Unusual Hotels

by Erik Olsen on

On the heels of my earlier post about the Yotel….here is an off-beat and interesting site about hotels came up this morning when I was StumbleUpon-ing around. The site itself is actually called unusualhotelsoftheworld.com, a mouthful to be sure, but what it lacks in brevity it more than makes up for in some really interesting information.

Take this hotel in Sweden called the Utter Inn. It is a floating, underwater hotel, where you sleep in an underwater aquarium. Look at that picture! The Inn come from the fertile grey matter of a local artist and sculptor named Mikael Genber  who has decided that art should be “for the public”, which presumably means they should be able to sleep in it. This is just one of many cool places to check out at this site, others of which might give rise to some ideas on where to stay on your next vacation.


Literary Ireland: Bloomsday

by Neil Woodburn on

Today is June 16.  It is a rather innocuous day for most people.  But not for Leopold Bloom.
 
Mr. Bloom is a literary character and as such, you’d imagine any day written about him would be a rather momentous one to warrant pen to paper.  And June 16 certainly was.  This was the day James Joyce carefully chronicled in what many consider the greatest novel of the 20th century: Ulysses. 

The novel takes place over the course of a single day and was the original 24 long before Keifer Southerland was ever born.  It follows the course of Mr. Bloom as he wanders and weaves his way through Dublin, paralleling Ulysses’ journey home as chronicled by Homer in The Odyssey.  

And you can do the same.

Every year, Dublin celebrates Bloomsday in honor of this lost soul.  There are readings of the book, a road race, and other festivities celebrating Joyce’s masterpiece. 

Fans of the novel, often adorned in period dress, start the day as Bloom did, with a kidney breakfast and then journey out to the Dublin streets and pubs featured in the book, stopping for Burgundy and a Gorgonzola cheese sandwich at Davy Byrne’s Pub.  Few, if any, properly replicate the entire journey which ends in the book at 2 a.m., but the fun is the attempt to do so. 

A wonderful bonus for participants is that the more they drink, the easier it is to begin grasping this otherwise impenetrable novel.  Somewhere between 12 beers and passing out, clear-sited epiphanies usually occur on the streets of Dublin and for one, brief moment, Joyce is finally understood. 

Shamanizing

by Erik Olsen on


Admit it, you’ve always harbored a secret desire to getaway to the Amazonian rain forest, where you will hack your way into the deep, dark jungle to find a tribe that welcomes you, that offers you a potent drink containing a powerful hallucinogen, and after you try it, the heavens open up and all of life’s mysteries reveal themselves to you. Unfortunately, you end up with one heck of a hangover. Oh, and you forget most of what you learned. Sorry about that. After effects, you know. But you did take away one morsel of wisdom: those big green leaves in the jungle: they make really cool hats.

Alas, you and I are not likely to fraternize with shamans any time soon, but the folks over at National Geographic did just that recently, and they brought along a video crew. Yes, two Americans, including one of my current writing idols Kira Salak, went to the Peruvian rain forest to try ayahuasca, a kind of jungly LSD/Mescaline drug that the locals use for ceremonies… and to play jokes on their bosses (Memo? I wasn’t supposed to have that memo done today? What, are you on ayahuasca?). 

But seriously, this is wonderful story-telling and a cool story. I spent a wee bit of time in the Amazon years ago and very much dreamed of taking the time to plunge into the forest to do exactly this. Of course, I didn’t. Couldn’t stand the mosquitoes.

Armenia Dispatches List

by Erik Olsen on

A gadling reader sent me a note recently asking what happened to all the Armenia dispatches I did while visiting that country last year. Well, seems our search is a little funky and they are hard to find, and since we added country listings a few months ago, we haven’t been able (yet) to go back and add lots and lots of old posts to the country lists.

So what I’m going to do is post a URL right here that should bring up Gadling search results featuring those dispatches. At least we’ll have a result here in the Armenia section.

Read all ARMENIA DISPATCHES

The Da Vinci, um, Dress Code

by Erik Olsen on

Here’s a story that many of us who have traveled a fair amount can relate to. The travelers dress code. Now, the one thing about this article that I don’t agree with is the tone that somehow Americans who go abroad are somehow worse dressers than people from other countries. I mean, have you ever seen the Israelis? A few years in the army with all that intense regimentation, and all the kids want to do is let loose and see the world in tattered sandals, ripped t-shirts and greasy dreadlocks.

But Americans, especially young ones, do commit their share of Dress Code Fouls. And the idea behind this article originally from the Chicago Trib is that, given where America’s image lies these days (i.e. somewhere behind Morocco and just ahead of Botswana) we ought to be doing a better job presenting ourselves when over seas. I couldn’t agree more. It aggravates me to no end to see Americans traveling abroad wearing old, crappy clothing and smelling like they’re homeless.

I’m not one to advocate any particular style of dress, but the piece here offers some suggestions. To wit: “Clean khakis or jeans, a nice shirt and Rockports will do for men. So will capris or slacks, a blouse and comfortable shoes for women.” Rockports? OK, nevermind that. But for the sake of our global image, folks, let’s start dressing up, if just a little.