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For a full list of Bristol hotels around the world, visit ALL BRISTOL HOTELS
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Florence, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Sarajevo...

GET A TASTE OF FLORENCE...
The Helvetia & Bristol in Florence is offereing "small, intimate" lessons in Tuscan and Mediterranean cookery under its chef, Enzo Pettè. "Enzo teaches with great passion the simplicity of recreating ancient customs and traditions into a grand contemporary feast," says the hotel where his own preparations can be sampled in the Hostaria Bibendum. The afternoon classes (3–6.30pm) cost 180 euros; 160 if you attend over thee days. For information: Reservation office +39 055 2665554 or email

...and watch the fur fly
Defying the anti-fur lobby, Italian fashion house Fendi showed its winter fur collection at the hotel, with a fur coat as a raffle prize.

WHAT'S THE BEST HOTEL ANNA CHANCELLOR HAS EVER STAYED IN?
"I was filming in Paris and stayed at the Hotel Le Bristol with my daughter Poppy, who was then eight. It was lavish and unexpected and being there with Poppy felt like something out of the book 'Eloise in Paris'." – The actress ("Duckface" in Four Weddings and a Funeral) interviewed in the Daily Telegraph, September 2007
On October 10 Le Bristol was nominated EUROPE'S LEADING HOTEL at the World Travel Awards in Newcastle.

Maybe she should try Rome next...
The Hotel Bernini Bristol in the heart of Rome, has a newly renovated Presidential Suite. On the sixth-floor, it has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, two lounges, a gym and a swimming pool, with a terrace and incomparabvle views over the city, as the picture here shows...

MICHAEL PALIN DIDN'T STAY HERE
The burned out shell of the Hotel Bristol in Sarajevo, not yet recovered from the city's 1,385-day bombardment that ended in 1995, has just been bought by the Malaysian Tradewind hotel group . The company intends to renew the 15-storey 200-room hotel that featured in BBC TV's recent series on Eastern Europe with Michael Palin

MEANWHILE, BELOW STAIRS
Here is a blog about the chambermaids in the smart Hotel Bristol in Geneva where IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) have regular speednetworking evening recently. Hope they have as much fun as the chambermaids seem to have.

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Istanbul Bristol becomes the Pera Museum

The Hotel Bristol in Istanbul was built by the Greek architect Achille Manoussos in 1893. Pera, meaning “beyond” or “across” was the original Greek name for Beyoglu, the area on the opposite side of the Golden Horn from the founding city. It is where foreigners came to live and it is where the Pera Palace Hotel was built, near the Bristol, both favourites for Agatha Christie and other visitors from the Orient Express. In 2005 the Suna and Inan Kiraç Foundation renovated this historical building and turned it into the Pera Museum. It has a permanent collection of Orientalist art, with more than three hundred paintings by European artists inspired by the Ottoman world from the 17th century to the early 19th and including the delightful Tortoise Trainer. Other permanent collections include Anatolian Weights and Measures and Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics, which have lively figurative decorations. The museum also has temporary local and international art exhibitions. If you're passing that way, don't miss it.

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Aerotel Bristol – cockpit or tail?

The lastest Bristol accommodation in New Zealand is two units in a 1950s Bristol Freighter. The Bristol was one of the last allied planes out of Vietnam. It is parked in Woodlyn Park, Waitomo, where there is caving, white water rafting, glow-worm walks and other outdoor fun. Accommodation is from $125 a night for the Tail or $135 a night for the Cockpit. Each area sleeps up to 4 in one double bed and one single bunk set.

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Revolution in Russia

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"A SIGN OF THE TIMES IN RUSSIA:
THE BOMB EXPLOSION AT THE HOTEL BRISTOL, ST. PETERSBURG"
This was a story in the Daily Graphic on March 25, 1905. The report beneath the illustration read:
"The bomb explosion at the hotel here shook the building to its very foundation. Windows were smashed, and some of the walls were cracked. The man who carried the bomb is supposed to have carelessly dropped it, and he paid for his blundering with his own life. At first he was reported to be an Englishman, but it has since been established that he was a revolutionist. A number of people in the hotel were injured by the explosion, and many passers by were hurled to the ground."

The St Petersburg hotel survived, and on the eve of the Revolution 11 years later, "The Bristol, a four-ruble-a-night hotel on an avenue of leafless chestnuts, had been commandeered for the Stavka, the supreme army headquarters. The tsar took his daily walks by the River Moika with his English setters. In the evening he watched movies. His favourite was a 22-reel detective serial called "The Secrets of New York." This come from Brian Moynahan's biography of Rasputin.

The Bristol is no longer there. Other smart hotels like the Kempinski and the Pushkin have taken its place. But in 2012 a new Bristol opened on Ulitsa Rasstanaya in St Petersburg (see New Bristol in St Petersburg).

Before the Revolution there were a number of Bristols in Russia, and in any shtetl you might find a four-rouble-a-night Bristol. The handsome Bristol in Odessa, built in 1899 by the Italian architect Alexander Bernardazzi, changed its name during Soviet times to the Krasnaya, meaning red or beautiful, as in Krasnaya ploschad, Red Square. Recalling its former glory, this grand hotel in the Black Sea resort has now become the Bristol again.

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Coming and going

GOODBYE SHEFFIELD The 111-room Hotel Bristol in Sheffield, which was given its name by the Bristol businessmen who founded it, has just been bought by the fast-expanding Swedish Rezidor Group, and from November 7 it will be renamed the Park Inn.

HELLO RABAT Meanwhile a new Bristol is to be built in Rabat, Morocco, the first overseas enterprise by the Brazilian Bristol hotel chain, which operates 21 hotel and apartment blocks with the Bristol name in the Brazilian states of Minas Gerais, Espitito Santo and Goiás. The north African venture will have 3–4-stars with 96 one- and two- bedroom apartments, and will take around 18 months to build.

GOING UP IN KARACHI Pakistan's first six-star hotel is being built in Islamabad . The Avari Islamabad will be an all-suite hotel, and the first 200 are to be ready by early next year. Making the annoncemen, the Avari hotel group chairman Byram D Avari, said that the Avari family had been known in the hospitality industry since 1944 when his father purchased the Bristol hotel in Karachi.

LEAVING LEBANON "Many clients have left,” says Chantale Zammar, sales manager of the famous Le Bristol hotel in Beirut. “And now we have foreign journalists who always come in times of trouble, like last year during the war between Israel and Hezbollah.”

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Jan Morris & the Bristol of Hav

The latest Hotel Bristol to crop up in fiction appears in the imaginary eastern Mediterranean city created by the travel writer Jan Morris and revisited in her latest book, Last Letters from Hav, just published in paperback.

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