Sunshine

I stayed here two nights. The room and the swimming pool was lovely, the food they served was tasty. Then something happened that I have not experienced nowhere else before. When I checked in they said they'll deliver my backbag to my room. A reseptionist walked me to my room and say "you stay here and relax and don't worry about anything- we will bring your bag to you". I could not actually relax so well because there was stuff I needed to get from my bag. I waited and nothing happened in 30 minutes. I decided to go down to get my bag. When I went there they asked in a rude tone "How can we help you?" I said "I just came to get my bag" - in which the other reseptionist said "I'm sorry I'm sorry, I forgot, we were so busy down here"... I said that's all right, polite as I am. Today, as I left the hotel I checked out and asked them to call me a taxi after I have a lunch in the hotel's restaurant. They have NO luggage rooms so the lobby was full of customers luggage. So, I left my bag to the lobby and went eating. The guy at the lobby helped me to place my bag. After my lunch, 30 minutes after the check-out I come back to the lobby but I don't see my backback where we left it. We search the hole lobby with the hole staff and they ask me what kind of my back is. Two members of the staff take their scooters and go and look for it - outside the hotel! Turns out my backbag was placed in a bus - no idea which bus and where it was going. After 30 minutes wait I get my bag back. I tried to ask them If these things happen to them often or not but they didn't understand my question. Without the bag incidents the hotel was good. But I think there are other good hotels where they hadle people's property a bit more carefully.

I had reserved my hotel room 2 months in advance with my only request being a nice view. I got a giant wall 2 ft. from my window with cigar butts on the ground between. There were plenty of rooms with nice views, but this is what I got. Plus, my room was right behind the reception desk and I heard the noisy staff late into the night. Now to the bathroom. A plastic sink with the one electrical outlet dangling from the wall by its wires. The shower basin was swarming with ants and some sort of long skinny flies that were bouncing around half-dead, most of which would eventually die. I told one of the staff. He sent someone to spray and to clean the shower. Done. That night, lots of flies were attracted to the ceiling light in the bedroom. Those that didn't die into the lamps covering the bulbs dropped onto the floor or onto the bed. One landed on my book as I was reading. I woud see a few ants and flies crawling around the floor, too. Needless to say, I had a restless night. Come morning, a few more bugs had crawled into the shower and died so I just showered them down the drain and left at 11:30 for the day. I returned to my room at 5:30 to find the shower basin now filled with bugs, even worse than before. I packed up my stuff and went out to the desk determined to leave. He offered to put me into another room but I really wanted to leave. At that point I was willing to spend an additional $30 bucks a night and go to the class-act Alaturca hotel which I should have stayed at in the first place. He told me though that I couldn't. I had waited too long and would be charged for all 3 nights. When I disputed this, he told me that you, the booking agency would charge the nights to my credit card. I asked him why a maid had not checked up on this during the day since they knew it was a problem. I was paying $70 a day for a decent hotel, not $10 bucks for a pension and should have had someone come make the bed up, and empty the tiny trash can and spray the bugs at least. He claimed that I had taken the key with me and that the maid couldn't get in but that was a lie and I told him so. Well it didn't seem reasonable that bookings.com would charge me without my approval, but because I really didn't know for sure I agreed to a room change. I got a better room this time. No bugs, and a decent view. So I got a good night's sleep. The next afternoon, at 3:30 I left a pair of my pants with one of the hotel staff for laundering, since the have this advertised on their website and had a sign in their lobby. I was assured that they would be ready by evening since I had a very early flight the following morning. Well, imagine my lack of surprise at this point when I return at 8:00 to find that they were unable to launder my pants because their machines were too big for one item. Then they suggested that I go to the laundry service just around the corner. Of course, the mystery is why they didn't do this for me in the first place since I would be paying for it anyhow. So, yes I did have to take it myself then return 2 hours later for pick-up when I had wanted to get to sleep early that night. Next morning, the front door was locked. It was 5:25 and I had purchased a ticket for a 5:40 shuttle. I knocked on the hotel guy's door so he could unlock the front door. He mumbled something in Turkish then dead silence. I knocked louder the next time. He came out half asleep and unlocked the door. It's now 6:18 and my shuttle still hasn't arrived. I'm getting worried. I hear the hotel door being unlocked behind me as the delightful hotel guy unlocks the door for another couple to meet their waiting taxi. I approached hotel guy, showing him my shuttle reservation ticket and asking him if such a delay was typical. Instead of trying to help me by offering to call the agency, he just pointed to the other couple's taxi driver and told me to go have him send me a taxi. Then he closed the door and that was that. I love the Turkish people on a whole and generally get excellent service with courtesy beyond expectation. But this was so out of the norm and so unacceptable that I just had to let you and other travellers know. Thanks for the opportunity to vent, legitimately, Grossly disappointed.

I booked this hotel as part of a package with corendon airlines, so it was great value (through their dutch subsidiary corendon .nl, which unfortunately is probably most useful if you are traveling from Amsterdam). For the price, it was a perfectly functional, but not flash, place to rest in Istanbul. The furniture was a little run down, and the place could definitely have been cleaner (the mould in the shower was a bit gross, and there were holes in the bedsheets). I also didn't like the fact that smoking was permitted everywhere in the hotel, although this may be standard in Turkey for all I know. Having said that, the room didn't smell of smoke (although the hallways definitely did). One final complaint is that the walls are very thin, and you can hear everyone in your corridor. The street is also a little noisy, especially as we were unlucky enough to have someone jackhammering outside our window between 10 and 11pm at night (obviously the council workers are paid better overtime over here!). Breakfast was bread with feta and haloumi cheese, canned olives, tomato and cucumber and jam/honey, with pretty ordinary coffee and orange cordial. Once again, not fancy, but enough to keep you going through the first few events of the day. Best feature of this hotel is the location, which is only 300m away from the Hagia Sofia, maybe 500m away from the Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace and 100m away from the Basilica Cistern. There's also a Turkish bath just 50m in the opposite direction, although we didn't try it out. Our room had a tiny balcony (strictly one persons feet at a time), and although the view was mainly blocked by the next building, we could see a tantilising glimpse of the top of one of the Hagia Sofia's minarets (along with a fairly good view of Topkapi palace).