Wednesday, July 4, 2012
W Retreat Koh Samui Lounge
The Powder Room
Need a smarter spot in which to powder your nose?
Do it at The Powder Room, the new salon from The Powderpuff Girls. Renowned for their on-site party makeovers, the 1950s pink uniform-clad glamourettes have opened a stand-alone beauty parlour in Shoreditch, and it’s a gem of a place.
Book in for a makeover (In a Jiffy), manicure (Busy Bee, Time to Linger) or blow-dry (Make Him Look Twice) and you’ll be served tea and cakes throughout. Prices start from £10 and though the salon is currently open only on weekends (with bookings taken on Fridays), it’s also available for private hire.
Consider it a mighty pretty pit stop for your next quick fix.
Old San Juan
The "Caño de San Antonio" lies also in South Coast and extends to the Southeast where the island of Old San Juan connects to the mainland through Santurce by three bridges, "Puente Dos Hermanos" (Ave. Ashford), "Puente G. Esteves" (Ave. Ponce de León) and "Puente San Antonio" (Ave. Fernández Juncos).
The city is characterized by its narrow, blue cobblestone streets and flat-roofed brick and stone buildings dating back to the 16th and 17th century when Puerto Rico was a Spanish possession. Near Fort San Felipe del Morro is the Casa Blanca, a palace on land which belonged to the family of Ponce de Leon.
One&Only Palmilla
Renowned as Mexico’s premiere destination spa, the One&Only Spa at Palmilla offers an expansive programme of ancient healing techniques combined with cutting-edge therapies. Pampered guests choose from a rich menu of Massage Therapies, Wellness Experiences and One&Only Palmilla Signature Rituals for an unrivalled journey of personal rejuvenation and renewal.
Follow a meandering path through tropical gardens to a hidden door opening onto a secluded private villa. Each of the 13 private treatment villas offers a beautifully appointed air-conditioned massage pavilion and open-air garden. Double villas are designed to share the experience with a friend or loved one, and many include rain showers, Mexican day beds and whirlpool baths as well as private vanity.
At One&Only Spa, every detail is an important part of the experience and every sense is indulged, from the rituals that accompany each treatment to the exclusive premium natural products using the finest ingredients. Our team of highly skilled ESPA-trained spa professionals have been handpicked to deliver optimum results in every treatment.
To get the most out of your spa visit, we recommend you follow the Hydrotherapy Circuit beginning with an outdoor rain shower and hot water pool, followed by the outdoor cold water plunge, aromatherapy steam room and sauna rooms. Relax with fruit infused frozen towels whilst sipping a healing tonic exclusively prepared with 100% organic local ingredients.
• Outdoor oceanside Palapas for massage, meditation, yoga and wellness activities
Secret Bay
Known for more than just sun, sea and sand, the Caribbean is now attracting a new breed of tourists wanting to discover the natural wonders of the islands.
As word about its stunning natural beauty makes headlines around the world, Dominica has become one of the leading eco-destinations in the Caribbean. A haven for nature lovers, festooned with waterfalls, dense tropical rainforests, hot springs and rivers where peace and serenity abound. To add to the allure of this paradise island, a new sophisticated resort has emerged, combining eco-sensibility with unfettered luxury and
offering a unique experience for visitors to the island.
Perched on a hill-top with breathtaking views of the Caribbean Sea, Secret Bay is an archetype for self-indulgence at its best. The property consists of two high-end luxury villas and two bungalows surrounded by an oasis of tropical foliage, a wild orchid garden, secluded beaches, a mysterious sea-cave and the enchanting Cario River. Unique to this exclusive resort, is the Souce Shack –where the river meets the sea – there, you can unwind and enjoy homemade snacks and freshly prepared local juices made from seasonal vegetables and fruits grown right on the property.
Castello di Miramare
The castle's grounds include an extensive cliff and seashore park of 22 hectares (54 acres) designed by the Archduke. The grounds were completely re-landscaped to feature numerous tropical species of trees and plants.
The Castle of Miramare and its Park were built by order of Ferdinand Maximilian (1832–1867), of the House of Habsburg - younger brother of Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria. In 1850, at the age of eighteen, Maximilian came to Trieste with his brother Charles and, immediately afterwards, he set off on a short cruise toward the near East. This journey confirmed his intention to sail and to get to know the World. In 1852 he was appointed Officer and in 1854 he became Commander in Chief of the Imperial Navy. He decided to move to Trieste and to have a home built facing the sea and surrounded by a park worthy of his name and rank.
Ocean House
Perched high on the bluffs of Watch Hill, Rhode Island, the Ocean House is an iconic New England seaside resort. The Ocean House was meticulously reconstructed to pay tribute to its storied past and offer exceptional personal experiences for guests, members and residents. The Ocean House's celebrated hotel and residential accommodations, uncompromising service, beachfront location, and world-class amenities pay homage to New England's golden age of hospitality with timeless elegance and renewed civility.
Couples Resorts, Jamaica
We invite you to enjoy the finest cuisine prepared with fresh homegrown ingredients and tantalizing Caribbean spices. Dive into a paradise of water sports and activities from scuba diving to reef snorkeling. Our team of instructors is ready to help you perfect your game of tennis or golf with a lesson. And it wouldn't be a real Jamaica vacation without watching a sunset aboard a catamaran, tropical cocktail in hand.
Julian Serrano
Interior design by famed Spanish design group Gente de Valor, in their first U.S. restaurant combining the elements of a Spanish restaurant with the more casual patio area (below) and more formal dining area (above) and bar (below) into one interior space. It’s fabulous!
Lapa Rios
John and Karen Lewis first envisioned Lapa Rios as private nature reserve. The Minnesota couple was driven by a dream that required liquidating all their assets to finance the purchase of a large tract of rainforest and build a small, supporting ecotourism project. A conservation easement elaborated by The Nature Conservancy and CEDARENA will ensure this primary forest be preserved in perpetuity, the land never to be developed. The 930-acre Lapa Rios Reserve helps buffer the Osa Peninsula’s Corcovado National Park and serves as a wildlife corridor.
Lapa Rios was designed in harmony with the surrounding forest and beach environment. The main lodge and bungalows line three ridges and are connected by walking paths and steps. Built over 350 feet above the sea, Lapa Rios catches the cooling tropical ocean and forest breezes. The main lodge and the Brisa Azul restaurant soar 50 feet above the sea and, like the 16 private bungalows, are built of locally harvested materials and have intricately woven palm thatched roofs. Climb the lodge’s three-story circular stairway to overlook the forest canopy and breathtaking ocean vistas. Comfortable, locally made bamboo furniture and huge private decks aid relaxation amidst pristine nature.
Rainforest and ocean activities bring together guests and the community. Daily guest experiences include a variety of staff naturalist led rainforest interpretive hikes, birdwatching walks and sustainable/educational local project visits. Ocean-mangrove boating trips, dolphin and whale watching, kayaking and surfing are offered by neighboring guides, as well as massages and yoga classes. Some guests’ highlights include a day hike in Corcovado National Park (via small plane transfer) or a night spent on the overnight platform; others find relaxing at the pool or hammock napping most memorable.
Lapa Rios is an ideal vacation for people who enjoy adventure in nature and want to be a part of conservation and local culture (often called Geotourism). The majority of guests are active couples, honeymooners and families (children over 6 years) looking for a more active and uniquely personal experience. Come be a part of ecotourism at Lapa Rios, become a traveler who participates in real sustainable tourism.
Farm to Fork
St. Pancras Renaissance
The Surrealist Gardens of Edward James
Cave of the Swallows
The name “swallows” is due to the habitants of the region, who were the first to saw the unique phenomenon that happens every day in its interior: thousands of birds of the family of swifts, which the locals call “Swallows” leave the bottom of the abyss, filling the sky with their flight from the Huasteca, which is repeated in the evening when all the birds return to the cave indicating that, one more day is over. In the cave is also possible to find a species of parrots, called locally Cotorras de la cueva (Cave’s Parrots).
Currently, the Basement of Swallows is highly frequented by lovers of climbing, base jumping and spelunking; its beauty and uniqueness makes it one of the largest protected natural areas of Mexico.
Trunk Bay, St. John
St. John is a short ferry ride from Red Hook in St. Thomas. Boats usually leave on the hour ($5.00 US for adults) from early morning to 11:00 PM. Home to a couple of first class resorts and hotels, St. John also has many private villas for the vacationer, and camping is available in the Virgin Islands National Park. There are also quaint places to shop like Mongoose Junction and Wharfside Village in Cruz Bay, and lots of great places to eat.
Trunk Bay is the most famous beach on St. John and possibly the most famous beach in all the Caribbean. It has perfect powdery white sand and an under water snorkel trail with plaques describing the various items that snorklers can see on the bottom. No visit to St. John is complete without a visit to Trunk Bay. Run by the National Park, there is a fee to access the beach from land, $4 for visitors over 16 years of age.
Mineral de Pozas
I arrived in Mineral de Pozos to mostly empty streets and soon found myself the only diner at a rooftop restaurant where the view of the Church of San Pedro’s rosy dome encompassed a large black web of electrical wires. The streets were still quiet as I walked back to my hotel. One customer stood at the counter in the one bar on the Jardín Principal. A small tienda selling sundries was open, but nothing else. It occurred to me that, if Pozos is the next San Miguel, it’s not the San Miguel of 30 years ago, the already well-established American expat destination, but the San Miguel of 80 years ago: the seminal sleepy ghost town woken up by artists of a different, post-revolutionary stripe. Without knowing exactly what I was looking for, I had found it here in Pozos—the small-town Mexico of before: before maquiladora-labor horrors, international-drug-cartel violence, and globalized type-A-ism had forever changed the landscape. This was the old Mexico that a foreigner can blend in to, the Mexico that still sleeps when it is sleepy.
Pueblo fantasma describes the once flourishing colonial Mexican towns that all but died in the early 20th century from sharp, successive blows to the silver-mining industry: abruptly falling prices, the revolution, and, in Mineral de Pozos’ case, a massive epidemic—either typhoid or influenza, depending on who is telling you about it. Population counts in Pozos vary widely, but at its economic height, in the late 1800’s, the town was estimated to have had some 70,000 residents and 300 mines. By the 1950’s, the population had fallen to 200. Today, there are about 5,000 full- and part-time residents. Of those, the nonnative transplants add up to about 50. As they redefine Pozos, they are doing so on Pozos’ terms.
The town started to yawn awake in 1982, when President José López Portillo designated it a national historic treasure. Vicente Fox was the next president to extol Mineral de Pozos’ merits on a 2003 visit. But it wasn’t until last year, when Pozos was promised Pueblo Mágico status, that federal and local investment began to materialize. Wealthy Mexicans are now buying land and houses, and new places to stay have increased the town’s stock from three to six: a quartet of luxury suites called Su Casa en Pozos was just opened by gallerist Eva Axelsson, and the expats originally behind the LavenDar Farms collective are now renting out their own houses on the property.
But a trip to Pozos is still an exercise in slowing down, helped along by the steep cobblestoned streets and narrow sidewalks rising from the shaded Jardín Principal as if from a canyon floor. One morning, the only people I saw during my wanderings west of the Jardín were a woman with a basket crossing Plaza Zaragoza and a little girl in a red dress jogging by in the opposite direction. The Church of San Pedro was open, but I was the only one there, admiring the walls tiled in un-churchy shades of yellow and green. Wherever I went, I had all the attention of the proprietors of the tiendas selling crafts, cotton clothes, sodas and candies, or handmade pre-Hispanic musical instruments (a Pozos specialty)—shapely whistles, drums with carved cases, and percussive round pots to tap with sticks. At the shop Camino de Piedra, I met artisan/musician and mine guide Marco Antonio Sánchez García, who took me through the haunting ruins of the 16th-century Santa Brígida mine a few days later.
The galleries that bring outsiders to Pozos show work that reflects a wide range of styles, but all of it seems drawn to Mexico’s texture, color, and light—a light that you can almost touch. For the newer residents, the connection to the local landscape and culture is crucial. “We moved here to be in Mexico,” says Nick Hamblen, owner of Galería No. 6, who arrived in Pozos from Dallas in 2004. The moment I walked into his gallery, I understood the rapport between Pozos old and new.
There is nothing in Galería No. 6 that fails to suggest take me home—from the wooden casement windows in foot-thick walls to Janice Freeman’s big, splashy paintings of agave cactus. Hamblen’s restored 200-year-old house is both gallery and residence. The first meanders into the second’s outdoor living room, where I found an old pine table, two friendly mutts on an antique rug, and a small open-air kitchen decorated, spectacularly, floor-to-ceiling in blue tiles. The space is shared with guests of El Secreto de Pozos, a sophisticated three-room B&B hidden in the exuberant but orderly gardens designed by Hamblen’s partner, horticulturalist ManRey Silva. This corner of Pozos fills in all the details of a fantasy of heading down to Mexico for good.
Which is not to say I was unhappy back in the real world, staying at the eight-room Posada de las Minas, a former mansion and adjacent factory restored by Houstonians David and Julie Winslow. Posada’s courtyard restaurant serves typical Mexican dishes and Mexican-American mash-ups like fried asparagus with a lime-butter sauce. It competes for best-in-town with La Perseverancia, at the hotel Casa Mexicana, whose menu ambitiously offers both chicken fajitas in a mole poblano sauce and a walnut-pesto tagliatelli. Such globe-trotting eccentricity would hardly fly in any foodie town in the United States nowadays, but in Pozos, hospitality flaunts its personality—a right afforded to quiet towns that remain under the travel radar.
Midweek at Posada de las Minas, things were slow enough for me to play Goldilocks and sleep in two rooms. From the one named for Santa Brígida, the view from my bed was of sky and mountains, and electrical wires dotted with birds. Pueblo Mágico status will ensure that those wires are buried. It likely, eventually, will bring more development, and more hubbub. The birds of Pozos will look for other places to light.
L’Asino d’Oro
Mr. Sforza originally gained fame as a chef in his hometown of Orvieto, where the first incarnation of L’Asino d’Oro was a pilgrimage destination for Italian gastronomes. He closed his doors there over a year ago and reopened in Rome to seek what he describes as “new adventure and new stimulus.”
At the new location, the handwritten menu changes daily to incorporate the freshest seasonal ingredients. The chef’s dishes evoke the traditions of central Italy — Umbria and northern Lazio, in particular — and are firmly rooted in peasant cuisine: A dense chestnut pancake starter would have provided ample fuel for tilling fields, while a hearty lentil soup could have been a source of protein for an Umbrian farmer.
Mr. Sforza’s signature dishes — mainly game, pork and offal — contrast sweet and savory elements. Tender wild boar in “dolceforte” is a harmonious blend of sweetness and pungent gaminess. Caramelized pork ribs have a delicate smokiness balanced with a lightly sweet glaze.
The chef spends most of each evening in the kitchen, visible through a porthole in the dining room. As dinner service draws to a close, he makes the rounds, greeting old customers from his days in Orvieto and conversing with new ones.
Dickens World
It is based around the life of author Charles Dickens, briefly a resident of Chatham as a child and who, as an adult, lived at Gads Hill Place in nearby Higham. Many of the locations and characters in his novels are based on buildings, places and people of the Medway Towns; for example Holcombe Manor was the inspiration for Dingley Dell, the house in Pickwick Papers.
The attraction has been heavily promoted as containing Europe’s longest indoors dark ride, the "Great Expectations" log flume. Other attractions include the Haunted House of Ebenezer Scrooge (which incorporates a Pepper's ghost effect), a Victorian school room, a 4D high definition cinema show, "The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters", a themed bar and restaurant, and Fagin’s Den, a play area. There are also mockup Dickensian-style London buildings around a central square, populated with sundry costumed characters from Dickens' works.
Churchill War Rooms
In 1940, shortly after becoming Prime Minister, Churchill stood in the War Cabinet Room and declared: 'This is the room from which I will direct the war'. Today, you can step back in time to explore the secret headquarters where Churchill and his staff changed the course of history.
Find out the stories of the people who walked the maze of corridors as London was being bombed above them. See where Churchill and his War Cabinet met, sometimes late into the night, and look through the lens of history into the Map Room, where the books and charts have remained exactly where they were left in 1945.
In the Churchill Museum, explore the man behind the image as you discover more about the influences and pressures that shaped Churchill’s life and work.
La Mar Cebicheria
Since our first opening, La Mar cebichería Peruana has strived to attain its mission to encourage those who visit to discover, enjoy and forever make their own the marvelous invention that is Peruvian cuisine. Today’s Peruvian cuisine retains the humility it has had throughout its 5,000 year history, while embarking on the long voyage to enter a world in which Peruvian cebiche is enjoyed by all and has discovered the new cosmopolitan Peru, ready to play a major role in the 21st century.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Boathouse on Orcas Island
Custom-made furniture includes a sculpted juniper driftwood bench, an alder blanket chest night stands, and a headboard made of teak reclaimed from an old boat. The cabin is a very intimate space richly detailed with reframed original doors, wrought-iron with beach stone door knobs and hooks, and aged rough-sawn millwork throughout.
The well-implemented kitchenette includes a custom-designed hutch of recycled Orcas wood and a striking countertop made of ironwood re-purposed from the old ferry landing. The bay-window dining nook provides dawn-to-dusk exciting views, a live-edge cedar dining table, and comfortable seating for up to 6 adults.There are water views from each bedroom, where you will experience the peaceful Island nights from the luxury of beds with pillow-top mattresses, down comforters, and high-count organic linens. A built-in “Captain’s bed” piled high with comfy pillows creates the intimacy of the 2nd bedroom area.
Included Amenities:
Deck with large picnic table
Hot tub at waters’ edge
Fire pit with seating (firewood included)
2-person kayak
Rowboat
Mooring buoy
Crab pot & cooker
Smoker/grill (Traeger)
Washer/dryer
Convection countertop oven
Pillow-top mattresses
Down pillows & quilts
Eco-friendly bamboo & cotton blankets/linens/towels
Terrycloth robes
All-natural soaps & cleaners
Wireless internet
The well-implemented kitchenette includes a custom-designed hutch of recycled Orcas wood and a striking countertop made of ironwood re-purposed from the old ferry landing. The bay-window dining nook provides dawn-to-dusk exciting views, a live-edge cedar dining table, and comfortable seating for up to 6 adults.There are water views from each bedroom, where you will experience the peaceful Island nights from the luxury of beds with pillow-top mattresses, down comforters, and high-count organic linens. A built-in “Captain’s bed” piled high with comfy pillows creates the intimacy of the 2nd bedroom area.
Included Amenities:Deck with large picnic table
Hot tub at waters’ edge
Fire pit with seating (firewood included)
2-person kayak
Rowboat
Mooring buoy
Crab pot & cooker
Smoker/grill (Traeger)
Washer/dryer
Convection countertop oven
Espresso machine
One queen & one full bedPillow-top mattresses
Down pillows & quilts
Eco-friendly bamboo & cotton blankets/linens/towels
Terrycloth robes
All-natural soaps & cleaners
Wireless internet
Friday, June 22, 2012
St Petersburg Canals
As you travel along, you will pass under a network of drawbridges. These allow large ships to pass between the Baltic Sea and Lake Ladoga, and from there, deeper into Russia. The drawbridges open to a precisely timed schedule, which allow ships to pass with a minimum of delay while still allowing the bridges to function as efficiently as possible. Of course, you may be less concerned with the practicalities of the system and instead be busy taking photographs – many of the drawbridges are spectacular, particularly the iconic Palace Bridge over the Neva.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Screen Door
The Inn of the Five Graces
Piran
Piran is a town in the eponymous municipality in southwestern Slovenia on the Gulf of Piran on the Adriatic Sea. It is one of the three major towns of Slovenian Istria. The town resembles a large open-air museum, with medieval architecture and a rich cultural heritage. Narrow streets and compact houses give the town its special charm. Piran is the administrative center of the local area and one of Slovenia's major tourist attractions.
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