Lonely Planet Review

Hotel Park II outshines its sibling around the corner with great-value rooms plus knockout views. The paint was still wet when we visited and we're afraid that once the paint is well and truly dry the prices might creep up - surely such good value can't last!

Hotel Park offers cheery yellow rooms, newly tiled and decorated, and gleaming white sheets and linen. A nice touch is the chairs upholstered with kilims (woven rugs). The best rooms are those at the front. Upstairs there's a kooky glass-brick bar/seating area and above that a terrace with impressive views over Aya Sofya, the Blue Mosque and the Sea of Marmara. The rooms are fabulous, but the decor in the rest of the place needs a bit more work. The foyer/TV room has downlight overload (so now we know the cause of Istanbul's blackouts!), while the empty bar upstairs isn't the kind of place you'd like to hang out in unless you were paid. Nevermind, we're sure things will get moving around here.