Hotels & Lodgings

10 Reasons to Visit Hamilton Island, Australia

There are 908 islands scattered around the Great Barrier Reef off the northeast coast of Australia’s Queensland State.

Of those, 74 islands make up the Whitsunday Archipelago, a national park and one of Australia’s top tourist destinations.

Of those, 11 islands are inhabited.

And, of those, only 1 island has luxury resorts, gourmet restaurants and a sophisticated, yet laid-back, vibe:

Hamilton Island.

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The Best View from a Hotel Room on the Amalfi Coast

There are few regions of the world with as many scenically located hotels as you’ll find on Italy’s Amalfi Coast. On that stretch of Mediterranean shoreline from Sorrento to Salerno, dozens of hotels, guesthouses, hostels and inns peer down on sparkling seas, grand gardens, charming churches and other sights that tempt travel writers adopt to alliteration and make other visitors simply exclaim WOW.

On the Amalfi Coast — the whole of which is a UNESCO World Heritage site — selecting the hotel with the best room views is thus a daunting task. Forced to settle on one for this post, we’ll choose the Hotel Caruso Belvedere.

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Rolling Huts of the Methow Valley

The Methow Valley is as picturesque as any in the world. Nestled in a high pocket of the North Cascades of Washington State, the valley is all forests and flower fields, ravines and rivers, snow peaks and sunshine1. And it’s all crisscrossed by biking, hiking and running paths — and by one of the longest cross country skiing trails in the world.

Until recently, one of the few blights on the Methow Valley was a particularly unattractive RV park northwest of the town of Winthrop. Happily, the Winnebagos there have given way to a wild meadow that’s mostly untouched except for the unusual, low-impact accommodations offered by Rolling Huts. It is a fantastically cool place to stay.

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The Best View from a
Hotel Room in Montreal

When Spot Cool Stuff travels we love staying in a room with a view. In Montreal, there’s no better hotel room view than that offered from the upper rooms at the Montreal Marriott Chateau Champlain.

Spanning to a height of 139 meters (454 feet), the Marriott Chateau Champlain is the tallest hotel in the city (and its 9th tallest building of any sort). The vista from those lofty heights is framed by the hotel’s most distinctive feature: the half-moon windows.

From inside the rooms, the view through those windows looks like this:

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The Semiramis Boutique Hotel: Art Deco in Athens

Is it Athens, Greece? Or is it South Beach, Miami? While staying at the Semiramis Hotel your GPS would tell you the former. But the day-glo colored lobby filled with beautiful people, the ubiquitous pop art and the pastel swimming pool area filled with the scent of suntan lotion is enough to convince you of the later.

Yes, everything about the Semiramis is undeniably cool. But it is as certain that this boutique hotel not for everyone. Its in-your-face design, its vibe and its location are the best reasons to stay here — and the best reasons not to.

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The Best View of Niagara Falls from a Hotel Room

The whole point of going on vacation to Niagara Falls is to take in the view. So, when spending the night at Niagara Falls, the smart traveler wants a hotel with a view of, well, Niagara Falls. And no hotel has a better view from their rooms than does the Marriott Gateway on the Falls . . . except perhaps the awkwardly-named Marriott Niagara Falls Hotel Fallsview & Spa. But we’ll get to that at the moment.

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7 Amazing & Luxurious
South Africa Safari Lodges

Spot Cool Stuff loves a good safari lodge, one that’s inviting and is in tune with its natural surroundings. Somehow candlelit dinners are more romantic when they are on a wood deck overlooking a river with crocodiles and hippos. Cold drinks taste better when drunk while gazing out at lions and giraffes in the heat of the day. Beds are more comfortable when they double as a refuge in the middle of an animal-filled wilderness.

Spot Cool Stuff also loves South Africa, a wondrous country that has more diversity of culture and landscape than most people imagine.

So it was an easy decision to write up two posts that combine our twin passions for South Africa and safari lodges.

In this, the first of our two-part series, we check out seven luxurious safari lodges. If you’re looking for a resort to celebrate a special occasion (or if you have access to an expense account) consider a stay at one of these WOW-inducing digs that combine luxury with some of the best game viewing in Africa. In our next South Africa post we’ll focus on our favorite budget safari lodges. To stay updated on that (and all the other travel goings at Spot Cool Stuff), follow us on Twitter, join us on Facebook or subscribe to our RSS feed and get our travel posts delivered to you directly.

And with that, here’s to luxury in the middle of South African wilderness:

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Our Favorite Room Themes at the Landhotel Hof Beverland

Spot Cool Stuff likes unusual hotels with creative themes. So, of course, we love the Landhotel Hof Beverland.

The Beverland (very much not to be confused with Bieberland) is located on the site of a former dairy farm near Ostbevern in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has 62 rooms. And 36 radically different room theme.

There’s are the under-the-sea rooms, for example, and the medieval themed rooms. The hotel’s jungle rooms have beds suspended from the ceiling. Their Star Wars rooms have private cinema screening areas. Their disco rooms come complete with hanging disco balls and blaring 70s music.

None of those rooms, however, made our list of our top five favorite room themes at the Landhotel Hof Beverland. Which rooms did make the cut? Read on:

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