Ah, to Bee in Paris!

This is the beehive that sits on a balcony on the 7th floor of the Hyatt Paris Madeleine. The hotel conceptualized and created a mascot called Maddie the Bee to try to make bees seem less intimidating to children. As you can see, Maddie is very French -- she is even wearing a beret. (Photo courtesy of Hyatt Paris Madeleine)

Ah, Paris.

City of Love.

City of Light.

City of honeybees on 7th floor hotel balconies.

Well, perhaps the last description is not so well-known, but it is accurate, at least in the case of the Hyatt Paris Madeleine, a charming boutique hotel with its very own honeybee hive right in the heart of Paris.

Whenever I travel, I always try to stay someplace that demonstrates some commitment to the environment.

The Hyatt Paris Madeleine recognizes that honeybees are in trouble and so it has installed and maintains this hive to show support for the bees.

I also like the fact that the hotel hosts an event where local elementary schoolchildren can watch a beekeeper harvest the honey and ask any questions they may have about bees or beekeeping.

The beekeeper at the Hyatt Paris Madeleine makes a point during the honey harvest. (Photo courtesy of Hyatt Paris Madeleine)

Laura, who works in communications at the Hyatt, very kindly gave me a tour of the beehive area. Although she assured me that these are sweet-natured bees, I got to suit up in the white pullover and helmet that beekeepers wear. (Sorry I forgot to ask for a blogger-as-beekeeper photo.) Then we stepped gingerly out on the small balcony and I shot this video of the bees buzzing in and out of their hive.

(The suit seemed unnecessary. The bees did not seem at all perturbed by presence. In fact, they ignored me entirely.)

Later on, I got a chance to sample some of the latest crop of honey and was very impressed. I have to say that it's among the most floral and 'perfumed' honeys I've ever tasted. I'd even go so far as to call it a 'romantic' honey -- the bees have managed to imbue it with the spirit of Paris!

A jar of the 2015 honey crop from the hive Hyatt Paris Madeleine. This little information card in all the rooms not only gives guests a chance to save water and detergent (by refraining from having their sheets laundered every day), it also makes sure they learn about the hotel's beekeeping program and hopefully sparks a conversation on the rationale and importance of such an initiative.

Laura mentioned that the chef in the Hyatt's on-site restaurants, Cafe M and Chinoiserie, incorporates the hotel's honey each year into a special dish/dishes. Last year, the honey showed up in a poached peach desert alongside lime blossoms and red currants. This year, the chef incorporated the honey into a sorbet (shown below).

This seasonal sorbet incorporated honey from the Hyatt Paris Madeleine's own beehives.

Beyond the bees and the honey, the Hyatt Paris Madeleine is still a pretty sweet hotel. The rooms are modern and spacious (for Paris). There's even a little spa in the basement with steam room (they call it a 'hammam') and dry sauna, plus a small relaxation room for chilling out with ambient music.

And I got a kick out of learning that the glass ceiling in the hotel atrium was designed by the workshops of Gustave Eiffel.

This is a view from the lobby looking toward the atrium. You can glimpse the glass roof designed by Mr. Eiffel's studio. (Photo courtesy of Hyatt Paris Madeleine)

You may have heard of Mr. Eiffel. He's well-known for a certain eponymous tower (visible from certain rooms at the Hyatt)...

Mr. Eiffel is actually better known for his tower (seen here in the distance from a room at the Hyatt Paris Madeleine) than for the hotel's atrium. (Photo courtesy of Hyatt Paris Madeleine)

From a practical standpoint, I should note that the Hyatt Paris Madeleine is very well-situated. It's near to several Metro stations (especially the Madeleine and Saint-Augustin stops) and I had no trouble walking from the hotel to the Tuileries garden, the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay or the Opera Garnier.


Disclosure: Hyatt Paris Madeleine arranged for a press visit so that I could gather material for this review. That said, the opinions expressed here are my own.

Travel Report -- Sweet (Bee) Dreams in Berlin at the Ritz-Carlton and the Scandic on Potsdamer Platz

Rooftop beehives at the Ritz-Carlton Berlin, with the Tiergarten park in the background

In September, I took a trip to Germany and the Netherlands. Over the next few posts on Garden of Aaron, I'll be sharing some of my garden related experiences and memories from the trip.

But first, any travel involves finding a place to sleep. Personally, as a gardener, I try to find places with an eco-friendly sensibility.

In Berlin, I found two hotels that actually maintain their own beehives and produce their own honey - the Ritz-Carlton and the Scandic, both of which are on or near Potsdamer Platz.

Wikipedia has a great entry on the history of Potsdamer Platz, once the busiest public square in Europe. Destroyed in WWII and subsequently divided by the Berlin Wall, Potsdamer Platz became a desolate no man's land.

But after the Cold War ended and Germany reunified, the platz sprang back to life. For a while, it was the biggest construction site in Europe. Heavy investment has transformed it once more into a showcase for modern Germany.

All of which is to say that from a traveler's perspective, Potsdamer Platz is interesting, historical (you can still see remnants of the Berlin Wall) and convenient from a transit perspective.

When I started researching eco-friendly places to stay in Berlin, it was the beehives at the Ritz-Carlton that first caught my eye. Installed in 2011, the seven beehives house up to 400,000 (!) bees in the summer -- fewer in winter -- who collectively produce 250 to 400 kilograms of honey each year. Some of that honey shows up at breakfast in the hotel's restaurant, while jars of the sweet stuff can be purchased as souvenirs at the hotel's gift shop. Some of the honey even makes its way into the hotel's delicious signature lavender-honey cake!

Signature lavender-honey cake at the Ritz-Carlton Berlin

Where do the bees gather their nectar and pollen in the midst of a giant urban area? Well, Potsdamer Platz is nearby the Tiergarten, a large city park. I also noticed quite a few bees buzzing around inside the display cases at local bakeries and donut shops. Coincidence? :)

The restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton Berlin incorporates ingredients from approximately 5 acres of land that are farmed exclusively for the hotel. The farm is in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern region, a couple of hours north of Berlin. In season, the farmer (who is also the supplier for the Ritz-Carlton Berlin's organic lamb meat) grows more than 60 kinds of organic and bio-certified vegetables and herbs for the hotel, including pumpkins, onions, carrots, cabbage, Jerusalem Artichoke (known locally as topinambur) and lavender.
(Photo courtesy of Ritz-Carlton Berlin)

The beehives are just one of the many environmental initiatives at the Ritz-Carlton Berlin, which recently became the first five-star-superior hotel to win certification from the EU's Eco-Management and Audit Scheme. The hotel managed this feat by taking a number of eco-friendly steps, including installing energy-saving LED lights, using environmentally-friendly cleaning products and reducing water usage.

I was impressed to hear that the hotel partners with a recycling program to transform its paper waste into school notebooks. The hotel provides approximately 25 tons of paper materials every three months that are then processed into more than 1,300 notebooks, which are distributed to welfare organizations in Germany and abroad.

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After a couple of nights at the Ritz-Carlton, I checked out and walked ten minutes to my next hotel, the nearby Scandic Berlin Potsdamer Platz.

This was my first time staying at a Scandic hotel. Headquartered in Sweden, Scandic is a Nordic company with hotels in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland.

The company has a long track record of supporting sustainability initiatives over the past two decades. One thing I really liked and don't think I'd ever seen at another hotel was the way the hotel had subdivided the in-room wastebasket to allow for easy separation of organic and paper wastestreams.

The cheerful and clever subdivided wastebasket at the Scandic Berlin Potsdamer Platz.

To reduce packaging waste, you'll notice that the hotel has done away with the innumerable little bottles of shampoo and body soap that you find in most hotels and replaced them with refillable pump bottles in the shower.

Refillable pump bottles of soap and shampoo in the shower at the Scandic Berlin Potsdamer Platz

As a gardener, I loved the way that the hotel incorporated nature themes throughout its decor. For instance, this translucent panel between the shower and the bedroom is decorated with a leaf motif that glows when the bathroom light is on.

These nature motifs continue in the hallways, where murals (giant decals perhaps?) adorn the walls at the ends of the corridors. Piped in nature sounds such as birdsongs (motion-activated like the lights) provide a soothing soundtrack. I believe there are also ambient nature sounds in the elevators.
 

You'll even find the nature theme continued on some of the lampshades in the guest rooms at the Scandic Berlin Potsdamer Platz.

Clearly the Scandic has less Old World luxury than the Ritz-Carlton. Still, I was impressed with the Scandic's trendy modern design. I liked the wooden floors for instance, and the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The Scandic Berlin Potsdamer Platz seemed really new and clean. Here's another eco-friendly design choice -- a dual-flush toilet designed to reduce water usage. I like how the Scandic shows that you don't have to sacrifice beauty when you emphasize eco-friendly design. Personally I think it would be nice if every toilet in hotels (or homes) offered the dual-flush option.

I didn't get a photo of it, but like the Ritz-Carlton, the Scandic Berlin Potsdamer Platz also produces and sells its own honey. Some of that honey also ends up on the breakfast buffet, which was included in our room rate and featured a selection of packaged and fresh organic products (which are typically labeled as "bio" in Europe).

So if you're a gardener or just a traveler who wants to support and encourage eco-friendly business practices while still enjoying a comfortable and convenient stay, I'd have no qualms about recommending either the Ritz-Carlton Berlin or the Scandic Berlin Potsdamer Platz.

(Well, maybe one qualm. In an effort to save energy, I believe the Scandic Berlin Potsdamer Platz turns off its air conditioning between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. We had a little bit of a warm spell during our time in Berlin and I did find it a little hard to sleep at night. I'm a little concerned that the room might become a sauna during a Berlin heatwave... Clearly I'm not the only one who had concerns over this practice. Reviews are generally very positive on Tripadvisor, but the few negative reviews generally reference the lack of nighttime A/C as the reason for giving a poor rating.)


Starting next week, I'll be sharing photos from my visits to German gardens. Stay tuned!


Full disclosure: Both the Ritz-Carlton Berlin and the Scandic Berlin Potsdamer Platz allowed me to stay in their hotels on a discount media rate. That said, all of the opinions expressed in this review are still my own.