Istanbul Hotel

Our hotel for the Istanbul trip has been booked! $66.40/night + service fees and taxes, blah blah blah, math math math, in the end, it's about $215/person at the Raymond Hotel. Not bad for 6 days in a lovely exotic city.

Photos make it seem super promising and the reviews are incredibly positive. The location is really nice - right in the thick of the old city sights and it's close to a metro line.

I emailed the hotel to make sure that our reservation is confirmed (since I booked through a third party site, hotels.com) and to ask again for the exact type of room we want, emphasizing our bed preference and how we want a non-smoking room, etc. Also, hotels.com was a bit confusing as to whether breakfast was included in the room cost so I wanted to double check with that as well. It's important to contact the hotel to make sure they received your booking, especially when it's foreign, because heaven forbid you're stranded in a foreign country, right? Plus, contacting them this early puts you in their radar and hopefully gets you the best room possible.

Ack! I get so excited when things start to come together.