| Michael |
Mar 21st, 2024 07:31 AM |
If you have a car you could stay at this hotel. It was fine except for the particularity described in this paragraph.
The airport is south of Izmir and driving to Selçuk was very easy. We stopped turned off a side street and came upon the first hotel recommended by Fodors'--Hotel Akay ( Hotel Akay Ephesus Selcuk) with Internet access in the lobby--$236 for 3 nights. We asked for a room, got a price and took it. It was more expensive than I recalled, until I read back in the Fodors' and discovered that we were in the new and higher priced section. There was nothing wrong with the room except for one thing that I pointed out to the owner. As an American (perhaps Europeans don't feel the same way), I am in the habit of locking my hotel room door from the inside. This room used the plastic card to turn on the electricity (a pain to separate key and plastic card) so that either the electricity was on or the room was locked but not both. It might have been possible to lock the door, remove the key to turn on the electricity (assuming one has a flashlight--which we did), but in an emergency, it would have been difficult without a flashlight to grab the key and look for the lock in total darkness to open the door. In other words the room was lacking a manual latch. We later discovered that perhaps we should have stayed at the other recommended hotel across from the ruins of St. John's Basilica and midway between our hotel and the center of town--the host appeared friendlier. Breakfast was the standard buffet: coffee or tea, hard-boiled eggs, cubes of Feta-like cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, yogurt, fruit drink and bread. I took tea because the coffee is normally Nescafe--a few places accepted Turkish coffee as a substitute, others charged extra for Turkish coffee. |
