The Bamboo Treehouse is not the only place to sleep at the Rosalie Forest Eco-Lodge on the Caribbean island-country of Dominica. Guests can also choose to stay in a self contained cottage or in one of several cabins. There’s a secluded area where campers can pitch a tent. The lodge can arrange a local home stay too.
But of all those accommodations options the Bamboo Treehouse is the coolest.
Spending the night in drainage pipe in a public park is a bad thing . . . usually
It’s almost like being homeless
All the charm and safety of a bomb shelter
Our rooms are no longer full of crap
We like to imagine that those were among the tag lines rejected by the Dasparkhotel, the accommodations in a suburb of Linz, Austria where guests spend the night in a recycled drainage pipe.
There’s a scene in The Simpsons in which a cartoon rendering of architect Frank Gehry casually tosses a piece of paper onto the ground, gives it a look and then says to himself “Frank, you genius! You did it again!”
That joke is probably funnier seeing it than reading our recounting. And it’s certainly funnier if you are familiar with certain Gehry-designed buildings—like the Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A., the Experience Music Project in Seattle and, especially, Bilbao Spain’s Guggenheim Museum—which really do bear some resemblance to crinkled paper (if you squint a little).
With a new year comes a new selection of travel deals. And a difficult choice: take to the snow of the mountains or escape to the warm waters of a tropical beach? Fortunately, we’ve found discount deals for both options.
To stay updated on our travel bargain finds you can . . .
• go directly to our travel hot deals page;
• or, get a Kindle subscription to our travel blog;
• or, perhaps best of all, subscribe to our RSS feed and get all of our travel posts delivered directly to your email inbox or to your RSS aggregator;
or—why not?—act on all three of those options.
Please note that all of the offers below are for a limited time. Happy high-value travel!
There’s a soft spot in Spot Cool Stuff’s heart for unusual hotels. In a world where there are so many mediocre motels, unremarkable rooms, indifferent inns and characterless chains we love when a hotelier gets creative and offers an overnight experience that goes beyond the ordinary.
With a new year of unusual hotel exploration nearly upon us it seemed a good time to look back at the most weird, odd and downright bizarre accommodations we visited in 2009.
Airport hotels have got a bad name. You might have spent the night in a soulless concrete box by the tarmac, its hallways lined by hollow-eyed passengers en route to a better place. But it doesn’t have to be like that. The next time you’ve got a stopover between connecting flights, you can spend the night in heavenly comfort at one of these luxurious airport hotels. You might be tempted to book a room even if you aren’t using the airport!
Grandiose casinos, towering hotels, enormous buffets, larger-than-life stage productions and extreme neon are not all Las Vegas takes to excess. The swimming pools of Sin City are outrageous in their size and opulence too. And they are an often overlooked joy of travel here. After a night of gambling, partying, taking in stage shows, drinking, more gambling and whatever else you did (we don’t want to know; or, at least you don’t have to tell us) there can be nothing better than relaxing and recovering by a Vegas pool. Here, in rank order, are our top seven selections:
November marks the start of the high season for many of the world’s warm weather destinations. Travel to places like Thailand, Turkey and the Caribbean starts to get expensive. Meanwhile, the ski season in Europe and North America prepares to get into high gear. Fortunately, there are good travel deals and discounts to be found. Here’s a selection of a few of our favorites.
As always, you can stay updated on our latest travel deal posts by . . .
• going directly to our travel hot deals page;
• or, getting a Kindle subscription to our travel blog;
• or, perhaps best of all, subscribing to our RSS feed and getting all of our travel posts delivered directly to your email inbox or to your RSS aggregator;
or—why not?—act on all three of those options.
Please note that most of the offers below are for a limited time. And with that, here’s to happy, high-value travel!
| Hot Categories | More Cool Stuff | Shop Travel | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unusual Hotels | Travel Gear | Tech | Flights |
| Unusual Restaurants | Vegas | Entertainment | Hotels |
| Pubs & Clubs | Amazing Views | Websites | Travel Gear |
| Museums | Caribbean | Design | Event Tickets |
