For staying clean on a roughing-it trip there’s no better friend than magic soap.

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New to Moscow’s Krasnaya Presnya park: the world’s first ice sculpture gallery. This might also be the world’s coldest museum—the frozen exhibits here are kept at -10C (14F).

Visitors to the gallery are given special coat to wear that looks like a cross between an Eskimo’s parka and an alien costume from a low budget horror movie (see photos after the jump). The coats are partially to keep you warm (and looking ridiculous) but also to keep your body temperature from melting the displays. Even with the coats, to keep the temperature constant only ten visitors are allowed in the gallery at a time. The ice displays are open year round, making the ice sculptures in Krasnaya Presnya park a good place to cool off in the summer . . . or warm up in the Moscow winter. Entrance is 350 rubles (about $14, €9).

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Some lighthouse hotels are a little gritty. (Or, at least cramped). The Phare de Kerbel, on France’s Brittany coast, is spacious and modern. There’s a full kitchen, gorgeously appointed bedrooms and a swimming pool. Better still, there’s the view of the Atlantic from a perch 25 meters (82 feet) above Port Louis.

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Once an illegal massage parlor, hence the name, Happy Endings is now a friendly lounge with a hip singles scene that doesn’t guarantee this spot’s former promises of gratification. Getting in is as easy as showing-up and the downstairs lounge still offers private tiled rooms, which are now filled with banquettes and tables. The crowd is informal and hip and they both dance and mingle to DJs that bring the 70s funk on weekends, but aren’t afraid to mix it with a little 80s pop and modern rock. Take a cab here -– the lounge is hard to find and the neighborhood can be sketchy.

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Seriously, this place specializes in milk and cookies. It’s no $100 per entrée hot spot playing “the irony angle,” it’s a café that has found a niche in a city where it seemed that all of the niches had been taken ten times over. Of course, no one pulls off this kind of coupe with store-bought Oreos. This place makes their own type of Oreo with chewy Valrhona chocolate and a homemade cream filling. Coolest of all, this bakery also lets customers create their own cookies — you select from their myriad of ingredient possibilities and they’ll bake up your creation in 20 minutes ($19/dozen). No wonder this place is a favorite for the West Village’s young at heart . . . and their inner-children.

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Autumn is upon the northern parts of the northern hemisphere and we’re stocking up on our cold weather gear. First up, the new hard warmer from Zippo. Unlike the company’s famous lighters, this Zippo produces no flame. Instead, the radiant heat comes from a smoldering of lighter fluid within an ultra-thin platinum-catalyzed burner. A mere 4 ounces of lighter fluid can produce heat for 24 hours, virtually pollution free.

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There are other treehouse hotels in America but none are as dramatic as Cedar Creek. Here, 200-year old trees literally grow through the kitchen, bedroom and living spaces of the five-person bed & breakfast suite. Coolest of all is the observatory tower, which is more than 100 feet (30 meters) above the forest floor and reached via a suspended walkway and the “stairway to heaven” that spirals around a giant Douglas fir.

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Somehow we didn’t get to The World Erotic Art Museum when we took that junior high school field trip to Miami. Don’t you make the same mistake the next time you are in the south Florida.

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