To astronomers, Arecibo is the world’s largest radio telescope and one of mankind’s preeminent tools for probing the heavens. To movie buffs, Arecibo is where Jodi Foster first met Matthew McConaughey in Contact and where Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond chased down a villain in GoldenEye. To Caribbean travelers, Arecibo is a great travel destination to mix into your diving, shopping and beach lounging (particularly if you are traveling with children).
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The absolute smallest, cheapest room available is a two story suite.
Move over Las Vegas, the new new standard for resort luxury, grandiosity and audaciousness is now in Dubai. It is there, on an artificial island just off the coast, that you’ll find the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab. It is the world’s tallest hotel. And that’s only one of the world records it holds.
The Burj Al Arab is also home to the world’s fastest elevators, the world’s tallest atrium and largest aquarium. No other building in the world incorporates as much gold (the 2,000 square meters or 21,500 square feet of gold leaf!) and no other hotel has earned a seven star rating.
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Here’s a restaurant theme you didn’t see coming: darkness.
The concept of purposefully eating in complete pitch-black dark originated with Jorge Spielmann, a blind clergyman from Zurich. Dinner guests at the Spielmann house would wear blindfolds to show of solidarity with their host and to better understand his world. These guests found their dark dinning experiences fascinating. They found also that they enjoyed their food more—when you free yourself of having to see your sense of taste and smell becomes heightened. And that gave Spielmann the idea to open a dark restaurant, which he did in 1999.
Today you can stumble into dozens restaurants around the world where that question made famous in an American commercial in the 80s — Where’s the beef? — takes on a whole new meaning. Most dark restaurants employ blind waiters, offer a single set menu, and ban anything that could give off light (like cigarettes, cell phones and cameras) from the dinning area. All of them also have normally lit bathrooms though you’ll need to ask your waiter for help in finding it.
Here’s our illuminating look at some of the world’s dark restaurants:
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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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Where else would the world’s highest wooden structure be located other than “The Wooden City” (which, as the arboreally astute among you may know, is Archangelsk, Russia)? Archangelsk did not only earn its nickname for the town’s numerous wooden dwellings but also for its wooden port building, wooden streets and museum that includes wooden artworks such dishes made from birch bark. The wooden skyscraper in the center of town towers over this termite’s dream town like Gargamel’s palace over The Smurf village. The 13-story, 144-foot (44-meter) tall building was constructed entirely without the use of machinery. For a well-researched article about some of the unusual history behind this unusual structure click on “learn more,” or see the photo below the jump.
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You know a swimming pool is big when an average swimmer is unable to complete a single lap within it. And when he’s likely to be passed by a sailboat while trying. That’s the situation at the San Alfonso del Mar Resort in Algarrobo, Chile. The pool there — the world’s largest according to the Guinness World Records — took five years and nearly $4 billion to build. (That’s not a typo, that’s billion with a “b”). The pool is a full kilometer (.62 miles) long, 35 meters (115 feet) at its deepest point and covers more than 20 acres. The massive amounts of water required to fill the pool comes from the Pacific just beyond the pool’s edge. A high-tech filtration system cleans ocean water, cycles it through the pool and then returns it to the Pacific in an environmentally friendly way.
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Bangkok's coolest scenes are high above the city.
Bangkok’s glamour set has no fear of heights. Two of the Thai capital’s most chic dining and drinking spots are well above the city: the Vertigo Grill & Moon Bar and Sirocco.
The whitewashed Vertigo occupies a former helicopter landing pad on the 61st floor of the Banyan Tree Hotel. Sirocco, atop the 65 story State Tower, is the highest open air restaurant in the world. Both draw a chic cocktail-centric crowd.
Of the two choices, Sirocco is the larger of the two and has the more energetic scene; its Mediterranean restaurant also has the better food. Vertigo is more intimate and so feels more on-top-of-the-world. Show up at both early to claim your seat by the ledge and to give time for the notoriously slow service to get you your drink in time for the sunset.
LEARN MORE: Vertigo | Sirocco | READ | FLY THERE
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The Tides South Beach | Miami, Florida
