Gamblers' hotel discount in Russia

So, Russia has once again decided to allow certain areas of the country to run casinos. The move has been hotly debated in the country, and we don't want to get involved in the debate. All we'd like to pass on is the fact that the Hotel Bristol in Yelsk (or Elsk, it gets transliterated a lot different ways), in one the of the chosen regions, is offering a discount on its rates to gamblers. The 36-bedroom 3-star Bristol, pictured here, is a modern business-oriented hotel, but the original Bristol in this trading port on the Sea of Azov opened more than 100 years ago.

Phantom Bristol hotels

Bristol hotels crop up a lot in fiction. It is a landmark in Jan Morris’s convincingly real Mediterranean city state of Hav (“You desperately want the place to exist,” said the Observer book reviewer. “with all its idiosyncrasies - the snowberries that ripen only 'when the early spring suns melt the last of the escarpment's winter snows'; the lethal Roof-Race which is to the people of Hav 'as the bull-running is to Pamplona'."

Roald Dahl had an invented Bristol Hotel in Cannes, in his story Skin, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 just before Christmas. It was a double bluff, as the fact that there is no Bristol hotel in Cannes provided a punchline to the tale.

The Bristol hotel 'in a large city on the Atlantic coast' of America is also the setting for “A Night at the Bristol Hotel” This “ancient edifice of four stories, weather-darkened and squeezed on every side by the overgrowth of the great city....” provides the backdrop for spooky short story that has just been published on a blog by Norman A. Rubin.

And there is City of Ghosts, a story about the Capsis Bristol in Salonica, where Tom Cotton found himself one Easter weekend.

Christmas in Bristols past

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150 years ago On Christmas day 1859 the poet/painter Edward Lear arrived at the Hotel Bristol in Marseilles after a rapid journey across France on the new railways system: "Suffered from heat & cramps at first but wore thro' the night to Dijon at 2½ , & at Lyons by 6½. After that the weather cleared, & I read and looked out of windows at the mountains beyond Valence. All the better for it and afterwards the olives and stones. But the afternoon clouded and became wet. At Marseilles by 3½ . No bother with luggage. Came to Hotel Bristol, washed & dressed by 5 – table d'hôte dinner tolerable. 2 sets of English & a very nice fellow, Dr Chisholm, from India. Came to bed @ 9 and slept well."

There was still a Bristol Hotel in Marseille, at 18 Canabiere (pictured) up until around the 1960s, but there is no longer one there now.

70 years ago On Christmas day 1939 the veteran US journalist Ed Murrow (left) gave his regular 5-minute broadcast from Warsaw: "For reasons of national as well as personal secucrity I am unable to tell you the exact location from where I am speaking," he told his American audience on NBC. "Spread out beyond the roof before me is a vast sea of darkness, patchily illuminated by burning buildings... Off to the west is a line of fire that marks the location of the battle line between the German and Polish armies, a line marked by the muzzle flashes of artillery, flares hanging in the air between the two armies and burning buildings that have been struck by shells. That line goes off beyond the horizon in either direction, reaching all the way to the Lithuanian border in the north and all the way to the Czechoslovak border in the south."

.....In fact Murrow was speaking from the terrace outside the Paderewski suite in the Hotel Bristol, still a high spot in the city.

Scandal of the Bristols

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"The disgrace and disintegration of three aristocratic families" is the sub-title of a new book, Spleandour & Squalor by Marcus Scriven, and it is no surprise to see that the Bristols are one of the three. The fortune of the family that gave its name to the hotel trade was most spectacularly dissipated by John Hervey, the 6th Earl, who is said to have spent £7million on drugs, for which he was at one stage jailed. You can read about him in "LL Cool J and the Man who Shot Andy Warhol", chapter 7 in High Times at the Hotel Bristol. He did, however, not stand much of a chance, being the son of the Victor, the 6th Earl, who had also put in time for robbery and was, according to Scriven, the inspiration for Evelyn Waugh's Basil Seal Rides Again: Or, the The Rake's Regress. Victor's story is told in Paris Hilton & Lady Victoria Hervey, which can be read on-line.

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Bristol hotel revived in Romania

Well well, another Bristol hotel has been revived in the east. The old Bristol hotel at 12 Domneasca Street in Galati has returned to its former name after being the Galati for many years under communism. The old building (right), like most in Ceaucescu's Romania, is entirely rebuilt (left) and has added a 'Le' before the Bristol - but then Romania always had pretensions towards Paris. Hotel Le Bristol could provide a pleasant place to stay in the Moldavian city on the banks of the Danube not far from the Black Sea. But somehow the old Bristol looks more inviting.

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Steamboat Springs Bristol gets snowboarders' vote

Snowboard magazine in the US has just voted the Bristol Hotel in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, hotel of the week. "Why stay at a chain hotel when you can check out a place with some local flavor for the same price," says the magazine.

The hotel, illustrated here, was established in 1948 by local police chief Everett Bristol – so there is no doubting how this hotel got its name. With a welcoming host, Petrona Pusey, it's a great hotel in the middle of town, with a real old-time feel.

"The roots of Steamboat Springs are in ranching," says the hotel. "And that's the flavor that embraces you as you step across the threshold to an era gone by. You can almost hear spurs jingling with each footfall as the Bristol's ambience, like a Zane Grey novel, takes you to a simpler time. Hang up your duster, put your wide-brim on the hook and stay awhile."

Sounds wonderful. For other Bristol hotels in snowy skiing locations, visit Ski Bristol Hotels.

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Hotel Bristol in Lagos comes down

The old Bristol Hotel in Martins Street, Lagos, is being demolished today. One of the city's well-known hotels, where foreigners used to go to exchange money, it has long been on the shabby side – there was even once a lynching in its garden. For some time, it has been in steady decline. The Martins family, who own the land, has been given permission by the state governor to pull it down, following the expiry of its 50-year lease.

This is one of the last hotel Bristols in Africa – the famous one in Cairo is long gone, leaving only three, in Tunis, Tangier and Asmara, in Eritrea.

LET THEM EAT HANDBAGS

Chef Laurent Jeannine at Le Bristol in Paris has produced a fancy chocolate dessert shaped like a handbag – another must-have for the must-buy clientele of the top hotel. At only 30 euros, it will add relatively little to Sarkozy's lunchtime bill.

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