Hip hotels may come and go. But any of the Kimptom Hotels just seem, well, hipper. Case in point: The Hotel Monaco Seattle and it’s “Room with a Vroom” promotion offers: • A Vespa scooter for a day; • Complimentary wine and beer in the lobby during its happy “Hour of Indulgence; and • Room…
I own a time share with one of the leading companies and have traded it for fabulous vacations in Florida, California, Colorado and Aruba. To that end but a bit different, SailTime offers fractional ownership on U.S. coasts and overseas of high-end sail boats and guarantees members a minimum of seven sailing times each month….
In America, we’ve blogged about themed room art hotels in SF and NYC. In Europe, they’re becoming more popular, too, and the Berlin’s Propeller Island City Lodge is a new bright light in the art hotel universe. Here, each of the 30 rooms is a unique art installation and very reasonably priced. In the Forest…
A few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge is the Buckeye Roadhouse. It’s also a mile downhill from the scene of a horrendous 28-car pile-up last Saturday morning from a rare 3-6″ snow and ice storm that hit the area. The Buckeye has been a fixture on the side of Highway 101 for many…
For a limited time only, Oceania Cruises is offering free airfare, as well as two-for-one fares on some of its European voyages this Spring, including trips to Italy. These are two extraordinary, luxuriously appointed ships with expertly trained European staff to cater to only 684 passengers per cruise, the finest cuisine at sea and the…
Two of Walt Disney World’s most upscale resorts –– The Swan and The Dolphin –– are now offering 25% discounts on one night’s stay to anyone who can prove they recently bought a toupee, hair transplant or hair-restoring drug. The “Rugs, Plugs & Drugs” promotion is Disney’s way of leveraging the fact that they just…
The annual Paris couture show that ended on March 6 blends pagentry, boldness, lunacy and a style watch for global fashionistas. See artist and author Gladys Perint Palmer’s candid jottings in her “Paris Sketchbook” as “the fashion world continued to mix the topical and the trivial, an experie ce captured in these exclusive drawings.” Read…
Ever wanted to do something that was uniquely unique? Well, Outside Magazine’s 2006 Trip of the Year is a one-of-a-kind, powder and glacier heli-skiing experience that departs from a luxury 61-meter-long megayacht, Absinthe. Within a few minutes, you and up to 10 other skiers can be standing atop the West Coast Mountain Range of British…
It may snow in the San Francisco Bay Area tonight, which is rare. But I’d much rather be strolling on the snowy, sugary white beaches on Providenciales in the Turks & Caicos chain, a 40-island archipelago south of the Bahamas and east of Florida. The weather is warm and sunny year-round and I proposed to…
There are luxury hotels. And then, there are the 359 most luxurious, most well-appointed, most awarded and most heralded hotels, resorts and spas in 59 countries across the planet. For the first time, the 2006 list of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World includes places from South Korea, Laos, St. Lucia, Russia and Estonia….
The screens on most handheld devices are too small to enjoy watching photos, videos or TV programs. To appeal to this audience, Samsung of Korea and Asus of Taiwan introduced an ultralight tablet computer at the CeBIT Show 2006 in Hanover, Germany yesterday that’s bigger than a handheld but smaller than a tablet. Called Project…
A flight from Dublin to Paris cost about $600 in the 1990s. Today, it goes for about $50 US, round- trip. That’s why, according to a Washington Post article, “growing numbers of Europeans are buying second homes in other countries because they can afford to travel to them frequently, creating building booms along seasides from…