Hotel: Kent
From Fusselman.org
We stayed at the Kent Hotel on the very last night of our 2009 Europe/Egypt trip. The hotel was booked directly through their own website, as the usual hotel websites didn't seem to have much selection of hotels overseas. If I recall, we found them by using Google Maps to search "hotels" near things we wanted to see in Istanbul. The deciding factors in favor of the Kent: Breakfast Included (and early enough to make our flight), Airport Transfers (we didn't want to mess with a cab at the crack of dawn) and reasonable price... I want to say it was around 85euro but I'm not sure anymore. We corresponded wit the hotel by email a few times before and after booking, and their communication was quick and in pretty decent English.
I've told a number of people that the Kent is probably the nicest hotel we had ever stayed in, and I think I can stand by that statement almost a year (and a few hotels) later. The hotel didn't look too over the top from the outside, though that was nice too, but the inside was very nicely finished. The lobby and breakfast areas were well appointed, and generally "classy", and the rooms were very modernly styled with stainless trim, fully tiled bathrooms and nice linens. It doesn't appear to me that the Kent is a part of any chain, though I might be wrong.
We weren't totally sure what all of the things on the buffet breakfast were, but in general, it was excellent, especially the "brownie", which was some kind of flat, chocolate cake. We're pretty sure that the hotel's "airport transfer" driver was the Concierge's cousin with his minivan, but that was just fine with us... The service was prompt, the guy was polite (even if his English was limited), and he covered the distance to the airport in record time.
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