Renaissance Hotel Polat Istanbul

I REALLY like this hotel. Of course circumstances would lead to staying about 4 hours there, but this is the essence of modern luxury in Turkey - vast pool, tennis courts, great beds, turkish delight on your pillows at night, a huge flatscreen that you can connect your laptop to via a special port in the wall. EVERYTHING. It truly had everything you can imagine!

also available is a shuttle but that runs hourly to the airport from 6:30am onwards, and one that runs 3 times a day to the city center. The city center shuttle isn't the most convenient time-wise, but it's free.

The only weird thing is that this hotel seems to be under some seriously tight security. There is a guard when you drive in that will check your trunk. And when you enter the doors there are metal detectors that don't seem to be turned on, but still. Perhaps once there was some crazy gang-shoot-out here!

The tea room also looks absolutely magnificent, with a view of the water and pool below (see first picture I uploaded) but CLOSES at 1pm, so I missed having tea here! =( But I suppose it was made up for because when we got into the room, there was an air show going on literally.. right outside my window! =) Wish I could've caught a beautiful sunset or sunrise photo, but we got home far too late and left before the sun came out!