie. It’s said that she wrote some of Murder on the Orient Express while staying at the Pera Palace in the 1930s.

The hotel has endured through the reigns of three Ottoman sultans, the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the new Turkish Republic in the 1920s. Between World Wars I and II, it was at the center of international intrigue in the Pera neighborhood, then a hotbed of espionage and geopolitical machinations involving players from throughout the Continent. Pera, with its numerous military and diplomatic posts, was once called Little Europe.

The Pera Palace today retains its lofty position as a place to see and be seen. Trying not to gape, I entered the high-ceilinged lobby on the red carpet inscribed with the hotel’s name in gold letters, glancing up at the crystal chandeliers and plush red draperies on my way to the reception desk.  Gleaming marble walls, floors and balustrades, along with brass urns brimming with palm fronds, set the tone as well.

The Pera Palace Hotel is one of Istanbul’s elite addresses. (Photo credit: Pera Palace Hotel)

Famous Guests of the Pera Palace

Over the years, the same grandeur has greeted notables like England’s King Edward VIII and Queen Elizabeth II, Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef, Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran, President Tito of Yugoslavia and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Hollywood royalty has included Zsa Zsa Gabor, Greta Garbo and Alfred Hitchcock. As a reporter after World War I, Ernest Hemingway was a hotel resident.

In Turkish eyes, the most important figure to grace the Pera Palace was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, revered as the father of modern Turkey. When in Istanbul between 1917 and 1926, the country’s first president resided in Suite 101, which is now a museum devoted to him. A stern-looking Ataturk mannequin—holding a cane and dressed in a green army uniform and black cape and hat—stands in the sitting room. Along with vintage photographs, newspaper clippings and a Time magazine cover bearing Ataturk’s image, personal possessions on display include the national hero’s eyeglasses, goggles, pajamas, shoes, white linen suit jacket and black silk prayer rug. The museum, free to hotel guests, is open to the public for a fee.

Suite 101 in Istanbul’s Pera Palace Hotel is a museum dedicated to the memory of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern republic of Turkey. (Randy Mink Photo)

The guest room where Christie stayed, number 411, now carries her name, and the hotel restaurant is named Agatha. Framed black-and-white photographs of past guests, including Garbo, Hemingway, Zsa Zsa and Jackie O, adorn the restaurant’s back wall.

Dining at Istanbul’s Pera Palace Hotel

Agatha Restaurant’s bountiful buffet breakfast offers everything from salads and olives to cheeses, cold cuts and quail eggs. Pastries include mini donuts, mini croissants and simits, the sesame-seeded dough rings found throughout Turkey. For spreading on breads and rolls, I made good use of the honeycomb, tahini, grape molasses, jams and clotted cream. I had more than my share of the cheese balls covered in sesame seeds, black cumin, pistachios or poppy seeds. Among the hot dishes: cheese quiche, cheese soufflé, falafel, artichoke soup, pancakes and porridge.

The breakfast buffet at Agatha Restaurant offers many choices, including a wide variety of olives. (Randy Mink Photo)

More treats await at Patisserie de Pera, an intimate cafe reached from the hotel lobby or separate street entrance. Rose-colored walls and furnishings lend a soft touch, and red-accented Venetian glass chandeliers hang from the pink ceiling in each of the two salons. This is the place for a leisurely mid-morning coffee or tea break accompanied by a decadent fruit tart, slice of cheesecake or an assortment of chocolates or macarons.

The gift shop just outside the cafe (actually just a glass cabinet) provides a wide variety of Pera Palace mementoes. Items include socks, umbrellas, bathrobes and other things bearing the hotel logo. There are coasters, coffee mugs and souvenir plates. How about an Ataturk tea set or the paperback Murder on the Orient Express?

Patisserie de Pera is the place to linger over pastries and a cup of coffee or tea. (Randy Mink Photo)

Steps from the merchandise cabinet is an original sedan chair once used to carry Orient Express passengers from the train station to the Pera Palace.

A traditional afternoon tea with piano music is served under the six skylight domes of the Kubbeli Lounge. Featuring elements of Islamic architecture, the two-story-high room is decorated in dark reds and deep plums, as is the nearby Orient Bar, another plush spot to drink in visions of a bygone era. The equally stylish Library Room seating area, complete with bookcases and antique globes, extends from the lounge and bar.

The hotel’s Kubbelli Lounge hosts a traditional afternoon tea. (Photo credit: Pera Palace Hotel)

The Pera Palace’s Orient Bar provides an elegant setting for cocktails. (Randy Mink Photo)

Guest Rooms at the Pera Palace Hotel

More flashbacks to yesteryear are in store on a fun ride in the hotel’s original electric elevator, installed only three years after the Eiffel Tower’s elevator. The wood-and-cast-iron cage, operated by a staff member, is used only for arriving hotel guests. For normal use, a set of modern elevators services the six guest room floors.

The original elevator’s wood-and-cast-iron cage is well over a century old. (Photo credit: Pera Palace Hotel)

From tall windows in my room, number 506 in the Deluxe Golden Horn category, I had views of the Golden Horn, the waterway that separates modern Istanbul from the Old City on the other shore—and the primary inlet of the Bosphorus Strait. Amenities in the marble bath included thick white towels and robes. The pillow cases, hand towels and robes all bore the gold Pera Palace heraldic crest.

Deluxe King and Deluxe Twin rooms at the hotel feature pillowcases and plush robes that bear the Pera Palace’s heraldic crest.

Guest rooms at the Pera Palace are spread across six floors. Each floor has display cases filled with artifacts that illustrate the hotel’s colorful history. (Photo credit: Pera Palace Hotel)

On the morning before checking out, I made a point of visiting all six floors to peruse the display cases exhibiting old photos, menus, ledgers, china and silverware from the hotel and Orient Express. On the fourth floor I found the Agatha Christie Room, wishing the door would be open so I could see inside. For me, it will always be a mystery.

Communing With the Past in Tantalizing Toledo

The city of swords, marzipan and El Greco is a perennial favorite with tourists in Spain

By Randy Mink

I could spend hours roaming through the tangle of cobbled pathways that thread the historic core of Toledo, one of the best places in all of Europe for getting lost in a medieval dreamscape. Loaded with Old World magic, Toledo projects the very essence of Spain and was once its capital.

On a recent visit to this intriguing city rich in Christian, Jewish and Muslim heritage, I never tired of probing the labyrinth’s nooks and crannies while popping into souvenir stores, touring museums, and traipsing through an ancient synagogue, the world’s fourth-largest cathedral and a former mosque built during the Moorish occupation.

The Mosque of Cristo de la Luz, later a Catholic chapel, was one of 10 mosques in Toledo during the Moorish period. (Randy Mink Photo)

Like the Old City district of Cuenca, another tourist favorite in Spain’s Castilla-La Mancha region, Toledo’s extensive medieval quarter sprawls across a rocky mount bounded by the original city walls and surrounded by a river below.

Located 55 miles southwest of Madrid, Toledo (pronounced “to-LAY-do” in Spanish) overflows with tourists—attracting a million of them every year—and its pedestrian alleyways abound with gift shops. I’m not ashamed to say I loved shopping for refrigerator magnets and other tchotchkes in Toledo, but I also liked stepping away from the commercialism to explore shady back lanes and sunlit plazas accented with wrought-iron balconies, grillwork windows and massive, centuries-old wooden doors. Some of Toledo’s narrow winding streets do allow cars, however, so be prepared to stand flat against the buildings to spare your feet from being run over by drivers barreling up and down the steep inclines.

The narrow streets of Toledo’s Old City beckon tourists who relish getting lost in the past. (Randy Mink Photo)

Long known for its quality cutlery, Toledo has many sword stores and calls itself the Sword Capital of the World. At the Zamorano sword factory, where we watched craftsmen at work, one fellow traveler shipped home two swords, fitting reminders of this fortified city that harks back to the days of knights in shining armor. Since the Middle Ages, Toledo has excelled in steel craftsmanship. Stores offer fine selections of knives, letter openers and scissors as well as swords, plus knight figurines in all sizes.

Also catching shoppers’ eyes is the art of damascene—the inlay of intricate gold and silver threads into a steel base. Top sellers include damascene jewelry, scissors and tableware.

Toledo’s historic core counts numerous shops that specialize in swords, daggers, knives, scissors and knights in shining armor. (Randy Mink Photo)

Candy is always a good thing to bring home, and I stocked up on marzipan at Santo Tomé’s flagship store. The seventh-generation family company has been making its famous almond paste confection since 1856. For gift-giving, I bought wrapped boxes of six-inch marzipan bars inscribed “T-O-L-E-D-O,” but my own bag of marzipan pieces was gobbled up before I got to the Madrid airport. (I even started on the bag originally intended for the neighbor watching my cats—it was so irresistibly fresh.)

Santo Tomé marzipan consists of 57 percent crushed almonds, 40 percent sugar and 3 percent honey, with no preservatives or extra ingredients. The most colorful items are in the shape of fruits—oranges, lemons, strawberries, etc. Some pieces are studded with pine nuts or whole almonds or come with a dab of jam. The flagship store/bakery on Calle Santo Tomé occupies a former convent. (Nuns were once the main provider of marzipan, and a few convents in Toledo still sell it.) Santo Tomé has three other locations in town, including one on Plaza de Zocodover, the main square.

Tours of Santo Tomé marzipan bakery include a peek into the kitchen where bakers are making the almond-based confection. (Photo credit: Santo Tomé)

Santo Tomé marzipan is the perfect souvenir of Toledo and makes the perfect gift for those back home. (Randy Mink Photo)

In between shopping and wandering footloose in the dense medieval mazes, I checked off a few places from my must-see list.

The Alcazar, a former fortress and royal residence, crowns the highest point in the city and is now a vast military museum with excellent exhibits on the history of Spain. Rebuilt under dictator Francisco Franco after the Spanish Civil War, the Alcazar had been heavily damaged during the siege by loyalists in 1936. 

At the other extreme, Underground Toledo is worth a look. Archaeologist and tourism guide Diego Esteban Sánchez takes small groups into the bowels of the medieval district, unlocking doors that lead to well-lit restored sites like a Roman bath, a Jewish house and an ancient well.

The same sense of discovery is offered by cozy, atmospheric eateries like Restaurante La Cave, a historic building with brick-lined rooms in cave-like spaces below street level.

To art lovers, Toledo is virtually synonymous with the Greek-born painter Domenikos Theotokopoulos, better known as El Greco, or “The Greek.” He moved to Spain in 1571 from the island of Crete and, after centuries of neglect, is today venerated as one of the country’s old masters, along with Goya and Velazquez.

The El Greco Museum is one of Toledo’s top visitor attractions. (Randy Mink Photo)

El Greco’s religious canvases, distinguished by bold colors and elongated figures in voluminous robes, can be admired at several locations, including the El Greco Museum. Other El Grecos are found in the Santa Cruz Museum, the Gothic-style Cathedral of Toledo (along with works by Raphael, Titian, Goya and Caravaggio) and the Convent of Santo Domingo el Antiguo, which houses the crypt where the artist is believed to be buried. 

In Toledo’s old Jewish Quarter, El Transito Synagogue is a prime tourist draw. (Randy Mink Photo)

One could a whole morning or afternoon admiring the statuary, artwork and architectural flourishes of the Gothic-style Cathedral of Toledo, one of Spain’s most impressive churches. (Randy Mink Photo)

The El Greco Museum resides next door to the 14th century El Transito Synagogue with its Arabic-influenced interior decoration, magnificent coffered ceiling and museum of Sephardic Jewish culture. Here in the old Jewish Quarter, the park across the street has a memorial to El Greco and a terrace affording panoramic views of the Tagus River (Rio Tajo) and city of Toledo, truly one of the most captivating places in all of Spain.

For more information on Toledo, Cuenca and other cities in Castilla-La Mancha, visit www.turismocastillalamancha.com.