A Flickr user’s glimpse into Spain

by Elizabeth Seward on

Photo sets of Spain aren’t difficult to come by, but some of them certainly seem worth sharing more than others. I recently came across this photo set by Flickr user EfwEE. These 25 photos capture this user’s experience in Spain in 2007-2008. The photo set features shots of Pena Montanesa, an incredibly noticeable rocky outcrop of the Pre-Pyrenees. The photo set also documents the Pineta River, Red Rock Fall, Ordesa National Park, and more.

Photography is often times one of the greatest side effects of travel and simultaneously one of the greatest incentives for travel; photos tell a story of a destination to anyone able to listen. And for anyone interested enough to experience a place on their own, photos are continuing remnants from travel that cyclically persevere and inspire others. In other words, photography seems to effectively breed travel. Perhaps these photos will inspire you to visit Spain–they have inspired me.

10 unique underground hotels from around the world

by Jessica Festa on

While staying above ground has its perks, it’s always fun to try something a little out of the ordinary. On your next trip, why not try staying in one of these unique hotels located underground? You’ll get privacy, a unique experience, and won’t have to worry about the sun waking you up too early on your vacation.

Sala Silvermine
Sala, Sweden

The Sala Silvermine is an actual mine that allows visitors to stay in a Mine Suite, the “world’s deepest hotel room”. The room is about 508 feet below the Earth’s surface, next to underground galleries and caverns. Guests will receive a guided tour of the mine, which was well-known for its silver, lead, and zinc content, as well as a basket of goodies including cheese, fruits, chocolate, biscuits, and sparkling wine. While beautiful and peaceful, just make sure to dress warm as it is only 35.6 degrees Farenheit in the mine all year round and 64.4 degrees Farenheit in the room itself.Desert Cave Hotel
Coober Pedy, South Australia

Since 1915, people have flocked to Coober Pedy in the Outback in search of the precious opals the town is known for. They have also gone to explore the underground dwellings of the area, as many locals live in “dugouts” to keep cool. The 4-star Desert Cave Hotel officially opened in 1988 as a way to help people experience the underground way of life. While there are 50 rooms available, 19 are underground. All contain modern luxuries like color television, Wi-Fi, and free in-house movies. And those living below the Earth won’t feel too disconnected from the world, as there is also an underground shopping arcade that features an extensive range of opals and opal jewelery.

Kelebek Cave Hotel
Cappadocia, Turkey

Located right in the center of Goreme’s historic village, the Kelebek Cave Hotel allows guests to stay in spacious underground cave dwellings as well as fairy chimneys formed from volcanic activity. The rooms are surprisingly comfortable and cozy, with a fireplace and a traditional Turkish breakfast. If you want a better idea of what the property looks like inside and out, they offer a comprehensive virtual tour on their website.

Woodlyn Park
Waitomo, New Zealand

Lord of the Rings fans will love this hobbit-inspired accommodation. Woodlyn Park includes 4 types of motels, including a plane motel, train motel, boat motel, and the underground hobbit motels that have circular windows poking up out of the ground. The rooms include a kitchen, bathroom, furnishings, and decor. While this is by no means a luxury hotel, it is a fun and unique accommodation option.

La Claustra
Airolo, Switzerland

La Claustra was once a hidden military fort housed inside the St. Gotthard Mountain. In 1999, the Swiss army gave up the space, giving arist Jean Odermatt an idea for a unique modern accommodation that is embedded deep into mountain rock. This 4-star property also offers, innovative and organic cuisine, a steam grotto, and activities and events upon request.

Les Hautes Roches
Rochecorbon, France

Les Hautes Roches is located in the Loire Valley and was formerly the living quarters of the nearby Abbey of Marmoutier monks who sought refuge during the wars of religion. After being abandoned for 15 years, these caves and adjoining 17th century pavilion were renovated by hotel owner Philippe Mollard into a luxury Troglodytic hotel. Guests sleep in rooms sculpted from tufa rock and housed inside the center of cliffs. Fun fact: Tufa rock has a velvet-like appearance and is also known to promote health and well-being.

Beckham Creek Cave Lodge
Parthenon, Arkansas

The Beckham Creek Cave Lodge is a serene and secluded underground property with modern technology and luxurious amenities. Relax in the below-ground jacuzzis, watch movies on a flat sceen television, or just enjoy the elegantly furnished room and high-tech stainless steel kitchen. While you will be sleeping below the Earth, you will be able to immerse yourself in nature above ground with horseback riding and hiking through the Ozark countryside.

Cuevas Pedro Antonio de Alarcón
Guadix, Spain

The Cuevas Pedro Antonio de Alarcón is a pre-historic cave hotel near Granada that has been amended into chalet accommodations. Carved into the clay hillside, the individual chalets feature modern living facilities inside whitewashed caves that give guests the chance to “experience the authentic lifestyle of accitanos”. There are 23 fully-equipped caves to choose from, as well as a pool, restaurant, meeting room, reception, and laundry facility.

Kokopelli’s Cave Bed & Breakfast
Farmington, New Mexico

Kokopelli’s Cave Bed & Breakfast is a cave accommodation that has been blasted out of mountain rock. The property is a 1,650 square foot, one-bedroom cave hotel that sits 280 feet above the La Plata River and is made from sandstone that is 65 million years old. Luxury and comfort is part of a stay in this private and secluded cave, with plush carpeting, a hot tub, hot waterfall shower, kitchen, washer and dryer, and Southwestern-themed decor.

Null Stern Hotel
To be determined

The first Null Stern Hotel opened in Teufen, Switzerland, but closed down on June 4, 2010, exactly one year after opening. The closing came not because of an unsuccessful establishment, but due to an overwhelming amount of positive guest feedback asking for more properties. A former Swiss Nuclear bunker, the aim of the underground property was to give the unused space a second life while providing guests with an affordable accommodation.

For the time being, the founders of the hotel are dedicating their energy on an expansion strategy and opening a Null Stern Hotel property that is even bigger and better than before. However, because negotiations are still in progress, the exact location cannot be disclosed. The original hotel is currently open as a museum, giving visitors guided tours that introduce them to property features like the wheel of fate, the second check in, and the virtual window.

Medieval manuscripts in Los Angeles and London

by Sean McLachlan on

Two major exhibitions on opposite sides of the globe are focusing on the art of medieval manuscript illumination.

At the Getty Center in Los Angeles, a show has just opened highlighting the burst in creativity and education in what is popularly called the Gothic period. Gothic Grandeur: Manuscript Illumination, 1200–1350 features books from this important period, when educated Europe created a huge demand for illustrated manuscripts.

Looking at these works of art instantly dispels the popular notion that the Middle Ages were a low period in civilization. In fact, it was a time of great artistic creativity and innovation. Even though the Church tried to create an orthodox mode of thinking, science and basic questions of philosophy were able to advance, albeit slowly. Even existentialism had a place. Just read the opening chapter of St. Augustine’s Confessions if you don’t believe me.

The exhibition mainly draws on Getty’s impressive permanent collection, including recent prize acquisitions such as the Abbey Bible, one of the finest Gothic illuminated manuscripts ever made. Also of interest is the Northumberland Bestiary, a mid-13th century encyclopedia of animals.

In London, the British Library is running Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination. This collection of 150 manuscripts from the library’s collection date from the 8th to the 16th century and depict royalty through the ages. Some were even owned by kings and queens, such as a psalter with marginal notations by Henry VIII. The exhibition not only covers the royalty about and for whom the books were created, but also the artists who create them. Not all were monks as commonly believed. Many books were made by professional freelance artists who hustled for commissions from the rich and powerful. Not much has changed!

Gothic Grandeur: Manuscript Illumination, 1200–1350 has two installations, one running to 26 February 2012 and the next running from 28 February to 13 May 2012. Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination runs until 13 March 2012.

Photo courtesy British Library.

Things you won’t see in Paris this holiday season: beggars

by Libby Zay on
As tourists window shop in Paris this holiday season, they won’t find any more homeless people asking for change around some of the city’s most popular areas; the French government has issued a series of decrees that ban begging around Paris’ most popular tourist and Christmas shopping spots. According to the Guardian, the Champs Elyssés was the first Paris landmark to fall under the begging ban, with Galeries Lafayette and Printemps department stores and the area around the Louvre and Tuileries Gardens soon also deemed “no-go zones” for the country’s homeless.

The news outlet writes that interior minister Claude Guéant said the anti-begging decrees were part of a “merciless fight” against “Romanian criminality,” adding that Romanian criminals account for one in six appearances in Paris courts. To target the offenders, 33 Romanian police officers have been contracted to round up beggars around the Champs Elyssés alone.
The mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, is unhappy with the new policies. He called the efforts a cheap “PR stunt” that targeted some of the city’s most well-off areas while brushing real problems in other neighborhoods under the rug. “Wanting to fight poverty by repression and fines is shocking at a time when the state isn’t fulfilling its obligations in housing vulnerable young people or providing emergency accommodation,” Delanoe told the news outlet.

Christmas in Paris: ’tis the season to be feasting

by David Downie on

It’s not that Paris doesn’t have Nativity Scenes or Christmas trees or even Santa Claus-lookalikes called le Père Noel-Father Christmas..

It’s not that Parisians don’t string blinking lights, buy extravagant gifts, throw parties, ring bells, and sing “noel-noel”. Isn’t noel French for “Christmas?” A few French faithful even attend ceremonies, light candles, observe Advent Lent, and fold hands in drafty sanctuaries that echo in emptiness the rest of the year.

But somehow in this militantly secular republic, where freedom from religion is a religion in itself, Christmas really isn’t about Christmas. Not the way “les Anglo-Saxons” seem to celebrate it.

Noel in Paris is a time for worshipping the true French cult: food and wine, la grande bouffe. It’s pagan, it’s druidical, it’s not just pre-Revolutionary, it’s possibly pre-Roman or prehistoric and thoroughly ancient Gallic, meaning totally contemporary French.

Christmas in Paris is a fattening tale of extreme Thanksgiving-like gourmandizing, gluttonizing, gobbling, gnoshing and every other imaginable variation on the theme of snarfing up and scarfing down fine edibles and nectarous potables.

Holiday food markets and an extra rasher of farmer’s and neighborhood markets mushroom in squares across the land and sometimes even fill bridges that cross the Seine. The Champs-Elysées, Trocadéro, Notre-Dame, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Place de la Nation and other history-soaked sites swarm with humanity drawn like flies to rustic stands groaning with goodies from the provinces.Stationed on a thousand sidewalks outside bottle shops, cheese shops, and gourmet specialty boutiques legions of svelte Parisian Santas-most in spiffy civvies without a trace of cotton beard-tempt you to taste or swill something seasonal and irresistible-and part with your precious euros.

On Paris radio stations it’s not sleigh bells or Christmastide jingles that delight your ears. Non. It’s nonstop advertising for les produits nobles-the French nation’s notion of upscale produce and ingredients. The list stars, of course, Champagne, Sauternes and hoary wines from mossy chateaux, foie gras, oysters, scallops, smoked salmon or sturgeon or duck’s breast, caviar, truffles, runny Mont d’Or cheese, catwalk chocolate and extravagant pastries.

Pastries!

In Paris a buche de noelisn’t a yuletide log to burn in your fireplace. It’s a dangerously caloric, creamy log-shaped cake that comes in a mind-boggling variety of sizes and flavors. Millions are consumed in the holiday season, rolled out by every baker in town.

This glad season of weight-gain actually stretches from La Fete de la Saint Martin-November 11-to Epiphany-January 6, reaching paroxysms of hedonism at Christmastide.

Saint Martin’s feast day is dedicated to — guess what? Not a holy man! It’s the official festival of foie gras, and opens the hunting season for France’s many marchés au gras, which continue into the New Year. Only in France can the concept of “fat markets” make mouths water. The French Ministry of Agriculture has a web page dedicated to this artery-plugging phenomenon but not much about the forgotten saint. The separation of things spiritual and comestible into sealed compartments is deliciously watertight.

Like foie gras, pastries bridge the holiday season. When the yuletide cake logs have burned through they are swiftly replaced in January by les gallettes du roi-“the king’s flaky pies.” They look like pork pie hats but are filled with delicate marzipan. Included in the price of your gallette you’re given a folded golden crown of paper. Whoever finds the fève hidden inside the pie-literally the fava bean, though it’s usually a ceramic token-is crowned king or queen of the day. That’s a ritual that goes way back, past the various King Louis all the way to Augustus Caesar.

Who knows how many Parisians are aware of what the gallette and fava tradition springs from, and how many care? In Paris “Epiphany” is either a revelation about a fashionable new restaurant or a slice of the king’s marzipan pie. Rarely are the arriving Magi invited to share it.

No, Santa definitely drives a refrigerated truck when he hits Paris. Maybe that’s why I decided to stay all these years.

Author and guide David Downie’s latest books are the critically acclaimed “Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light” and “Quiet Corners of Rome.” His websites are www.davidddownie.com, www.parisparistours.comand http://wanderingliguria.com, dedicated to the Italian Riviera.