Fair dinkum bars Down Under

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Not all Bristol hotels are places of accommodation. On the other side of the world they are better known as bars and pubs.
The Bristol Arms Retro Hotel in Sydney’s clubland, for example, is a lively nightspot with seven bars on five floors. Converted in 2004, its speciality is hen parties, while July sees winter warm-up nights – wear Hawaiian print or diving mask and snorkel for free ‘VIP’ entry.

The Bristol Hotel in Williamstown, Melbourne, on the other hand, is a traditional pub. "Like a step back in time," says one satisfied customer “The publican, 'Bear', usually gives you the first drink on the house and any information you require regarding the local area and the pub’s history. No pokies, eftpos or computerised sales systems – it really is a unique hotel full of friendly locals and fair dinkum humour that only a visit could explain."
It even has an old-time Ladies’ Lounge.

The Hotel Bristol in Wellington, New Zealand, also sounds like a friendly bar. ”It’s the way a bar should be,” says the promo. "The Bristol is the sort of place that has the right feel. It’s not too small and it’s not too big. It’s not too dark and it’s not too bright. The food is great but the prices aren’t. And you can hear yourself think... except perhaps when a really good live band is playing, or the ‘Canes are dicking the Blues, or the day nighter is down to the last over, or just because the place is packed on a normal Friday night (well, maybe it can get a bit noisy)."

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High Times at the Hotel Bristol on BBC Radio 4

High Times at the Hotel Bristol featured on BBC Radio 4's Excess Baggage on February 2. The presenter John McCarthy interviewed the author, Roger Williams, about the 200-or-so hotels called Bristol around the world, about how they got their name and about some of the stories they had to tell.
To listen to the programme as a download or podcast, visit Excess Baggage website.
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JAMES BOND IN PANAMA
Judi Dench chose The Bristol Panama to stay in while recently shooting scenes for Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond film in which she once again plays "M", with Daniel Craig as 007. Her stay lasted a week, and though the hotel, one of the best in Panama city, may have appreciated her visit, the location was chosen to represent Haiti. The film's title comes from a short story by Ian Fleming, and it reflects how Bond's heart had been broken at the end of Casino Royale. "When relationships go wrong," Craig told a press conference, "when there's nothing left, when the spark has gone, when the fire's gone out, there's no quantum of solace. At the end of the last movie, Bond has the love of his life taken away from him and he never got that quantum of solace." Now he is out to get the man responsible.
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BRISTOL IN RUSSIA REOPENS
The name of Bristol in the town of Elsk (or Yeysk) in Russia recently resurfaced after the best part of a century. The first guests in the modern 36-room Bristol hotel were a business group from the French Dreyfus company which had been also frequent guests of the city's old Bristol a century ago. Groupe Louis Dreyfus S.A, the huge family-owned commodity trader, was the major wheat exporter in this port on the Sea of Azov before the Revolution that brought about the demise of most Bristol hotels in Russia.
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TRAGEDY AT THE NEWQUAY BRISTOL
A coroner in Truro, Cornwall, has recorded a verdict of suicide in the case of Robert Cheetham, a 38-year-old GP who was found dead in the Best Western Hotel Bristol in Newquay on December 5. The doctor, who was married with two children, worked for the Kernowdoc 24-hout GP service. Two days previously, following a call, he had erroneously driven to Bodmin instead of St Austell, a mistake he was convinced would cost him his job. He was found at the Bristol Hotel in Newquay after being reported missing by his wife. He had injected himself with an overdose of diamorphine.
The Hotel Bristol has been run by the Young family since 1927.
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ICE BAR FOR INDIA'S BRISTOL
The 5-star Hotel Bristol in Gurgaon, near Delhi, is set to have India’s first ice bar, where everything from the glasses to the décor will be made of ice and the ambient temperature is -5degC. Hotels and restaurants with bar licences are to be allowed to open ice bars by paying an additional annual fee of Rs 1 lakh.
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THESSALONIKI'S BEST
The 412-room 4-star Capsis Bristol in Thessaloniki, Greece, had a good mention in the Observer this month. "The city's only boutique hotel has a range of rooms tastefully decorated in period style, with doubles from around €160. There is a gourmet restaurant and a classy first-floor terrace to boot," wrote Rough Guide author Nick Edwards
For a new High Times at the Hotel Bristol story about the Thessaloniki Bristol, see City of Ghosts
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ABSEILING THE BRISTOL FOR CHARITY
Just posted on YouTube is this video of a student abseiling from the roof of the Hotel Bristol in Sheffield to raise money for the Sheffield Kidney Research Foundation. The hotel has since changed its name to the Park Inn.
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LESSON FROM THE OLD BRISTOL HOTEL IN PARIS
"Cooking demands complete dedication. One must think only of one's work. When I began as an apprentice I was in the kitchen at five o'clock in the morning and I did not stop until eleven at night, with just a couple hours rest in the afternoon. That was my schedule in 1914 at the Hôtel Bristol in Paris. It has been my schedule ever since. It's too much isn't it? But la grande cuisine is pitiless!" — Fernand Point (1897–1955), father of modern French Cuisine. He was the chef-owner of de la Pyramide in Vienne, where Paul Bocuse trained. A recent mention of his cookbook, Ma Gastraonomie, in the Wall Street Journal sent the price of his 1969 book rocketing. The Hotel Bristol in Paris was then in the Place Vendôme, see Suha Arafat and the Hope Diamond, chapter 19 in High Times at the Hotel Bristol.

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Sarkozy, Bruni and 'gooseberry' Blair

From The Guardian, Jan 13: "Smooching their way through a five-course lunch yesterday at an exclusive Paris restaurant, President Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni made it clear that they care nothing for what anyone thinks, including their gooseberry guest of honour, Tony Blair. The former PM was invited to the five-star Hotel Bristol after addressing a rally of Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement party. But all eyes were on the 40-year-old Bruni, who every now and again lifted her sunglasses to lean in and nuzzle the presidential cheek. Sarkozy reciprocated with kisses and cuddles, oblivious of any uncomfortable fidgeting from those around them."
Fashion shows are a regular event at Le Bristol, which was the chosen venue for a recent ceremony to award Jonathan Newhouse with the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. The chariman of Condé Nast Internationlal, and nephew of founder Si Newhouse, once told a magazine "Throughout the years my family has worked in the same way – seriously and in a quiet manner. Our style has been to concentrate on the business and not to seek attention for ourselves." But at the glamorous Bristol, with Karl Lagerfeld, Stefano Pilati, Alber Elbaz, Nicolas Ghesquière, Franca Sozzani, Carine Roitfeld, Pharrell Williams and Pat McGrath in attendance, he was a little more conspicuous than usual.
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L.A. REVIVAL
This story has been going around for a while, and it might not happen yet. Los Angeles restaurateur Adolfo Sauya and smart designer Dodd Mitchell, who are behind the fashionable Zen Grill & Sake Lounge in Westwood, have a plan to put their and culinary and design skills towards reviving the 1927 Art Nouveau Bristol Hotel (pictured) on 8th and Olive streets. Their plan, initially slated for compketeion three years ago. will give it up to 100 rooms, an Asian-themed restaurant, a bar and a nightclub. It's all part of the sign that downtown L.A. is on its way up.

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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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Bristol hotels are tops

Le Bristol Hotel in Paris has been voted the Leading Hotel in Europe at the prestigious 2007 World Travel Awards. It was also voted Leading Hotel in France, while the Hotel Bristol in Vienna was voted Leading Hotel in Austria. The trophies in the Europe category, pictured here, were presented at the Marriott Hotel Gosforth Park in Newcastle in November. Said a spokesman for the awards, "With thousands of votes cast by travel professionals from 167,000 travel agencies, tour and transport companies and tourism organisations in over 160 countries, winning a World Travel Award has become one of the highest accolades a travel organisation achieve."
The Prince of Wales Suite in Vienna's Hotel Bristol was voted Austria's Leading Suite. It is the largest hotel suite in Austria, with a library, dining room, office, fitness room and sauna. When in Austria the Prince of Wales famously visited a public sauna, appearing naked with his equally naked, and embarrassed, security guards. You can read all about the Prince of Wales and his affair with Wallis Simpson at the hotel in HIGH NOON FOR THE QUEEN'S MOLL, Chapter 6 in High Times at the Hotel Bristol.

Another recent award winner is the Hotel Bristol in Amman, Jordan. At the 7th Annual International Hospitality Awards, the Middle East's major trade show for hotel equipment and food services, the Bristol, which opened in 2001, received 9 awards including a gold for bed-making. General Manager Alfonso Nocero said that that this achievement serves to solidify Bristol's image as a provider of premium quality services.

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How Villars' Hotel Bristol brought Aitken down

Jonathan Aitken, recently put in charge of the Conservative Party’s task force on prison reform, may reflect that he owes his appointment in part to the Hotel Bristol in Villars, Switzerland (right). In 1993 Mohamad Al Fayad, owner of the Ritz hotel in Paris, told the Guardian newspaper that Aitken, then Minister of State for Defence Procurement, had been staying at his hotel, and his bill had been paid by Saudi businessman Said Ayas, adviser to King Fahd’s son, Prince Mohammed. Aitken denied this, claiming that his wife, Lolicia, had paid the bill, and he sued the paper. The case looked as it was going his way until the eleventh hour, when Al Fayad revealed the log of phone calls made by Aitken from the Ritz on the morning of his departure, including calls to the Hotel Bristol in Villars. A Guardian reporter sped to the hotel where he found its papers in boxes, as it was going through a change of ownership. For three days he sifted through them until he discovered that on the day in question Lolicia Aitken and her mother had been staying at the Swiss hotel – so they could not have been at the Ritz to pay the bill. Jailed for perjury, Aitken served seven of his 18-month jail term, providing him with the basis of his new career.
For the full story, see The Minister Who Didn't Pay his Bill

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Scandal of Victor Hervey, 6th Marquess of Bristol

LORD BRISTOL, 'CUNNING CRIMINAL'
The National Archives have recently opened their files on Victor Frederick Cochrane Hervey, 6th Marquess of Bristol, father of society limelighters Victoria and Isabella Hervey. The report by the Metropolitan Police CID, , dated January 2, 1946, came in reponse to an anonymous letter-writer's claim that he was behind "almost every jewel robbery in the metropolitan area and within areas outside London"and was "one of the most unscrupulous, calculating and cunning criminals at large". No evidence was found against him and the investigating officer concluded. "Although vicious to almost a sadistic degree, I am certain he would not be fool enough to carry firearms.". An account of the court case in which Hervey was jailed for three years for two Mayfair jewellery robberies in 1939 is the background to Paris Hilton and Victoria Hervey, one of the stories in High Times at the Hotel Bristol.

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