Aprilis Gold Hotel - Special Category

Fantastic location in Sultanahmet, walking distance to metro, Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia.

Excellent location, staff were friendly and professional.

Walls are a bit thin, if you have loud guests next door you can hear their conversation.

Clean. Good bed and shower

All good

.....

I really did not like the location of this hotel. It is slap bang in the middle of the tourist trap that is Sultanahmet, surrounded by tacky shops and restaurants that seem geared towards extracting as much money as possible from unsuspecting tourists. Prices are inflated because they know tourists will pay them. If I came back to Istanbul, I would stay further out, where prices are cheaper. I also really disliked the breakfast. It seemed like an exercise in cost-cutting rather than something designed to give guests a decent start to the day. There were cold chips being served. Why at breakfast? I have no idea. And where had they come from?!!! As I don't eat meat, I was particularly disappointed to discover that the scrambled eggs contained some sort of sausage meat. Why? Again, I have no idea. There was also hard beetroot, which wasn't exactly an appetising breakfast option. And then there was the coffee. An old-looking Nescafé machine producing coffee that tasted like dishwater. Sometimes all you want in the morning is a decent cup of coffee, and they couldn't even manage that. The toaster was another farce. It was one of those conveyor-belt things. Put the bread through once and it came out barely toasted. Put it through twice and it came out burnt. Surely there must be a happy medium? The reception team were friendly enough, but I felt they were far more interested in selling you something than actually engaging with you as a guest. Every time we returned from a day out, we were asked whether we'd booked our airport taxi or offered a boat tour. It would have been nice if, occasionally, someone had simply asked, "How was your day?" or "What did you get up to?" But no, it was always another opportunity to sell something. Overall, I wouldn't stay here again.