Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: hotel

The Smart ED, essentially a Smart ForTwo with electric drive, has been much talked about in recent years, but this is the first one that I saw in real life, 2011 being the first full year of production. This one was being used by the Mosaic House hotel, although for what purpose I wasn't clear on. It isn't an ideal taxi, for one thing, as it doesn't have a full trunk for suitcases.

The chandelier was also immaculate, although I'm assuming it was actually real, as it would only have had to be replaced had it been broken.

I'm not aware of whether these tables and chairs are barely-used antiques, or really authentic replicas, but in any case it is unusual to see a coffeehouse so faithfully decorated in the style of the 1910's, and in such good condition. This coffeehouse (unless I'm mistaken) was connected to the Hotel Sun.

This is the Hotel Bohemia, one of many hotels that I photographed, but one of only a few I decided to post online.

Most of the more interesting buildings (although not all) are hotels built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when tourism to Marianske Lazne was at its peak, and the city was still called Marienbad. This is the Penzion Elektra.

The Pangea Hotel is close to the Zamek, near the Stepnicky Rybnik.

Here's another version of the previous shot that has been edited for maximum contrast and saturation short of making it look like a painting. For some reason, shots from the video camera get vignetting when you crank the contrast up, and I have no idea why that is.

Completed in 1968, this futuristic looking hotel resembling an antenna is also exactly that, a television tower. It was also featured in the Czech film "Grand Hotel." I've tried to photograph it many times, but I've almost always been too far away, even though I've visited Liberec twice. This time I tried getting the shot with a video camera that had a still function. The resolution on the camera was awful, worse than my cameraphone, but the reason I wanted to try it was that it had a 25X digital zoom. Actually, it had a 700X digital zoom, but beyond 25X the resolution was so low that it was pointless. After uploading the .jpg to my Mac, I still had to edit the image for higher contrast because the cloud cover had played more of a role than I had foreseen.

Although several historic buildings of note survive in Saratoga, this one is probably my favorite, is it is the most dated and the most unusual to see still standing in the U.S. Most of these burned down or were abandoned and torn down during the 1960's-1990's, and many are still under threat. This hotel, built in 1877 for people visiting the supposedly therapeutic Saratoga Springs, still hosts all manner of tourists....in the summertime. When I visited, it had closed for the winter.

This is the Crown Plaza Hotel, based on the Seven Sisters complex in Moscow. This hotel, originally the Hotel Druzba, was built in 1952-1954 under the supervision of Alexej Cepicka, and was decorated with Communist murals, which you can see in the red striping just below the roofline.

Therefore.....given that my other shot is hard to distinguish from a black and white photo, I made this version black and white. I think that in the end it's the better photo, although I could be mistaken.

The Corinthia Towers hotel is so close to the Metro that it's almost integrated with it. I saw the opportunity to compose this shot with the flagpoles, but now that I have the image in my computer I'm noticing that the fog was really, really thick. It's so dominant in this photo, in fact, that it takes a few seconds to tell if it's color or black and white.

The light on this shot was, I think, nearly perfect, and I couldn't resist shooting this. I really liked it from the moment I shot it, although I don't know if you'll agree....

With a tram in the shot, the photo can be better or worse, pretty much depending on your opinion, particularly of trams. This, in any case, is probably my favorite of all my tram photos from 2007.

In addition to the City Tower, Pankrac is also home to the Corinthia Panorama Hotel, seen on the left, and a convention centre connected to the hotel, seen on the bottom and, I think, as the tower on the far right, which also houses offices.

Penzions are cheap but respectable Czech hotels, Penzion Attractive, appropriately named, I think, being on the eastern embankment of the River Vltava.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know a lot about the Hotel Mercure (which is on Na Porici, near Namesti Republiky, if you want to take a look), other than that I like the Neo-Baroque architecture on it. This shot just looked like it would be an attractive one to take, so I did.

Josefuv Dul has an old hotel that appears to be in rough shape. I don't know if it's still open for business or not, but the missing windows aren't a good sign.