SNOW HOTELS

Check into the Hotel de Glace and put all your worries on ice for the night. In fact, you’ll be on ice for the night; the beds, furniture, and just about everything else are made of ice at this unique hotel just 10 minutes from downtown Quebec. There are many different room styles available to suit guest’s individual tastes. The original Hôtel de Glace rooms are small, but cozy, while the Premium Deluxe theme suites are equipped with a fireplace, private spa, ice sculptures, and artistic lighting. If your room doesn’t come with a spa, don’t worry: there are plenty for you to thaw out in over at the outdoor Nordic relaxation area.

Hotel Kakslauttanen offers igloo accommodations just like the above resorts, but not only in snow form. Besides the classic ice-block igloo, this hotel in Finnish Lapland also features glass igloos that allow you to star-gaze throughout the night. Even though the igloos are located 155 miles north of the Arctic Circle, you don’t have to worry about shivering the whole night through.

The owners of SnowHotel Kirkenes want to teach their guests that snow can be our friend. Like the other snow hotels on the list, the icy accommodations here reveal the amazing insulating powers of snow. The owners also want to show their guests the artistic potential of ice. Each of the 20 snow suites feature different themed sculptures and decorations created by artists from Harbin, China, which is world-famous for its ice artisans.

This is the ice hotel which started it all over twenty years ago. Icehotel of Jukkasjärvi, Sweden has garnered much international attention over the years for its breakthrough in ice construction, such as the very first Absolut IceBar and the Tron-themed room created for the 2010-2011 winter season. Today, it is the world’s largest ice and snow resort with 5,500 square meters of frozen lodgings guaranteed to provide a good night’s rest at -5ºC.

Read More

The V8 Car Hotels

The V8 Hotel, just in case you were wondering, has nothing to do with the vegetable juice: we’re talking about beefy, eight-cylinder engines. This is a hotel designed for all the car fanatics in Germany, as well as the world at large. If you fall into this category, perhaps you’ve had a car you love so much that you’ve been tempted to sleep in it. Well, here at the V8 Hotel in Stuttgart, Germany, you get to do just that, but with much more comfort than you’ll find in most performance vehicles.

Altogether, the hotel has 34 car-themed rooms; but some of them are more elaborately decorated than others. The basic rooms are nothing to complain about though. In fact, if you prefer the Bauhaus aesthetic, they’re perfect for you. These spacious white rooms are simply, but tastefully furnished, which highlights a historic car-related photo that covers an entire wall.

If you want more than just a photo of cars, then you should reserve one of the ten fully decked-out rooms. As we hinted at earlier, the beds in some of these rooms are made out of real cars. Each of these rooms is thoroughly decorated according to an automotive theme, such as the drive-in cinema, route 66, the car wash, and the race track. The drive-in room (pictured at top), for example, features a long red Cadillac bed and a mural that depicts other cars lined up for the film, as well as a night sky overhead. Over at the Route 66 room, the bed is set under a canopy tent, while the walls and ceiling portray a desert scene. And of course all the mechanics out there will want to check into the auto shop room where they’ll sleep comfortably among many tools and car parts.

Read More

THE LIFE OF A HAMSTER AT THIS FRENCH HOTEL

Here’s one of the more unusual projects we’ve come across in a while – and trust us, we come across some pretty far-out ideas on a regular basis. What we have for you today is La Villa Hamster in Nantes, France. Even though this might sound like a pampered retreat for your pet hamster, we assure you it is quite the opposite: the guests at this themed hotel are all human. What makes this hotel experience so unusual is that the rooms are designed like hamster cages, complete with running wheel and water spout.

There seems to be more than just an interest in seeing a strange place drawing visitors to this customized 18th century villa in Nantes. The appeal of this hotel experience appears to be the transformation from one’s ordinary self into something entirely different. At the same time, there is a sense of familiarity for those who have raised hamsters as pets. How many times have we looked at our dog, cat, or hamster and wondered what it would be like to live life in their shoes (or paws)? Or wished that we could trade in our complicated lives for the simple life of our pet after a particularly stressful day. La Villa Hamster gives us the opportunity to finally answer questions such as these and herein lies the appeal of the hotel.

Most guests are familiar with the habits of hamsters and know exactly how to behave once they check into their rooms. Apparently, some guests even take to all fours during their stay at La Villa Hamster. If you prefer to walk upright, but still want to feel more like a hamster, you can throw on one of the cute hamster hoods provided by the hotel. Inside the rooms, guests will find all the standard fixtures of a hamster cage. A human-sized running wheel is affixed to one wall and doubles as the dinning area when a table is inserted between the crossbars. As far as dinner goes, your meal of organic grains is served inside a plastic feed bowl. You then wash your grains down with water from a spout activated by a foot petal. And when it’s time to turn in for the night, you’ll climb up to the loft where your bed of hay awaits.

As funny as this all sounds, Falquerho and Tabary are on to something. The hotel has received nothing but positive responses since it opened in 2009. Having met with such success in their hamster-themed venture, the duo is now looking into opening other animal-themed hotel experiences, starting with cats and dogs.

Read More

UNDERWATER HOTEL IN DUBAI

While this underwater hotel in Dubai is still a long ways off from taking reservations, the concept art alone has been enough to create quite a buzz throughout the blogosphere. This is not too surprising as underwater projects never fail to fascinate the public; there’s something about the idea of living under the sea that is endlessly enchanting. We’ve already put together a list of amazing underwater restaurants, but we’ve yet to see an underwater hotel.  Although we’ve heard about many extravagant projects planned for Dubai that never come through, we’d love to see something like this come to fruition some day.

The Water Discus Hotel, named after the shape of both its underwater and above-water structures, was designed by Poland’s Deep Ocean Technology, who also specialize in underwater vehicles and deep-sea exploration equipment. Construction of the hotel will be completed by Dubai-based Drydocks World, while financing will come from Switzerland’s BIG InvestConsult. The Water Discus Hotel isn’t the only underwater hotel in the works, but it might be the first to actually be built. Another underwater hotel called Hydropolis was planned for Dubai back in 2006, yet the $300 million project never broke ground. Over in Fiji, the Poseidon Underwater Resort is under construction, but it keeps running into delays and the completion date is unknown. Hopefully everyone behind the Water Discus Hotel has learned from the problems encountered by these previous projects and apply those lessons to this latest attempt at an underwater hotel.

As you can see in the concept drawings, the hotel looks like something out of the Jetsons. Above the water, a disc shaped structure will be home to a swimming pool, spa, and garden. However, all 21 rooms will be in another disc 10 meters below the surface. As you would imagine, the rooms will feature incredible views of the ocean through an entire wall of windows. While architect Pawel Podwojewski tried as hard as possible to keep construction costs down, potential guests will be glad to know that he didn’t skimp on the acrylic windows, which are the most expensive element in the project. He was able to keep costs relatively low by adhering to a simple design and not affixing the disc to the ocean floor.

The underwater disc will actually be able to move up and down a central pillar, which will come in handy for a couple of reasons. The first is safety. In the case of an emergency, the disc can be brought up to the surface in 15 minutes where it will be much easier to evacuate guests. The speed at which the disc moves up-and-down is adjustable, so if it needs to be brought up for repairs, it will move at a much more leisurely rate, taking as long as 12 hours to breach the surface.

Well, those are the few details we have so far. Whether or not this is just another Dubai pipe dream, we can’t say for sure. However, we get the feeling that it won’t be too long before we start to see the hotel industry head beneath sea.

Read More

Dangerous Thunderstorms Lightning

Thunderstorms are an elusive phenomenon that rarely cooperate with a photographer. Not only that, but most storms won't come to you - you'll have to go to them.Here are some photos catching the beauty of lightning.

Read More

Dangerous Snake

Housing a snake that is quick, intelligent, and deadly, as well as over 12 feet long, can be challenging. When kept, they usually are given their own enclosures, one pair per enclosure. Commonly enclosures are at least 5 feet wide by 10 feet long and tall enough for a person to stand and maneuver during maintenance. At least one lockable hide box or switchbox is essential, but this species often refuses to be goaded into entering a box. Ventilation is a must, as is a large tub of water for humidity and bathing. Keep the temperature in the range of 85 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, dropping a few degrees at night. Some specimens spray liquid feces over all surfaces daily, so keeping the enclosure clean is difficult and dangerous.

Many king cobras refuse to eat in captivity, but those that do will take several large rats or rabbits a week and also any dead snakes that can be found. A large male is recorded eating over 5 pounds of rats and snakes in a single week.

King cobras are much too dangerous to be kept by individuals without proper training. They are notorious escape artists, and their bite can kill an adult human in 15 minutes under rare circumstances.

Read More

Burning London Fireplace Screens

Unusual firescreens, made of laser cut metal, look like iconic silhouettes of famous cities: London and Rome.

Clever fire shields were inspired by the Great Fires of 1666 and 64 AD.

Read More