Looking for a good place to stay in the Marais? Check out the Jardins du Marais hotel. Within a short stroll from the lovely Place de Vosges and all the merriment of the Marais, the helpful staff will help you have a great visit to Paris.
Paris hotels can be a bit, well, tricky. A favorite can quickly become a has-been and even a favorite can be too small, too old, or too “European” for some tastes. (Especially American ones.)
Louis points the way to a good hotel in the Marais
So, while I have a few other standbys for Paris jaunts of all shapes and sizes (and budgets), there’s a nice place in the Marais very near the perfection that is the Place de Vosges, appropriately called The Jardins du Marais.
As is so important in the strollable City of Light, there’s the hotel’s amazing location. While I have a personal connection to the more sedate 7th, the Marais is a center of many things cultural (the fascinating Carnavalet Museum, the newly refurbed and oh-so-popular Picasso Museum) and definitely some great nights out.
With a groovy lobby area and cool courtyard for convening with fellow travellers, the rooms at the Jardin du Marais are unusually spacious for Parisian hotels. (The room I stayed in even had a mini-kitchen.)
And beyond that, there was the welcome. The staff were beyond helpful. From check-in to baggage dude, everyone went out of their way to give you a hand. In great English and multiple languages too, should you not be proficient when you parlez Francais.
I snagged a deal on Orbitz when I stayed, but the hotel also has special offers when you book direct.
The word’s out about Zoe. A few weeks ago, a friend and I just tried to book into the Hotel Empress Zoe— one of my favorite hotels anywhere on the planet– and it was already sold out for September. Last time I visited, I made a reservation only a week before I arrived.
Because the scarcity is a sign of the hotel’s excellence and an indicator of Istanbul’s growing popularity as a destination, it just means you have to plan ahead. Further ahead than you may like at certain times of year, but the Hotel Empress Zoe is definitely worth it: wonderfully friendly and helpful staff, a great central location, and unique touches that always remind you that you’re in enchanting Istanbul.
Situated in the Sultanhamet, staying at the Empress Zoe puts you within walking distance of the iconic and astounding Blue Mosque, Hagia Sofia, and Topkapi Palace, among several other essential Istanbul sites. You’ll be well-fuelled for sightseeing with the excellent coffee and delicious breakfast buffet, which you can eat in the hotel’s lovely garden.
Before or after seeing the sights, you can recline on a a comfortable daybed that’s covered in Turkish textiles. (Many of the hotel’s rooms and suites have daybeds and other unique extras, like marble hamam style bathrooms.) The daybed in my room was perfect for reading the works of Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize-winning author who weaves so much of Istanbul and Turkey into his transformative writing.
Sometimes, you’re sad when a great gem of a hotel gets popular. But other times, you think, well, they deserve the success. The folks who own and run the Hotel Empress Zoe definitely deserve every success. So if you’re fixing to go to Turkey, plan ahead so that you can stay at one of the most welcoming and unique places I’ve ever stayed in my travels.
Before we begin, we would like to wish Prince Philip (aka the Queen of England’s hubby), a very happy birthday. Prince Philip was born on Corfu on the date of this entry’s publication a whopping 4 score and a decade ago. If you believe the newspapers, Prince Philip would probably welcome my greeting by saying something inappropriate to me, but you get to do what you want when you’re 90 and were once, according to lore, smuggled from your island home in a fruit basket as a wee tot.
Fortunately, you do not need to get to and from Corfu in such dire modes of transport. While the rusty little ferry that brings you to Corfu from Igoumenitsa is certainly not confidence-inspiring, the ferries aren’t near as cramped as a fruit basket would be. Of course, with all the budget airlines now, you can also fly to Corfu very easily and avoid the rust bucket ferries, but getting to an iconic Greek isle by boat– even rusty ones with engines that make ominous grinding sounds– is all part of the adventure.
Though many flock to Corfu for relaxing villa holidays on the island’s somewhat less populated shores, staying in cosmopolitan Corfu Town for a few days provides a nice mix of seaside relaxation with the pleasant bustle of an island town. (It’s a particularly good idea to stay in Corfu Town if you visit during the off-season; the rest of the island can get a little too mellow when it’s not the height of tourist time.)
As befitting a place on UNESCO’s world heritage list, Corfu’s old town has an interesting mix of architecture that comes from being a point of interest for the numerous empires that perpetually harrassed it (the Venetians, the Turks, and the British, to name a few). To look back even further into the island’s more mythical past, the Archeological Museumof Corfu offers an impressive collection of artifacts from around the island, and is worth the hour or two it takes to visit. (I particularly liked a very nice reconstructed temple frieze of Medusa, the original femme fatale.) NB: Keep in mind that many Greek establishments regularly keep slightly irregular hours; with the troubles in Greece at present, staffing at even large museums has been a problem. As the museum’s not too far from the town center, it might be a good idea to visit and see when opening times are. (No matter what’s going on, a lot of museums all over Greece seem to shut after 2ish or 3ish).
For a nice, easy walk from the town center, head out to Villa Mon Repos. The Villa is Prince Philip’s birthplace and is encircled by lovely parkland open to the public. Level footpaths take you around a good assortment of moss-covered ruins that are nestled in a pleasantly shady forest. And the shade is prized; even in the winter months, Corfu can be very hot.
Lovely Harbor, Corfu Town
Back in town after our rambles in nature and along the Ionian sea, my husband and I really enjoyed staying at the Hotel Cavalieri. The hotel has a great location right in the town center, next to a slew of cafes and bars that stay open well into dawn. The hotel’s roof bar offers stunning views, making the roof deck popular with locals when it’s open in season. Our neat, clean room also had a lovely view of the sea.
In addition to lovely vistas, Corfu Town also offers a more meat-tastic highlight– the perfect gyro. In an admittedly obsessive quest to taste the best gyro in Greece, my husband and I found one of the strongest contenders in Corfu Town. We ate the gyro of our dreams (enrobed in some kind of delicious, tangy brown sauce) at the “O Ninoe” taverna at least once a day. The other homestyle Greek food served there was also compelling and drew a fairly large local following, but our hearts were stuck on the gyro.
Of course, there’s lots of seafood to choose from in Corfu as well, which can be enjoyed at numerous seaside restaurants. However, our taste for calamari quickly tapered off after seeing numerous locals catching octopi on our walks. Was it the severed chicken foot used as bait? Was it the sick wet thwacking sound as the fisherman brained the octopus on seaside rocks? One never knows with such sudden culinary aversions. Suffice it to say that this spectacle focused our minds even more on the meaty delights of O Ninoe and all the pleasures that can be found away from the seaside in Corfu’s lovely, well-preserved old town.
If you’re looking to stay in a place with good rates and some design flair, without a lot of the usual scenesters and tourist sprawl that accompanies those things, check out the Hotel Sublim Eiffel in Paris’ very residential 15th arrondissement. Should you stay out well past your bedtime as often happens in Paris, the rooms are wonderfully dark and quiet for some good do-do action. (NB: “Do-do” is French for “sleep” and is not related to the American “doo-doo,” which does, admittedly, happen in hotel rooms, but let’s not discuss that here.)
On my recommendation, some friends of mine recently stayed at the Sublim. They also loved it, attesting to the hotel’s excellence and value. Of course, immediately after that, the hotel appeared in a major newspaper’s write-up of “hidden gems” among Paris hotels. Hopefully, this won’t ruin the vibe or the value.
Though there is no snorkeling in Utah’s Capitol Reef, it is one of the best places for an introduction to the geology lesson that the Great American West provides from the Western edge of Colorado to the chasm of the Grand Canyon. Along with impressive insights into the natural forces that made the 100-mile long monocline known as the Waterpocket Fold, Capitol Reef National Park also provides a glimpse into the people who have left more temporary traces on the area’s landscape, including the First Nations, pioneer settlers, the likes of Butch Cassidy, and the modern ranchers whose cattle are the most dominant life-form in the area.
One of the best and most “western” hotels in the Best Western chain, The Capitol Reef Resort, can be found right at the gate of Capitol Reef National Park. A great base camp for park exploration, the hotel even has a hot tub where you can contemplate how the changing light alters canyon hues while soaking hike-weary bones.
To wash down the trail dust and fuel up for back country exploration, a bar/restaurant across the street from the hotel, The Rim Rock Patio/Spaghetti Western Cafe offers some of Utah’s finest beers and a very satisfying pizza. The outdoor dining area has some of the nicest dart set-ups I’ve seen in any bar, and, if you’re able to extend your arms after a full day’s hike, it’s a fun way to spend the evening. The night we visited, the very kind-hearted woman proprietor showed us where we were on her groovy, vintage topographical wall map on which decades of rubbing fingers from all over the world had lovingly erased our location.
Before and/or after getting beered, hot-tubbed, and generally satiated, you will, of course, want to visit the main attraction, Capitol Reef National Park. You could spend one or several days hiking, biking, and off-roading in this geologic marvel.
One of the best ways to get oriented to the park is the self-guided drive. A map of the self-guided drive stops (along with fabulous fun facts) are available at the park’s visitor center for a nominal fee. At the end of the self-guided drive’s car-based route, a 4-mile round-trip hike takes you through Capitol Reef Gorge, where you can see some of the park’s odd sandstone formations up close, along with the signposts of people who came before.
The most visible of the earliest human traces in the park are amazing
Fremont Petroglyph on Capitol Reef Gorge Trail
petroglyphs, left by the Fremont people, some of the area’s earliest inhabitants. On the Capitol Reef Gorge hike, you can get right up close to a few of these rock carvings, and ponder whether they were made for religious and/or informational purposes. It’s hard not to ge excited when standing inches away from something carved by human hands thousands of years before. Elsewhere in the park, on a large canyon wall, giant Fremont petroglyphs are visible from hundreds of feet away. Gigantic shaman, bighorn sheep, and other animals carved into the red rocks leap off the rocks.
After the First Nations, pioneers traversed the area to head Westward, and on the Capitol Reef Gorge hike, you can also see their names lining the walls, some dating back from the 1840s and 1850s. Butch Cassidy didn’t sign any rock walls, but he allegedly hid out in the area. (Butch Cassidy connections are touted a lot in this particular neck of the woods.)
Later in the 1800s, Mormon settlers recognized that the valley’s ample water supply would be good for farming, particularly fruit trees. Orchards of apples and other fruit trees planted by these intrepid settlers still line Capitol Reef’s valley.
Apple Tree in Capitol Reef
The National Park Service still maintains these fruit trees, and, when the trees are bearing fruit, you can eat an apple, pear, or other fruit for free when you’re in the orchard. If you’d like to take any fruit with you, bags and picking equipment are available, along with a box to leave payment.
If DIY fruit picking’s not up your alley, or if you visit out of fruit-bearing season, you can always enjoy the valley’s fruits at the Gifford Homestead. Located in the old Mormon settlement in the valley, the historic home sells pies made from fruit grown in the area, along with other baked items and preserved goods– great for a pre or post-hike picnic. (The pie made from apples grown in one of the orchards was particularly tasty after hiking the Capitol Reef Gorge trail.)
Though the apple trees and the settlement and the pioneer grafitti and the Fremont petroglyphs all seem to point to the permanence of man’s hand in the landscape, Capitol Reef leaves you with the feeling that we humans are newcomers and short-timers on the planet. The greater permanence of nature, as evidenced by Capitol Reef’s 100-mile long sandstone monocline, endless canyons of every color, harshly dry landscapes that suddenly swell with water– all formed over eons– dwarves our feeble human efforts to leave a mark. In short, we should enjoy the apples, and the apple pie, while we can.
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