Travel Picks: Top 10 famous hotel rooms

SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) - If walls could talk some hotel rooms would never be quiet, with men’s Web site Askmen.com coming up with a list of top 10 famous hotel rooms.

This list was compiled by Askmen.com and is not endorsed by Reuters:

1. Room 1738, 1740, 1742, Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal, Canada

John Lennon and Yoko Ono stayed in bed here for a week in 1969 to protest the Vietnam War but the suite’s biggest event was Lennon and Ono recording anti-war song “Give Peace a Chance” there. Now available to the public as the John Lennon and Yoko Ono suite, the living room and bedroom have various press articles and other memorabilia to commemorate their stay.

2. Room 16, L’Hotel Paris, France

“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go,” Oscar Wilde said in this hotel room where he spent his last days before his death in 1900. Wilde was flat broke when he stayed there as you can see from letters on the wall, asking Wilde to pay his bill.

3. Room 105, Highland Gardens Hotel (formerly Landmark Hotel), Hollywood, California

Janis Joplin checked into this Hollywood hotel room and overdosed on heroin, dying on October 4, 1970. Now renamed the Highland Gardens, the hotel does make her famous hotel room available to the public.

4. Room 776, The Mayflower, Washington, D.C.

Franklin Roosevelt stayed here in the months leading up to his 1933 presidential inauguration. The hotel is also more recently known as the site of Client 9’s (aka former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer) secret meetings.

5. Room 217, The Stanley Hotel, Estes Park, Colorado

Stephen King and his wife checked into this room in Colorado for a quiet weekend but instead King came up with the idea for “The Shining”. Many believe the hotel is haunted. “The Shining” TV miniseries was shot here as well as parts of “Dumb and Dumber”. The hotel’s TV plays the movie and miniseries on a loop.

6. Room 524, Stamford Plaza (formerly The Ritz-Carlton), Sydney, Australia

INXS leader singer Michael Hutchence hanged himself with a belt in this room in November 1997, with a coroner ruling it was suicide despite a popular suggestion his death was accidental.

7. Room 203, Mark Twain Hotel, San Francisco, California

On January 22, 1949, federal narcotics agents raided jazz singer Billie Holiday’s room and she was arrested for possession of opium. The case went to trial but she was acquitted.

8. Presidential Suite Brandenburg Gate, Kempinski Hotel Adlon, Berlin, Germany

Michael Jackson dangled his baby from his room in 2002, later saying it was a “terrible mistake”. In the suite you get a living room with a fireplace, two bedrooms, an office, dining room, kitchenette, private sauna and a personal butler. Guests have included Bill Clinton and Queen Elizabeth.

9. Monet Suite, Savoy, London, England

French Impressionist Claude Monet painted over 70 canvases of downtown London and the Thames in this room. The Savoy is currently under renovations but before it closed, the hotel offered the Monet Experience -- a two night stay in this room with canvases, paint easels and an art teacher.

10. The Churchill Suite, Mena House Oberoi Hotel, Cairo, Egypt

Sir Winston Churchill stayed in this room as an allied leader during World War Two while the hotel hosted the Cairo Conference between U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek and Churchill. It’s said Churchill returned to his room each night and slept with his curtains open so he could see the Pyramids of Giza.

(Editing by Miral Fahmy)