Hotel Pera Palas, Istanbul, Turkey:
The Pera Palas was built in 1892 to serve passengers on the Orient Express, and later became a favorite of mystery writer Agatha Christie, Dutch spy Mata Hari and Alfred Hitchcock. Christie wrote “Murder on the Orient Express” here. Perhaps the Pera Palas’s mysterious Orientalist, Victorian and French architectural melange inspired her.
THE CLIVEDEN, Buckinghamshire, England:
“We are not amused,” declared frequent Cliveden houseguest Queen Victoria when the Duke of Westminster sold his 17th-century manor house in 1893. But for Cliveden, the sale was just the beginning of a new era of success. Its new owners, American millionaire Waldorf Astor and his wife, Nancy, went on to entertain King George I and Queen Mary, George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill. Cliveden became a hotel in 1986, and guests continue to enjoy the same lavish luxuries as their predecessors.
Mount Washington Hotel & Resort, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, U.S.A.:
In July 1944, delegates from 45 nations gathered at the Mount Washington to create the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. With its golf courses and numerous topnotch restaurants, the resort is still the perfect place to mull over money.
The American Colony Hotel, Jerusalem, Israel:
Teetering on the border between East and West Jerusalem, the Colony was built in the 19th century as an Ottoman palace and has since survived four wars and four rulers (Turkish, British, Jordanian and Israeli). In June 1992, the first secret peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians were held in room 16. The one hotel in Jerusalem that is still consistently booked, the Colony guarantees a little refuge from the war outside its walls. But if the chaos does come into the courtyard, just grab a sheet off your bed and wave it out the window in surrender–like the Turks did in 1917.
Hotel Oloffson, Port-au-Prince, Haiti:
It’s no surprise that Graham Greene based his Hotel Trianon of “The Comedians” on the gingerbread-style Oloffson. Built as a presidential residence in the late 1800s and used as a military hospital by the U.S. Marines in 1915, the Oloffson often served as an unofficial outpost for foreign journalists and CIA operatives during the dictatorships of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier from 1957 to 1986. They would congregate on the veranda, sip rum punches and trade whispers with local regular Aubelin Jolicoeur (on whom Greene based his delightful gossip columnist Petit Pierre). The Oloffson’s mystique remains to this day. And although he’s now in his 80s, Jolicoeur still stops by every few days for a drink and a chat.
