Best of Spot Cool Stuff 2009: Unusual Hotels
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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.
Our year started at The Everland: The Hotel Above Paris . . .
. . . or, rather, it was about Paris. This unusual pod of a hotel (see photo, above) is as traveled as some of its guests. After various stops in Germany and Switzerland the Everland was moved to the roof of the Palais de Tokyo; from there it had the best Eiffel Tower view of any hotel in Paris. Sadly, the Everland was removed from its Paris-top perch last March. There are not yet any announced plan to move the Everland to a new location in 2010.
Several of SCS’s unusual hotel posts over the last year seemed to run in pairs. We visited two hotels that were once operational airplanes . . .
Stockholm’s Airplane Airport Hotel
. . . two posts were about guest rooms built into the earth . . .
The Kokopelli Cave Bed & Breakfast
. . . and two accommodations we reviewed were as affordable as they were unusual:
Negril’s Blue Cave Castle Resort
Finalists for our favorite 2009 unusual hotel post include:
The Planet’s Single Coolest Eco-Resort
If we could choose any unusual hotel to stay in for a week it would probably be the Adrere Amellal in the deserts of Egypt. This world-class eco-resort isn’t the most weird place to stay but its casaba-like mystery and lost-in-time feeling make it the most intriguing.
The Hotel Where Every Day is Christmas
At this Japanese “love hotel” Santa has seemingly taken up permanent residence.
The Unusual Hotels of Harlingen, Holland
Harlingen, on the Dutch coast, might have more unusualness per capita in its accommodations than any other town on the planet: stay in a hotel room on a tugboat, atop of a lighthouse or (our favorite) inside a giant operational crane.
In the end, however, we must give our 2009 Unusual Hotel Post of the Year award to:
The treehouses at this surreal resort in Germany have hidden objects, secret passageways, spirit creature residents, walkways above the forest floor—and mini-fridges full of beer.
Coming in 2010
In 2010 we’ll have reviews of several more treehouse hotels, including one that is rather difficult of its guests to find.
We’ll also explore hotels made out of unusual materials like wine casks, ice and key cards. And if you want to live like a hamster for a night, we’ll have you covered for that too.
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Have you stayed in an unusual hotel? Make yourself at home in our comments section, below.
