I like hotels. I like hotel lobbies, particularly if they have wingback chairs, a lot of lush greenery and characters with darting eyes mulling about as if they were bent on intrigue, things like spying and clandestine gray-hazed meetings.
To name- and place-drop, a favorite hotel is the Pera Palais in Istanbul, where the spy Mata Hari stayed and did whatever Mata Hari did, which is often debatable and which is why mystery so galvanizes us.
But these days in Istanbul, where The Willard Group has an office, I don't stay at the Pera, though I do try to get by the Oriental Express bar, named for a book by one of its more famous guests, Agatha Christie, author of "Murder on the Orient Express."
In fact, I haven't stayed there in a long time. The rooms are musty, rather uncomfortable, and while the cloak-and-dagger theme hangs about like a shawl on a aging lady, the hotel is much in need of a manicure and pedicure, top to bottom.
When I was very young, a motor trip meant the possibility of staying not in a hotel but a motel, a strip of smallish rooms generally bounded by colorful and flickering neon. Whether it is honky-tonks or motels, neon is captivating to a six-year-old. Chances were that a cafe would be attached to the motel, or at least across the two-lane blacktop highway. If we were lucky, there would be a swimming pool, but that was a rarity.
I have some genetic pull to motels and hotels. My dad's second cousin, Ben Gaines, became a millionaire by teaming up with Kemmons Wilson, the Holiday Inn founder. He provided the furniture that went into the motels that sprouted up like mushrooms in the South and later conquered the world. Well, conquered the world with the exception of Kyiv, which managed to keep hotel chains out of the city until the Radisson broke hotel gridlock two years ago.
I have never had the opportunity to stay at a hotel in Kyiv, since I have had a residence in the city for 12 years, and it seemed rather superfluous unless threatened with mayhem at home. However, I have tertiary observations.
While one can be impressed with the grandeur of the pricey Premier Palace, it lacks what is generally known as character. Character trumps fluff. It is the stuff beyond the dreamy.
Character is all about people, in this case employees. It is a subjective observation, but the folks at the Premier Palace really don't always seem interested in what they do. Good service masks and even apologizes for a few rough edges.
But this is no different than Moscow hotels, though I select The National, across from the Kremlin, as a favorite. The several Marriott Hotels seem cookie-cutter. They could be in Kalamazoo, Michigan just as easily. The National does have character. It also has bloodlines without being musty. I see ghosts walking there, and it makes me comfortable and at home.
If I ran a hotel, there are a couple things I would not do: 1) Charge an exorbitant fee to use something that should be as free as shampoo - the Internet; and
2) Hike prices to the stratosphere during special events, such as Formula 1 races.
The Swissotel in Istanbul is guilty of both those offenses. I had known about the price for Internet service, as well as the cost for the race weekend. But the race was a couple of hour traffic jams outside Istanbul, and I had no intention of being there.
I am not a fan of Formula 1. I haven't liked any formula since the milk I had as a baby. I like America's NASCAR racing because cars trade paint at 200 miles per hour while rounding the far turn four-abreast at Talladega Speedway. I also like it because the drivers are beyond acne, some edging up in their 40s. Formula I drivers were born last week.
Stock car racing is exciting. It is, in fact, racing. In Formula 1, the beginning is sort of interesting in a passive way, sort of like the whiff of somebody else's aftershave. Everything else can be observed better on television, and is about as interesting as watching snails cross a hot sidewalk. The person leading the race at the beginning wins - unless his car breaks down. Then the second guy wins. End of story.
For the obscene amount paid, the room at the Swissotel should have come with hourly foot massages, a bevy of dancing girls and a butler. Actually, I think it did come with butler service, since someone annoyingly calling the room every 15 minutes to ask if all was all right.
You want to say: "Hell, no! I am being held hostage by polka dot pygmies."
But there was that Bosporus view, the executive lounge and a fancy john that did more intimate things to the body than one could or should be able to imagine. I would have traded it all for at least the kind of 'free' Internet service where they hide the charges in the bill. Swissotel's charge was out for all to see: 29 Euros a day.
This, and raising prices for Formula 1, led me to conclude that the folks at the Swissotel are competition morons. After three days, I decided that I had had enough of Swissotel. I moved a few blocks away to the Bentley.
"And what about Internet?" I snarled to the guy at the registration desk.
"No charge," he said.
The Bentley now has a loyal customer.
I just wish they would hang some neon outside.
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