Travel & Planning

3 Insane Hotels You Won’t Believe Are Out There

August 21, 2013 By Danny

According to Jake Bush, a Braun & Steidl hotel architect and developer, anyone who makes it their business to craft a hotel considers the following: “who is the guest, and why are they here”. With that in mind, it’s easy to understand why hotels across the board vary wildly—each one is trying to accommodate a specific kind of traveler.

For the most part, hotels are trying to cater to the business traveler, the luxury vacation traveler, and the budget-friendly traveler. However, there’s still another kind of traveler out there that some very unique and utterly strange hotels try to cater to, which is: the adventurous, experience-seeking, explorer.

These travelers want accommodations that are nearly the polar opposite of all the others—they want intrigue, danger, and a unique experience they can’t get anywhere else in the world—plus, they’re often willing to sacrifice a substantial amount of comfort, just for the experience. For every other kind of traveler, comfort is the last thing to be sacrificed when it comes to hotels. You can find out more at Accor, http://accorhotels.com.au/.

So, what kind of hotels does this kind of traveler frequent? Here’s my top picks for the world’s most insane, strange, and quirky hotels—some, you just won’t believe actually exist!

THE MIRRORCUBE | Location: Harads—Sweden

What is This Place? Well, The Mirrorcube is exactly what it sounds like, actually; it’s an extremely lightweight aluminum box (4x4x4 meters) with one-way mirrors for walls.

Accommodations: At most, it can only accommodate two guests at a time—imagine the waiting list! However, the interior—albeit small—provides a double bed, a living room space, a bathroom, and the exterior roof provides a nice roof-tip terrace.

What the Adventure-Traveler Loves: Per the description thus far, The Mirrorcube might not seem that interesting, but I haven’t mentioned yet that this mirrored box is actually camouflaged within a tree canopy, suspended above ground, around a tree trunk that shoots up through the center.

How the world do you get in?! By way of a rope bridge, connected to a neighboring tree!

Fun Fact: Since The Mirrorcube is located in a tree canopy and is made of mirrors, occupants are provided a 360-degree view of the surroundings. Sounds cool, right? Well, to local wildlife—specifically birds that might fly right into it—it’s not so cool. To handle this concern, all of the reflective glass is embedded with an ultraviolet color that only birds can see.

ICEHOTEL | Location: Jukkasjarvi—Sweden

What is This Place? Again, the name really is what it is—it’s an entire hotel made from snow and ice! Apparently, it’s the largest in the world, which sparked this comment from me: There’s more than one?!

Accommodations: While the beds—as well as the furniture and fixtures—are made of solid ice, they’re covered in the finest, warmest, furs. From what I understand there aren’t individual rooms; guests enjoy a more of a community experience—sharing body heat probably helps!

What the Adventure-Traveler Loves: It’s a hotel made of ice—what wouldn’t an adventure-seeker like about that?! With temperatures never rising above minus 5 degrees Celsius, adventure travelers will have a wonderful time walking around in snow pants and furs, while enjoying the company of other like-minded travelers.

Fun Fact: The ICEHOTEL only exists in the winter months—it melts after that! Every year, in November, the ICEHOTEL architects get together and design a whole new structure. Several hundred tons of ice is used in the process and it provides return guests a different experience every year!

KAROSTAS CIETUMS | Location: Leipaja—Latvia

What is This Place? It’s a prison—no, really, it’s actually a prison. Well, a former one, anyway.

Accommodations: It’s not terribly dressed up from being anything other than a prison. Guests sleep on grungy prison bunks, eat prison food, and even take a substantial amount of abuse from the guards—I’m assuming they limit that to verbal abuse. I think even the adventure-traveler draws the line at paying for physical abuse from the hotel staff.

What the Adventure-Traveler Loves: “A good hotel has got to be safe, clean, and have a good staff,” says our hotel developer Jake Bush, so the adventure-traveler loves that this hotel does all of the opposite. Karostas provides an experience—one that you can’t typically get unless you commit war crimes for a living.

Fun Fact: As a former military prison—constructed in 1905—Karostas imprisoned Stalin-era war criminals, revolutionists, and even KGB operatives.

All photos courtesy of the respective hotels.

Gear For Travel – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

August 16, 2013 By Danny

It is really remarkable how quickly technology has completely changed the face of travel. Our RTW trip lasted nearly two years, 2009-2010. As we embarked, we invested in some of the best technology to get the job done that was possible. We thought of ourselves as flashpackers extraordinaire. That included a brand new netbook, an unlocked cell phone, and a fancy DSLR camera. Now, just a few short years later, when I look back on all of that still functioning gear, it just looks so old and antiquated. That’s the nature of technology.

This old piece of hardware was our PC for two full years.

The Phone – Our mobile phone was nothing but an unlocked GSM flip phone. We were excited when a SIM card we purchased allowed us to make calls home from the Sahara Desert in Sudan for Mother’s day. Now with VOIP calling, a smart phone can make calls around the world for free…and from anywhere. The best part is that there are finally some cutting edge phones (e.g. Galaxy S4 Active) that are water and drop resistant making it even easier to stay connected and travel adventurously.

The Tablet – These did not exist while we were our trip and are a tremendous game changer, at least if you are blogging or sharing pictures while you travel. We shared one netbook as we traveled, weighing and taking up far more room than two tablets would have taken in our packs. Any of these today – iPad, Android or even a Windows tablet – are both lighter and more powerful than our “state of the art” netbook was. Plus there is wifi virtually everywhere now making a tablet a really useful tool for travelers to check in.

The Camera – This area has changed a lot less, mostly these cameras now come with more features and more megapixels than before. However, by and large, they still do the same job. The big add-ons here are the ease by which photos can be geotagged and quickly uploaded. Camera processing has also improved allowing for better low-light photography and much better videos. That would have saved us quite a bit of time geotagging our photos.

This article is NOT about what gear to go out and buy, there are plenty of review sites on the Internet, It is merely a comparison of what has changed in less than 3 years time. In the next three years will Google Glass remove the need for a tour guide? Streaming video and video conferencing might ultimately replace the written word when it comes to blog posts. We might even be able to sterilize our meals on our plates with a UV light and completely make food poisoning a thing of the past! Sounds good to me.

4 Bachelor Party ideas for Las Vegas and Beyond

August 7, 2013 By Danny

Typically, most bachelor parties here in the USA involve a lot of booze and often a trip to Las Vegas or Atlantic City. In a few weeks, I’ll be heading out on a bachelor party myself and although some of the other guys wanted to take a traditional Vegas trip and stay at a place like the www.arialasvegas.com, the bride to be was dead set against that option. Several still took the time to research Vegas flights and things to do in Sin City but it was to no avail. Las Vegas can be a great place, but it is only one of the options we have here today.

A Backwoods Adventure.

Nothing quite says manliness and male bonding like a camping trip. Somehow the challenge us urban and suburbanites face when lighting a campfire always makes stories for the ages. Add to that a few rounds of brew and no real stressors and you can have yourself a nice relaxing trip…but that’s not what bachelor parties are all about. Instead, try to take a mountain biking or a white water rafting trip. The nice thing about rafting is that by choosing a rafting company, such as the one we used on my bachelor party, no one needs to have any real skills or gear.

Be A Kid.

With this upcoming bachelor party we chose instead to do something that would be simple and fun. We’re visiting Cedar Point in Ohio where we will ride roller coasters until we’re blue in the face. To add a little bit of manliness to the weekend we’ll also be hitting a baseball game and grilling out for dinner. The really exciting thing is that none of the crew has been to this park before; most have never been to Ohio for that matter.

Travel Abroad

In sticking with the theme of doing something new, why not take that same airplane and turn it in another direction. Recently I went to a Bachelor Party that took place in Puerto Rico, no passport needed and relatively inexpensive airfare still left us in a new country with plenty of options for things to do. Although if you have more money at your disposal, you could follow the British Stag Party tradition and visit Prague instead!

When a Massage Just Isn’t Enough

July 29, 2013 By Jillian

Is it possible to call yourself a weary traveler even if you haven’t been anywhere new or on a typical “adventure” in a while? I think yes. We are all in one way or another a weary traveler on the road of life. A bit poetic perhaps, but it’s true. The stress, anxiety and frustration we feel at home doesn’t automatically leave us when we hit the road, instead it is somehow transformed into positive stress (what time is the train? wait, what time is it now? oh no…), anxiety and yes, even frustration. We’ve all lived through it on the road, and when we get home we swear to our friends that those were the best moments of the trip. And yet at home, those are the moments that cause us to scream “I can’t take it anymore!”

As a weary traditional traveler, exploring the world, I took to the spas of Tbilisi in the hopes of some relaxation. What I got can only be called the most unorthodox way to relax…the massage and scrub. Now, repeat that with a heavy soviet accent.

Massage and scrub.

Read about the spas of Tbilisi before you continue. Yes, the scrub was painful, humiliating and yet afterwards I was willing to do it again, because… it was relaxing in that painful stress relieving sort of way.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when we were waiting for our twins to make their appearance in this world. We headed across the State of Florida to check out one of our favorite staycation options- Marco Island. Let’s just say the differences were abundantly clear from the moment we arrived:

Photo Credit: Hilton Marco Island Spa Website

No scary woman with a scrub brush and a hose here. Instead, the locker room looked like the inside of a softly lit palace, complete with uniformed attendants and fluffy white towels. Unlike the sulfurous water and back slapping, the spa massage included soothing instrumental music, soft mood lighting, aromatherapy and moisturizing massage oils. No one approached me with a look of determination to scrub me clean or beat into submission my aching back. The atmosphere was soothing, quiet and relaxing.

Too relaxing.

90 minutes after crawling onto the massage table I woke up.

Does a massage count if you fall asleep?

Maybe I’m just better off handling my stress and anxiety with a trip!

Semi-Professional Money Transferring: The Travel Made Me Do It

April 22, 2013 By Jillian

Keeping track on our finances on the road was far more complex a job than it ever should have been. We used two bank accounts, a third savings account, and about half a dozen credit cards. Although we didn’t quite need all those credit cards, we DID need the multiple banking accounts.

The first checking account is what we used while abroad. This account paid our credit card bills (the few times we were able to use our credit cards) and was the account we drew on while at ATMs around the world. (The great part was that it reimbursed ATM fees and didn’t charge us foreign exchange fees.)

The second account handled the ‘other payments’ we still had to make while on the road, namely those pesky student loans. We did our best to never access this account either online or from an ATM. Mostly, this account was a backup account in the event we lost our other ATM cards. If we had the ATM cards with us to the first account, then the ATM cards for this account were safely stored in our hotel room.

Having and maintaining a separate bank account for travel is important. It is a big safety factor that cannot be understated. Equally important is the use of separate savings account. In our little money laundering scheme, most of our money was in this third account. Every month it automatically transferred spending money to our travel checking account. If we needed extra I sent an email home to my father asking him to log into the account to make the transfer. That savings account also sent the exact amount of money to pay those student loans to that backup checking account. We also kept money in both checking accounts but never too much money.

We took the time to carefully research our options online before setting all of this up for our trip. Our credit cards were set to bill themselves to our bank, not all cards can do this. All banks are a little different and it is really important to compare bank accounts online and make sure you’ve selected the right one for you. Some will work for some people but not for others.

You never want to be abroad without access to cash to just remember to be safe and keep a backup plan handy. Once in Tanzania an ATM counted my withdrawals twice and in China I left my ATM card in the machine. In Guatemala one of the girls in our Spanish class had their ATM info skimmed off their card by the ATM and the bank was withdrawing money from their account every day for a week before they realized. Setup your extra accounts and play it safe.