Istanbul!

Nine of us flew out to Istanbul for a work meeting with colleagues coming in from Australia and Asia. I choose the hotel and was relieved to find it is a rather lovely old place. The travel agent wanted us to go for a rather expensive 27 story tower block hotel. I refused, this is an earthquake zone and adherence to fire regs is notoriously bad here. This old backstreet hotel is still standing so clearly survived the last earthquake and only has three floors, and as an added bonus the view from the third floor terrace is spectacular.