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| Afternoon Tea at the Historic Pera Palas |
Savvy, seasoned travelers can argue the best places in the world for High Tea. In London, the wonderful establishments, many historical, that offer this 17th century delight are too numerous to list, and there's always the fabulous Victoria Room in Sydney, Australia. Some may even argue that if you want true tradition, you must experience high tea in one of the former British colonies. But as for me, I'll take Istanbul and the mysterious Pera Palas any day, or week, or year. Actually, I do take it, at least once a year.
You see, High Tea is not just about the scones, sweets, savories, and Earl Gray. It is about experience, ambience, anachronism, romance, and mystery. Why just sit for tea and then leave, when you can wander a bit, step back in time, have all your senses stimulated, and dream awhile? I left my colleagues sitting with Earl and wonderful piano music, wandered from the Pera's opulent Kubeli Salon, to the hundred plus year old wooden elevator.
As it carried me slowly to the fourth floor, I was transported to the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, and imagined the famous and often times notorious who had been here before me......and are still here. The atmosphere is thick, replete with whispers, secret negotiations, deceptions, and decisions that perhaps changed the course of history. Had Mata Hari ridden this same elevator on her way to a clandestine meeting with a German liaison? And on one of the floors below had Cicero, the famous spy, handed over invaluable information that turned the tide of Nazi warfare? Did this same elevator carry Leon Trotsky to secret sessions with other compatriots of the Russian Revolutionary intelligentsia?
I was shaken from my dream as the attendant stepped out of the elevator, held the door open, and motioned me to follow. He led me down a red carpeted corridor, turned right down another, and stopped in front of a rather undistinguished door, that he unlocked and opened. My eyes were immediately drawn to the writing table, sitting there just as she left it. Years before, Agatha Christie had sat there and written, Murder on the Orient Express. The Pera Palas was built in 1892 for the clientele of that magnificent railway, with the idea in mind that it must equal in grandeur the Orient Express. Passengers were dropped off at the train station in the old city and swiftly carried across the Golden Horn in curtained horse drawn carriages right up to the door of the Pera Palas. Why all the secrecy? The hotel, just like Istanbul, has an air of mystery and intrigue, of undiscovered secrets, and of history held in place as the ghosts of past players whisk about. It can be a bit unsettling.
Closing the door to her room, I walked back towards the lift, preferring this time to take the stairs. This, too, should be done slowly. The mirrored brass balustrade leads you down wide scarlet carpeted marble steps. The period furniture on each landing is exquisite, as it is throughout the entire hotel. The polished woodwork and molding is from bygone days when carpenters took particular care with their craft. The Pera Palas takes you back through 120 years of history, to Old Constantinople, on a flying carpet. The ambience is unbelievable as your mind wanders and your senses intensify. With every step you take the creaking wooden floors remind you that much has gone on here before you.
Getting back to Afternoon Tea could wait a little longer. On the first and second floors, I wandered past rooms with brass plates on the doors, signifying the famous, the infamous, and the enigmas who had slept in the beds behind. Back at the Kubeli Salon, I peeked in on my friends, so wrapped up in the music and their surroundings, that they hadn't even noticed I'd left. Entering the historic bar with cushioned chairs arranged in a fashion to encourage one to linger, my mind began to wander again. Had Ernest Hemingway sat here contemplating the "lost generation" he so vividly captured in his novels? My eyes swept the bar with it's highly polished brass and wood and antique mirror. Only then did Hemingway come into focus. I could see him leaning there, and Greta Garbo upon the barstool, cocktails in hand, emptied glasses on the bar, laughing in ridicule at the expense of some politician, talking derisively of a nation full of shallow people with no direction. Glimpsing the doorway, Josephine Baker traipses through, exotically clad in a manner that defied acceptability, dog at the end of a jeweled leash.
But this was not a mere haven for expatriates and Bohemians. Josip Broz Tito, too, had come here, the one Eastern Bloc head of State courageous enough to defy the Soviet Union and pave a separate path for his country. The Pera Palas has accommodated European royalty and Prime Ministers, as well as Middle Eastern shahs, pashas, sheiks and princes, actors, First Ladies, writers, and expatriates. And, it, like the exotic city of Istanbul that surrounds it, has hypnotically attracted me for 35 years. I do not always stay in the Pera Palas, but it always beckons and lures, usually late in the afternoon, as seagulls glide past minarets decorating an orange and purple sunset. This is the time and place to relax over High Tea, relish the day's experiences, and plan the evening ahead, like many who have left their indelible mark on history have done before.
