Le Bristol stars in Woody Allen's new film

Le Bristol in rue du Faubourg St-Honoré provides a setting in Woody Allen's latest film, Midnight in Paris, which opened the Cannes Film Festival this year. Time magazine reports: "Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), a writer who's grown restless piling up the money and credits as a Hollywood script doctor, has come to Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her conservative parents John (Kurt Fuller), in town on a business deal, and Helen (Mimi Kennedy). Ensconced at the posh Hotel Bristol, they hate the city, the rich food, the people; they suspect, on little evidence, that a Bristol maid has stolen Inez's pearl earrings..."

Despite the slur, Le Bristol was happy for the exposure, which included shots of its 160sq m Panoramic Suite, which has a terrace, gum and Louis XV furniture. General Manager Didier Galvez said:"We were thrilled to assist Woody Allen, the cast and crew during the making of Midnight in Paris last summer... and are delighted that Le Bristol features alongside such a distinguished cast."

Owen Wilson as Gil and Rachel McAdams as Inez in the gardens of Le Bristol Hôtel

Good times, bad times: Bristols brought to book

“It has left off raining down in Lincolnshire at last, and Chesney Wold has taken heart. Mrs Rouncewell is full of hospitable cares, for Sir Leicester and my Lady are coming home from Paris. The fashionable intelligence has found it out and communicates the glad tidings to benighted England… Through the same cold sunshine and the same sharp wind, my Lady and Sir Leicester, in their travelling chariot (my Lady's woman and Sir Leicester's man affectionate in the rumble), start for home. With a considerable amount of jingling and whip-cracking, and many plunging demonstrations on the part of two bare-backed horses and two centaurs with glazed hats, jack-boots, and flowing manes and tails, they rattle out of the yard of the Hôtel Bristol in the Place Vendôme and canter between the sun-and-shadow-chequered colonnade of the Rue de Rivoli and the garden of the ill-fated palace of a headless king and queen, off by the Place of Concord, and the Elysian Fields, and the Gate of the Star, out of Paris.”

From Bleak House by Charles Dickens, written in instalments in 1852–3. Dickens had stayed at the old Bristol Hôtel and visited it while writing the book. To read the story of Bristol hotels in Paris, see Suha Arafat and the Hope Diamond, chapter 19 in High Times at the Hotel Bristol.
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“By the time we reached the Bristol Hotel in Fahd Al Salem Street [Kuwait City], I had not heard a word of our sales situation in the area, and I was feeling impatient. My irritation increased as soon as I had registered in the hotel. It was the foulest hotel I was ever to visit in my years in the Gulf. It had originally been picked from a list of names.
It would have been a change from the multi-national American-inspired hostelries where I usually stayed, and anywhere in Europe the name Hotel Bristol was almost invariably an assurance of five-star quality, since they derived their name from the patronage of the well-travelled 4th Marquess who bore the title of the great English port. It transpired that this hotel Bristol was a parody of its reputation – a misnomer designed to entrap the unwary traveller – an angler’s deceit in casting his fatal fly – a travesty of all that was true.”

From Death in Riyadh: Dark Secrets in Hidden Arabia, by Geoff Carter
(Arena Books 2001)

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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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