Istanbul’s new House of fun
ISTANBUL has long been on my dream destination list – and the opening of the latest outpost of members’ club Soho House in the city earlier this year meant we had the perfect base for this sprawling and buzzing city.
Soho House has been created in an incredible building – a 19th Century palazzo and the former US Embassy. We were left open-mouthed wandering around the grand rooms, featuring the original high ceilings, wood panelling and marble staircases.
We actually stayed at the Shangri-La for our first night while we got our bearings. Positioned on the edge of the Bosphorus, it was the ideal location from which to jump on a ferry to cross to the Asian side of the city.
Istanbul was much bigger than I imagined – a long weekend wasn’t quite long enough for all the exploring we’d hoped to do. To help concentrate on the key attractions, we booked a guide with Istanbul Studio tours.
The advantage of having a guide is that you jump the queues at the mosques and you’re less likely to get lost at the Grand Bazaar – one of the biggest covered markets in the world, with a head-spinning 3,000 outlets. There are more pashmina shops there than you can shake a shisha at.
For the rest of our stay we were based at Soho House. The place has an open-air restaurant that came to life at dusk with its canopy of lights. And at the top of the building is a bar with views across to the Old Town. We took full advantage of the hotel’s Cowshed spa. It was a great spot to kick back after a long day wandering around the city. There’s even a men’s grooming section.
It’s a brilliant idea if you’re there with your partner – you can be sitting there while staff give your hair a new lease of life with a blow dry while your companion has a traditional wet shave. But it was the Turkish hammam that really blew us away. After being scrubbed and exfoliated from my nose to my toes on warm marble, I was doused in buckets and buckets of warm soapy water, producing a mountain of satin-like bubbles on top of me.
After this full-foam massage – and another huge deluge of water (miraculously no soap in my eyes) – I emerged squeaky-clean and rejuvenated. That’s what you call a Turkish delight.