We're featuring several heavyweight titles this week. First it was a 600-pager from Rough Guides, and now TASCHEN gets heftier with a 720-page look at Great Escapes Around the World. This new release from the stylish German publisher features a top-notch collection of accommodations hand-picked by design diva Angelika Taschen. Previous Great Escape Hotel guides from Taschen have each focused on a different continent, but this latest one combines them all.

From Kerala to Sorrento to the Napa Valley, Great Escapes takes readers on a visual tour of luxurious guesthouses, ecolodges, spas, ranches, houseboats and hotels of all kinds. Glossy photos of private beaches and lush hideaways whisper wanderlust nothings in our ears. It's an eclectic mix that's sure to leave folks daydreaming for beds far beyond their own.

I love staying in hotels, if for no other reason than I don't have to clean up (much) after myself -- I can leave the bed unmade, and fresh sheets and towels will magically appear without me having to make the trek to the laundry room. But sometimes a hotel isn't the best option -- renting an apartment or house is often the way to go, especially if you're staying for a while. According to this article from MSNBC, there are lots of reasons to avoid hotels. Such as?

Space: Hotel rooms can be pretty limiting size-wise. Your own flat or house will come with lots of extra space, and maybe even your own yard.

Privacy: Hotels are public places; you can keep to yourself in your own apartment.

Be prepared. What you should know before renting a vacation home. Don't break the bank. Where are the world's most expensive hotels?

Price: It's often a much better deal to rent your own place for a week than pay a nightly rate at a hotel -- which can be really expensive! Plus, you can make your own meals in the kitchen, which saves a lot of money.

Cultural experience: Renting your own place allows you to avoid all the other tourists and get a feel for what it's like to live like the locals. And, consider this: All name-brand hotels are basically the same, so why stay at one when you're somewhere exotic? You might as well be staying in Poughkeepsie as far as the hotel decor goes.

Flexibility: There are rules at the hotel. In your own place? Not so much.

Don't just look at rental apartments and houses either -- keep your eyes open for unique accommodations. For instance, I stayed on a houseboat on the Seine River when I was last in Paris; it was an amazing experience.

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Ember Swift, Canadian musician and touring performer, will be keeping us up-to-date on what it's like to tour a band throughout North America. Having just arrived back from Beijing where she spent three months (check out her "Canadian in Beijing" series), she offers a musician's perspective on road life.


If the merging of kitsch and class together is on the agenda for a place to stay in Toronto, The Drake Hotel is perfect. Each room is unique. The furnishings are retro and modern combined. The artwork is compelling. There's even an antique photo booth machine that shares a room with an electric saddle ride.

But we didn't stay there.

Honestly, it's a bit too pricey for the musician's salary, but it's one of those urban hotels that are worth splurging for on a special occasion because it would be a memorable and unique night's stay. And, well, it's a happening place in the city and surely the entertainment within its walls would be worth absorbing. This week, for instance, it's one of the social hotspots for the Toronto International Film Festival. Well... there's something.

(Which film stars will be riding in that saddle, I wonder?)

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Ember Swift, Canadian musician and touring performer, will be keeping us up-to-date on what it's like to tour a band throughout North America. Having just arrived back from Beijing where she spent three months (check out her "Canadian in Beijing" series), she offers a musician's perspective on road life. Enjoy!

Please pardon the forthcoming cheesiness, but here's a story that's quite literally out of this world: The world's first space hotel is slated to open in 2012. What began as a hobby for Barcelona architect Xavier Claramunt is about to become a reality, thanks to careful planning and perseverance ... not to mention $3 billion that he fronted for the project. Guests of the Galactic Suite can fly around the world in 80 minutes, see the sun rise 15 times a day and experience the weightlessness that has until now been limited mostly to astronauts.

Wearing Velcro suits, guests can navigate their way through the luxury hotel. There's only one problem though -- bathrooms. They've got the showering part figured out -- guests will float through a 'spa room' filled with bubbles of water, but they seem to be trying to figure out a way for guests to do 'other' duties in a way that is luxurious enough to justify the exorbitant price tag.

Speaking of the price, it's $4 million for a 3-night stay, including an eight-week training session. And while I think the experience would be amazing, I can't see myself spending that much money on a hotel unless it has a really nice pool and room service. But then again, I've never had the liberty of spending money as a millionaire would, so who knows?

Hotels that have tried to class up their lodging by offering guests bathrobes are receiving a surprise backlash -- patrons who want to wear their robe everywhere. Guests at high tea in 5-star hotels have been entertained with less-than-appetizing physiques meandering past their tables in tiny terrycloth wraps.

Due to the decrease in unwritten dress-code respect, hotel managers are attempting to encourage guests to "keep it under wraps." Some have instructed their bar and restaurant staff not to seat anyone in a robe, and others allow freedom to roam fully-robed only on designated floors. Those who don't want to outright demand that people scamper back upstairs and change into something that actually covers them are going so far as to redesign their spaces. Tactics include building spas that are adjacent to suites, thus dismissing the need to leave one's room robed, while others are designing wraps that show a little less skin. Still others have simply thrown in the towel, acknowledging that the fight is not worth the effort.

Thanks to jhayman on flickr.com for the photo of some casually-dressed bar patrons.

I bought chopsticks.

What can you do in the face of reality? The reality was that I was leaving and the response was to soothe the pain of that reality with retail therapy. And, sad as it sounds, it worked. What's more, I took home gifts for my loved ones and that felt good. It felt like a bridge between Beijing and Canada somehow.

I guess you could say that I relented and loosened my grip on my desire to be "a local" and promised that desire that I'd revisit it in the future.

Many different markets had been tested in advance of their arrival. I went to The Pearl Markets, the Silk Markets (each offering much more than pearls and silk), the YaXiu Markets and, of course, to the Wudaokou Markets (several times) in search of the cheapest options and best environment for them. . .

The Genesis II, an inflatable space module recently sent into orbit via a Russian rocket, is the starting point to what hopes to become a "full-scale space hotel." Bigelow Aerospace, the company behind the project, plans to launch another module later this year that will link up with the Genisis II, and hopefully become the world's highest (and most expensive, I'm sure) hotel room.

Don't count on booking a trip anytime soon, however. "[E]xperts say the costs of commercial space travel need to come down before it can be a success," says the BBC. "As a result, Mr Bigelow is offering a $50m prize to anyone who can design a craft capable of carrying five people to a height of 400km (250 miles) before 2010."

Cool.

[Via Engadget]

Tina over at Swiss Miss (great blog, by the way) recently stayed at the Marriot in Atlanta and noticed a rather bizarre collection of wildly varying rug patterns throughout the building. She posted a small flickr set of her findings, which remind me of that scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when the obnoxious patterns of the hotel carpet come alive in Hunter Thompson's head, and ooze up the walls and onto the ceiling.

Why do hotels traditionally lay the loudest carpeting? Is it so it appears cleaner without actually, you know, being cleaned? Surely the designs aren't selected based on any sort of aesthetic qualities. What's the deal?

Today, the city of Dubai announced it has purchased the Queen Elizabeth 2, "one of the world's most majestic cruise liners," to convert into a luxury hotel. The QE2 will be completely renovated and parked at the world's largest man-made island, Palm Jumeirah. The restoration process will stay true to the original design of the ship, and a museum will be built inside to educate visitors on the liner's legacy.

What's else in store for the booming city of Dubai? Here's a quick rundown of current, future, and conceptual projects in the United Arab Emirates's oasis in the desert.

HotelChatter has released the 2007 findings in their annual search for the best wifi hotels. They boldly claim that the "hotel WiFi landscape has reached an impasse." No longer is the list made up of hotels that simply offer free wireless, but instead hotel chains like Omni make the cut because they have fewer restrictions. "For instance, you can get free WiFi in the lobby, but in-rooms it's ethernet and it starts at $9.95. Or you can get free WiFi in your rooms but you need to belong to a hotel's loyalty program or be assigned a code with a special password."

Topping the list is Marriot, whose Residence Inns, SpringHill Suites, and Courtyard "all have strong, free, fast, working wireless in the rooms and the lobbies." The only thing keeping them from a perfect score is a lack of property-wide access -- some Marriots are good, some are bad.

For the full report, head over to HotelChatter.

[via boingboing]

I'm not really into spending money on fancy hotels; I'd much rather spend my money on meals and entertainment. However, if you're planning your Trip Of A Lifetime, and you've got some dollars to discard, you should check out Travel & Leisure's list of the 500 greatest hotels. Sorted by region, the list is a veritable who's who of the hotel-igentsia.

In addition to providing fast facts on each hotel, the list tips you off on which rooms are best and and which activities you've just got to add to your To-Do list. Moreover, the folks at T&L took the time to place all the hotels on Google Earth, meaning you can see exactly where your hotel is in relation to, say, Ngorgoro Crater or the Taj Mahal.

Though I haven't slept at even one of the hotels on the list, I've eaten dinner at one of them; enjoyed high tea at another; walked the grounds of a third; and swam past a fourth. [Very, very important update: I've eaten dinner inside the Bellagio, too.] That means I've enjoyed exactly 0.08% 0.1% of the world's finest hotels. Top that!

Call it coincidence, but in this month's edition of concierge.com they've listed 10 hotels across the globe with a spooky past. (Coughs, can we say perfect timing for Halloween, hmm?) After going through each one, I noticed the history of some were creepier than others depending on what you tend to get spooked by. Shack up in a past crime den, nun's cell, jail or my personal favorite an old soup kitchen. From the photos featured one might not ever know that these places have a tale to tell, but don't let the looks deceive you. When you're at rest in bed the howling you hear isn't coming from the outside. It's the cry of the mentally unhinged resident that stayed there before you. (Insert: horror laughter.) I'm only kidding - sort of.

Check out the Poor House: Hopper Hotel Et Cetera in Cologne, Germany which now sits as a cheap-chic boutique hotel, but was once a homeless shelter and soup kitchen. Heading to Puerto Rico? Stay at the old Carmelite convent, now one of San Juans' most luxurious hotels was once home to 11 nuns that moved out in 1903. If you're in need of prison time look at their picks out of Turkey and the U.K., just don't say I didn't try to warn you of their bone-chilling ambience.

Before this whole big trip I never stayed in so many hotels back-to-back and now I can only imagine now what the life of a real rock star must be like. The only difference is they're probably staying ONLY at 4 or 5 star digs while I happily bounce between Comfort Inns and Best Westerns across the country. With this new short term living arrangement comes some likes and dislikes as well as some rather strange fears. For starters I have this weird feeling while I'm sleeping some Mafia type hit men are going to kick down the door of my hotel room and start spraying several rounds of bullets until they've murdered everyone in sight (which only happens to be me - an innocent victim). They will have realized they had the wrong room and without trying to hide the evidence, will move on until they find the right man to finish off. Where this bizarre fear comes from is beyond me. Perhaps too many Hollywood big screen type movies with hotel scenes?

Anyhow, with each room in each state I inspect the comforter for bedbugs (not really, but it seems like something a travel blogger might do) and I read the state hotel safety instructions placed on the back of the door just in case the Mafia does decide to bust in one night. At least I would have known what the state of Maryland or Pennsylvania suggested to prevent them from doing such. When all is said and done with my first two duties I might flip on the TV, but here is where my rant comes into play. HBO and Showtime are cool channels to have, but what on ever happened to channels as basic as UPN? At first at thought this was only the issue for one unnamed hotel, but I'm discovering UPN can be hard to come by. The question is why? And it's not that I watch a ton of UPN programming, but every now and again I like to tuck myself in to a nice reality TV episode of ANTP (America's Next Top Model). It's probably something I shouldn't be complaining about, but when there is little night life to discover in some of these small towns UPN becomes my next best friend.

In short, I'll be making sure to inspect the TV situation at each and every hotel I stay at just to make sure even if nothing I want to watch is on because it's just something to do. If I'm bored I'll report the findings, but if not maybe I'll have another set of rants and rambles to share.

(Photo taken from a hotel room in Philly near the airport.)