Although not expensive, this hotel was more expensive than our one of a kind experience in…read moreCappadocia, and more than the nice Obelisk Hotel in Istanbul. We knew we were arriving late, we had told him when we made the reservation, we gave a pretty accurate email and again a message by Whatsapp driving in. We asked him if we should eat on the way, or if there was a restaurant nearby that would be open. He assured us the restaurant across from his hotel would be open, but as it turns out, he didn't check. Driving to the hotel was quite the adventure as Google Maps doesn't make a distinction between real roads and Medieval cobblestone paths with road names, our midsize SUV rental often had only 5 centimeters clearance on either side. I felt like a time traveler in an anachronistic future vehicle, what we needed was a horse and a mule.
At night the neighborhood seemed a little sketchy, all the buildings were a century or two old, some were abandoned. The hotel doesn't look like a hotel, it only has two guest rooms, and there's a small sign on the front, and there was no answer. We called him and he seemed surprised we arrived at the time we said we would, he said to wait a few minutes for his "friend" to come by and let us in. She did arrive in a few minutes and opened the door for us, showed us our room upstairs, gave us two keys, and left.
There was no open restaurant in front, we called and he was surprised, he obviously hadn't checked. He said to walk to the town center and we would find something. It wasn't that obvious which way to walk, it was dark, and an ancient bridge was involved but we did find the village center where all the restaurants were closed though we managed to get in the door of one that was cleaning up and he still hadn't put away the stew so that's what he served us. It was actually pretty good but I was irritated with the hotel owner. The hotel is very cute on the inside, the room was Spartan but comfortable, there aren't enough plugs and a lot of minor repairs are necessary. The one biggest problem is that there was an entire door missing from the shower walls, so it was impossible to take a shower without flooding the bathroom. Judging from all the bathrooms we stayed in in Turkiye, they don't think of the hand held part of the shower to be used as a wall shower head, the placement of the holder for the handheld part suggests they think of it as a place to put the handheld until you turn it on with it in your hand.
In the morning, things looked better, but there are a few derelict buildings around. Breakfast was okay, there was no sugar for the tea or coffee, and some of the cheese was moldy. We got a traditional egg-tomato dish called menemen. There are also many friendly cats. The location is perfect if you like to see how people live where you're traveling, and it's a short, challenging, interesting, drive up to the Bergama (Pergamon) Akropolis. All in all, it was okay and although we've stayed in better hotels, it was really good to get up after a good night's sleep and be the first visitors of the day to the Akropolis. It was also a good experience to stay in an otherwise residential area of Izmir-Bergama.
