Weekend travel media top five: July 17-18, 2010

by Alex Robertson Textor on

This weekend’s most interesting travel stories include a take on apartment rental listings services, an overview of the delightfully uncrowded White Mountains of Crete, an exploration of boutique caravan rentals in Cornwall, a search for pies in southern Alberta, and a list of NYC hotel rooftop bars.

1. In the New York Times, Benji Lanyado explores new developments in the orbit of inexpensive apartment rentals. Lanyado’s article got a lot of attention this past weekend, all of it deserved. His is essential ammunition for the budget-friendly fight against gratuitously expensive hotels.

2. In the Financial Times, Henry Shukman walks all over Crete’s White Mountains. The article ends with a quick guide to four additional European island hideaways.

3. In the Guardian, Gemma Bowes explores the new wave of boutique caravans (or trailers, as we know them stateside.)

4. In the Globe and Mail, Cinda Chavich embarks on a road trip across southern Alberta’s Cowboy Trail, sampling pie in towns with names like Black Diamond, Twin Butte, and Okotoks.

5. In the Los Angeles Times, Sherri Eisenberg provides a primer to Manhattan’s hotel rooftop bars.

(Image of Crete’s White Mountains: Flickr/bazylek100).

Top Caribbean bolthole to offer iPads to guests

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Lighthouse Bay Resort, an exquisite Barbuda resort recently tipped by Vanity Fair’s George Wayne as an appropriately majestic honeymoon location for Prince William and Kate Middleton, already cocoons its guests in utter bliss.

It offers isolation along a miles-long stretch of insanely stunning beach; a skilled chef who produces wonderfully personalized meals; an appealing list of activities, all gently on offer; and free long-distance telephone and use of laptops-and, as of this coming week, use of iPads on the property.

In stocking its rooms with iPads, Lighthouse Bay will advance a luxury hotel micro-trend. Back in April, Gridskipper noted that several hotels had begun to incorporate the iPad tablet into their amenity tallies. One of the hotels mentioned in that round-up, Rhode Island’s Ocean House, at the time planned to offer iPads as a basic amenity for guests; the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Berkeley in London (the latter reported in Gadling) both provide iPad in selected suites.

Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s Ale House Inn ups the ante by providing iPads to guests in all its “Deluxe” rooms. By providing four iPads for its nine suites, Lighthouse Bay provides similarly broad guest access to iPads. Next season, Lighthouse Bay plans to roll out iPads in all of its nine suites.

The iPad is still very new and it’s unclear how broad its adoption will be. But if this micro-trend continues and luxury hotels will soon be providing the magic tablet for guests in greater numbers, the iPad may progress from amenity to utility fairly quickly.

Weekend travel media’s top five

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Here are some keepers from this past weekend’s English-language newspaper travel sections.

1. In the Financial Times, Philip Horne writes a fascinating North Dakota pilgrimage story that traces Theodore Roosevelt’s tenure in the Peace Garden State.

2. In the Guardian, Haroon Siddique writes about the Bed&Fed phenomenon (a couchsurfing/hostelling hybrid) across the UK and Ireland.

3. Also in the Guardian, Gemma Bowes weighs in on remarkable deals in Greece this summer, including an overview of luxury villas, some of which turn out to be surprisingly inexpensive.

4. In the New York Times, Jeremy Peters ponders 36 Hours in Genoa. In between his hunger-inducing restaurant and wine bar recommendations, Peters helps readers envision a day and a half of well-met culinary urges.

5. In the Times of London, Tom Chesshyre, Daniel Start, Alex Wade, Derwent May and Rufus Purdy list the UK’s 40 best beaches, from Land’s End to the Isle of Skye.

(Image Credit: Flickr/cm195902)

London town hall reopens as luxury hotel

by Melanie Nayer on

What’s one way to restructure an old building? Turn it into a luxury hotel.

The old town hall in the heart of London‘s East End officially reopened as a luxury hotel on May 12, featuring 98 luxury rooms and apartments all within walking distance to London’s financial district.

The hotel developer, Design Hotels, kept much of the town hall’s aesthetics in place when renovating the building for hotel guests. Many of the original interiors, including a council chamber, marble hallways and spiral staircases, are still intact and part of the new hotel design.

The Town Hall Hotel offers studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom options with various interior designs, some with modern kitchens. Artwork was provided by local London artists and the hotel also features a gym, a pool and a restaurant by Portuguese chef Nuno Mendes.

Rooms range in price depending on the amount of time you stay. For the hotel rooms, a double bedroom will run you £290.00 a night (approximately $427 USD) for 1-6 nights; £247.00 a night for 7-28 nights; and drops to £203.00 a night for stays more than 28 days. Comparatively, a one-bedroom apartment costs £345.00 a night (approximately $507 USD) for 1-6 nights; £293.25 a night for 7-28 nights; and £241.50 a night if you stay longer than 28 days.

The hotel opens in plenty of time to capture the pending tourist rush for the 2012 Olympic Games, which city officials hope will revitalize the East End area.

New US embassy in London to be bigger, sexier, stronger

by Grant Martin on

With today’s modern threats all around us, US embassies have become a bit of an eyesore of late, many circumferentially heaped with piles of concrete, checkpoints, armor, guards and other, nefarious security. One would never imagine that those sorts of security facets could tastefully be integrated into a structure, but lo and behold, the folks at Philadelphia-based KieranTimberlake have pulled it off.

London’s new US Embassy, an update to the current, less-secure digs, looks less like an iron and concrete government building (J. Edgar Hoover building what?) and more like an architectural masterpiece from the 21st century.

As KieranTimberlake describes it:

The expressive challenge is to give form to the core beliefs of our democracy – transparency, openness, and equality – and do so in a way that is both secure and welcoming. At the same time, the building must confront the environmental challenges all nations face with leading edge sustainable design.

And so the building will rise, a glass cube on the south shore of the Thames with an integrated urban park, photovoltaic (solar cell) roof panels and energy efficient design throughout.

That said, the new building will also still have plenty of security features, from a giant moat to (shrubbery infused!) barriers to blast resistant glazing.

Check out the full details over at KieranTimberlake. The new building should open up in 2013

[Via PRI’s The World]