Our favorite room in Bangkok is not the most luxurious . . . or the best value . . . or the most traditional . . . or the most chic. But give us a $150 budget and ask where in the Thai capital we’d want to stay and we wouldn’t hesitate with our answer: the Garden Suite at the Arun Residence hotel.
To reserve an entire restaurant for you and your date you have to be exceedingly wealthy. That, or find an exceedingly small restaurant.
Here are three restaurants that consist entirely of one table. Each is in Europe. And each claims to be the world’s smallest restaurant. Which one deserves that dubious title? You be the judge:
All work and no play makes Dracula a dull vampire
This January the Carnival Liberty will set sail on a special Fangs and Fur Cruise. But if you imagine this is an opportunity for you and your four-legged companion to take to the high seas—a sort of Rover + You + the Love Boat—you are off. Way off.
The fangs in question belong to a vampire. The fur belongs to a werewolf. And the cruise’s target audience is literally literary—it is for aspiring authors of the gothic genre.
The 3,000 rare and exotic species in Lotusland are organized into enchanting chapters
Ninety minutes north of Los Angeles in the manicured town of Montecito is a sprawling and surreal site—the 37-acre private botanical garden of a visionary eccentric.
At most of the world’s wine bars there’s a direct correlation between the quality of the decor, the quality of the wine and the snootiness of the clientele. At Chicago’s Avec Restaurant & Wine Bar high design and highly delicious wine have been refreshingly paired with a friendly, informal, atmosphere.
If RuPaul operated a farm and Liberace an S&M palor the Crazy Bear Hotel would be like a cross between the two.
Sometimes it’s a fine line separating gaudy from opulent, and trashy from romantic. Straddling those lines is the Crazy Bear Hotel in Old Beaconsfield, England
At almost any bar in the world you can get a drink with ice. At a few you can get a drink in ice. While sitting on seats made of ice. At a table made of ice. Surrounded by walls made of ice.
The concept of the ice bar originated, logically enough, in Sweden where both water and freezing temperatures are abundant. These icy drinking establishments soon became popular around Scandinavia, partly because they combined two elements Scandinavians tend to embrace (cold and alcohol) and partly because these bars’ LED lighting, artworks of frozen water and and intimate settings made them great places to chill out. (Pun. Sorry.)
Today, there are more than two dozen ice bars around the globe including ones in Amsterdam, London, Poland, Canada and Alaska. Not all of these frozen saloons are in places with cold climes. Hence this Spot Cool Stuff overview of ice bars in warm places.
For the purposes of this review, a “warm place” is anywhere it doesn’t snow in the winter and regularly gets hot in the summer. So, the ice bar in Beijing doesn’t count. The one in Shanghai would have had it not recently closed.
All of the selections on this list, like most of the ice bars anywhere, charge an entrance fee to get in. Usually this fee includes one free drink and use of cold-weather clothing that is designed as much to protect patrons from the bar’s sub-freezing temperatures as it is to protect the bar itself from the patrons’ body heat. To help keep their establishments below freezing, ice bars also have strict limits on the number of people allowed in.
And with that, let’s kick back with a cold one and tour the world’s ice bars in warm places . . .
The dining location for your ten-course tasting meal is kept 'secret' until your reservation is confirmed
If there is one dinner to plan in advance on your trip to Paris, make it Hidden Kitchen. Located in the swanky Parisian flat of two talented American chefs, this secret restaurant is where food-loving strangers come to meet and eat.
