(7) Lighthouse Hotels [photos]

Boy, would I love to spend a weekend in one of these lighthouse hotels!  Some are remote and accessible only by helicopter, some have spas, some have in-house light keepers, while others rent the entire island.

In alphabetical order, here are some exterior/interior views and US prices of:

East Brother Light Station – East Brother Island, California [US $400 to $550]

Harlingen Lighthouse – Harlingen, Netherlands [US $400 to $550]

Heceta Head Lighthouse – Yachats, Oregon [US $250 -$400]

Molja Lighthouse – Aalesund, Norway [US $250 -$400]

Saugerties Lighthouse – Saugerties, New York [US $400 to $550]

Svinoey Lighthouse – 6099 Heroy, Norway [US $100 to $250] *accessible only by helicopter

West USK Lighthouse – Newport, UK [US $100 to $250]

To see more pictures of these lighthouses, click here.

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Question: Have you ever spent a night or a weekend in a lighthouse?  If so, describe the experience!

And the wallpaper just keeps on comin’ [photos]

My favorites for wallpaper (I have the first one on my desktop right now):

For beach lovers

For cigarette lovers

For music lovers

For travel lovers

For water olympic lovers

Find all of these on www.uwall.net

Aerial tour of New York

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t have the money to travel but thanks to the internet I can virtually travel to all kinds of places–like New York.  All made possible by Pixelcase.  What a stunning tour of this city!  See it for yourself.  Just click any of the icons to zoom in, zoom out, travel west, etc.

Source

via The Presurfer

Protective tip for anyone traveling with children

Image by Marvin (PA) via Flickr

Bridget [Smith] (author of The Unauthorized Legoland Guidebook) offers this common-sense travel tip:

…Take a picture of your kids with a digital camera BEFORE entering an amusement park [...or sporting event, or zoo, or any other crowded place -- Ed]. That way if your child gets lost, you can show theme park personnel EXACTLY what he or she looks like including hair color, eye color, and clothing.

Source

Striped icebergs and waves caught in mid-air [photos]

Just sharing what I received in an email…

Icebergs in the Antarctic area sometimes have stripes, formed by layers of snow that react to different conditions.  Blue stripes are often created when a crevice in the ice sheet fills up with meltwater and freezes so quickly that no bubbles form.  When an iceberg falls into the sea, a layer of salty seawater can freeze to the underside.  If this is rich in algae, it can form a green stripe.  Brown, black and yellow lines are caused by sediment picked up when the ice sheet grinds downhill towards the sea.

The water froze the instant the wave broke through the ice.  That’s what it is like in Antarctica where it is the coldest weather in decades.  Water freezes the instant it comes in contact with the air.  The temperature of the water is already some degrees below freezing.

Look how the wave froze in mid-air…

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World’s first refrigerated beach coming in 2010

Rachel Nobel described Dubai as “… a bubble world where the things that are worrying the rest of the world, like climate change, are simply ignored so that people can continue their destructive lifestyles.”

Now, it is about to have the world’s first refrigerated beach!  What a concept.

Versace, the renowned fashion house, is to create the world’s first refrigerated beach so that hotel guests can walk comfortably across the sand on scorching days.

The beach will be next to the the new Palazzo Versace hotel which is being built in Dubai where summer temperatures average 40C and can reach 50C.

The beach will have a network of pipes beneath the sand containing a coolant that will absorb heat from the surface.

The swimming pool will be refrigerated and there are also proposals to install giant blowers to waft a gentle breeze over the beach.

The scheme is likely to infuriate environmentalists. The revelation comes as more than 11,000 politicians, green campaigners and others are gathered in Poznan, Poland, for the latest talks on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Read more

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Brazilian holiday ends with Periungual Tungiasis [photos]

A healthy 35-year-old man presented with small eggs and a brownish lesion on the medial edge of his right big toe (Panel A). Two weeks before presentation, he had returned from a holiday trip to Brazil, where he had been barefoot. The patient was afebrile and without malaise. The brownish part (the decomposing adult sand flea) was excised, and multiple eggs appeared after the application of lateral pressure (Panel B). After disinfection, a sterile dressing was applied. The patient had a complete recovery with no additional symptoms. Tungiasis is an ectoparasitosis in which the fertilized female sand flea (Tunga penetrans) burrows into the skin, with a predilection for periungual regions. However, any part of the skin can be affected. In the skin, the flea lays hundreds of eggs and then dies, leaving an open sore containing its hindquarters, which can be an entry point for superinfection. The parasite is endemic in tropical Africa and South America, as well as in subtropical regions of Asia.

Taken from Images in Clinical Medicine

Hut Spot

Photographer - Patrice Halley

The Alpine Club of Canada operates 23 back-country huts in BC and Alberta, with another five in BC, Ontario, and New York State.  Visit their website for details.

Source: http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/travel/travel_magazine/nov08/glacier_national_park.asp

Unusual hotels of the world [travel]

If you like ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ places to visit, you’ll want to check out this site.  You can search for lighthouse, train, underwater cave, igloo and castle hotels.  They are rated as wow, outrageous, wacky, unusual, and different.