PLAN AHEAD
WHEN WORLD TRAVEL RESUMES, KATIE BROOKS SAYS YOU SHOULD MAKE A STOPOVER DATE WITH ISTANBUL
■ CORNWALL: A Cornwall hotel is to open the UK’s first purposedesigned and built ‘socially distanced’ hotel restaurant.
Nicknamed ‘The Anti-Social Club’, the new dining concept at Rock’s St Moritz Hotel & Spa will consist of 16 private dining rooms, with a maximum of 96 covers and will ensure the two-metre rule and new environmental health requirements are met at all times.
The pop-up summer restaurant has been specifically designed to ensure the individual dining rooms are all accessed from outside, with the service function being provided from a central atrium, and all food and drink being delivered to the private dining rooms via a set of hatches.
St Moritz Hotel & Spa intends to reopen all hotel rooms, self-catering apartments and villas, as well as launch the ‘pop-up’, on July 4.
■ MAURITIUS: Inspiring Travel Company offers a seven-night stay at Shangri-La Le Touessrok Resort & Spa from £2,499 per person.
Based on two adults sharing a Coral Deluxe Room Ocean View Room and including daily breakfast, return flights from the UK and private transfers.
Valid for travel completed between January 4 – December 20, 2021. To book visit inspiringtravelcompany. co.uk/ or call 01244 433 311.
■ ICELAND: Travellers can sail through icy waters as they venture through the rugged charms of the Arctic Circle. Aspiring photographers will be wowed by the stark, expansive setting of the magical landscape, while another picture-perfect moment will present itself when the midnight sun bathes the frozen scenery with warmth.
Iglu Cruises offers the Iceland with Reykjavik sailing to the region that also takes in Reykjavik and Tórshavn, the chocolate-box capital of the Faroe Islands. Prices from £1,699 per person for 14-nights on board Cunard’s Queen Victoria. Departure on July 11, 2021.
Visit iglucruise.com, or call 020 3993 6390.
■ CORFU FROM £479PP: Save 29% on a week’s all-inclusive at the four-star Labranda Sandy Beach Resort in Agios Georgios. The price also includes flights from Bristol on May 10, 2021. Book at olympicholidays.com or call 020 8492 6868.
WE ALL love a direct flight when we go on holiday but sometimes it just isn’t possible. It might be down to the cost or there isn’t a direct route to the destination of your choice.
But while a stopover can initially feel like an inconvenience, you can turn it to your advantage.
Spending up to 24 hours in a city before continuing your journey, offers the chance to explore, and nowhere better than exotic Istanbul, straddling not just two continents but also European and Asian cultures.
It blurs time, too, being home to artistic and architectural masterpieces at the same time as being a metropolitan city.
Before the coronavirus crisis, I joined the thousands of Brits who travel from Birmingham Airport to Istanbul each year.
Ten flights depart from Birmingham every week, mainly to the tourist destinations of Bodrum, Antalya and Ankara.
But Istanbul is a treat to savour, whether on that stopover or as a destination in its own right.
We landed at the new Istanbul airport which is still under construction, although you wouldn’t know that from the inside because the terminal is so luxurious.
From there, it was a 45-minute taxi ride into the city.
An underground railway is being built, cutting journey time to 25 minutes – on a stopover, every minute counts.
When you fly Turkish Airlines, you can enjoy a one-night stay for free in a four-star hotel when your stopover lasts more than 20 hours. Fly Business Class, as I did, and that’s upgraded to two nights in a five-star hotel.
I stayed at Pera Palace Hotel in the city centre, a sight to behold.
The elegant hotel has welcomed many famous travellers including Agatha Christie, who wrote part of Murder on the Orient Express while staying here.
It dates back to the 19th century and there’s a lot of history inside its walls, including a museum which is open to the public.
Each of its 115 rooms is shaped to display unique details and is combined with more than 100 years of history. My Deluxe Pera room boasted a walk-in shower with a bath inside it!
There was also a huge 49” TV which had a wide variety of channels, including BBC World News and CNN.
Delightful as the hotel was, the clock was ticking. Time to explore.
My tip? If you’ve not been here before, take a guided tour of city highlights to see some of the top attractions.
You can enjoy the tour of Istanbul for free if you have at least a six-hour layover between flights.
We headed for the old part of the city where you can find the Hippodrome area, the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and the Basilica Cistern.
Women should wear trousers or a longer skirt or dress for the tour, particularly for visiting the Blue Mosque, also known as the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, where you’ll be provided with a headscarf to enter.
It’s a stunning piece of architecture and you can marvel at the blue tiles which give it its famous name. Be warned, however, that it’s currently undergoing renovation so you can’t see the huge dome in the middle.
The Hagia Sophia is also being renovated, although most of the detail is still visible when you look around.
One of the world’s most famous buildings, it started life as a Greek Orthodox Christian patriarchal cathedral, before later becoming an Ottoman imperial mosque. Now it’s a museum and tourists can enjoy history dating back to AD537, at the beginning of the Middle Ages.
Next stop should be the Basilica Cistern, which fans of Dan Brown’s thriller, Inferno, will recognise from the movie starring Tom Hanks.