24Travel 50 far-out places to stay

THE TIMES Saturday May 8 2010
24 Travel
16 more far-out
places to stay
MAURIZIO BRERA
timesonline.co.uk/wheretostay
50 far-out
places to stay
X together, but situated in Villabuena
de Álava it’s a good base from which
to explore Rioja.
Details B&B doubles from £110;
00 34 945 609 000, hotelviura.com.
Italy
32 Afloat in Venice
The wheel deals Moon buggy at La Balade Des Gnomes, Belgium, left (38); and Dutch train accommodation, right (45)
It doesn’t seem odd to stay on a boat here
even if it’s permanently moored. The
Sarah Cruise is a nine-room B&B-yacht
tied up on the island of Giudecca, with a
vaporetto (water bus) stop 200m away.
It has air-con and internet.
Details B&B doubles from £115;
budgetplaces.com
33 Italian caves
“Four-star boutique cave-hotel” is the
proud boast of the Sant’Angelo in the city
of Matera, which is famous for its sassi —
houses dug into the rock. The rooms have
been fashioned from old sassi stables and
workshops. There are two restaurants, a
bar and an art gallery.
Details Three-nights from £335pp (two
sharing), including some meals, a
walking tour and car hire but not flights;
020-7520 3100, laiholidays.co.uk
Eight metres above the ground, this Italian
treehouse in the central Lazio region is a
fantastic spot to get away from it all. The
spiral staircase that leads up from the field
is impressive enough, but once up in the
branches you’ll find a four-poster bed,
shower room and toilet, and a terrace.
Details From £290 per night for two
including breakfast; lapiantata.it
Staying in a windmill on the island of
Milos, watching the sun go down, glass of
retsina in hand, a plate of dolmades on the
table, would tick most people’s boxes. This
converted mill has two bedrooms; there
is no pool but it does have air-con.
Details From £180 per night for two
people; i-escape.com
Croatia
36 The last straw
Bale is an appropriately named location
for self-catering accommodation made of
straw, which sleeps up to 12. Igor, the
owner, travelled to Africa and Asia before
returning to resurrect his grandfather’s
wilderness retreat, which has a sweat
lodge and rainwater-collected showers.
Details From £65 per night for up to 12
people; 00 38 5 98 916 0650, eia.hr
Belgium
37 Monastic touch
Builtin the 19th century for Franciscan
friars,the Martin’s Patershof Residence,in
Mechelen, is now asleek, modernhotel, but
puts pillars, stained glass and flying
buttresses to good use.
Details Standard double from ¤159; 00 32
1546 4646, www.martins-hotels.com
38 Lunar landing
A hotel to make you feel that you’re on the
Moon. You sleep in a Moon buggy, you
bathe in a lunar capsule, and the walls and
ceilings are covered in twinkling stars and
planets. The hotel is called La Balade Des
rainbow colours and the wonkiest shapes;
some have lawns on the roof.
Details Double rooms from ¤137pp;
00 43 3383 5100, rogner.com
44 House of hemp
48 Bunker down
A typically slender-fronted Dutch
building houses the extraordinary Hemp
Hotel in Amsterdam, where rooms reflect
the many cultures of the world and all else
reflects the uses of hemp — hemp rolls and
muffins for breakfast, hemp ice cream for
tea and hemp futons on which to sleep.
Details From ¤75 a double with shower;
00 31 206 254 425, hemp-hotel.com
The Null Stern (No Stars) is the invention
of the Swiss artists Frank and Patrik
Riklin. It was built as a nuclear bunker
beneath an apartment block at Teufen, in
St Gallen canton. Guests (maximum 14)
sleep behind 2ft-thick blast doors in two
open-plan rooms.
Details From £18 per bed;
00 41 71 330 0163, null-stern-hotel.ch
45 All aboard the tram
Germany
49 Water works
Dutch transport enthusiasts Irma and
Frank Appel have parked two trams and
one diesel train, and converted them into
comfortable overnight accommodation.
Choose whether you want your tram with
an English, Italian or French theme.
Details Trams sleep two to four, from
¤60pp; 00 31 226 352 693, controversy.nl
34 Treehouse deluxe
Greece
35 Island windmill
with appropriate murals, paintings, statues
and quotations.
Details From ¤130 for a double; 00 31 206
833 013, sandton.eu/nl/amsterdam
Austria and Switzerland
46 Down the drain
Gnomes, near Liège. Other themed rooms
include a troll forest, a South Seas sailing
ship and, newly opened, the Trojan Horse.
Details From ¤115 per double;
00 32 472 208 623, labaladedesgnomes.be
Sweden and Norway
39 Top of the tree
In a Norwegian forest halfway between
Hamar and Lillehammer, this treehouse
sleeps as many as six people high up
among the squirrels and woodpeckers,
with moose and reindeer below and
golden eagles overhead. There is also a
pine hut option, or larch.
Details From £110 per night, sleeps six;
00 47 909 33356, tretopphytter.no
40 Cottage on stilts
The name for a Norwegian fisherman’s hut
is a rorbu, and there are lots of them in the
Lofoten Islands in the Arctic Circle.
Each cottage sleeps two and comes
with its own rowing boat.
Details A week for two costs £748pp,
including car hire; 01653 617000,
www.inntravel.co.uk
41 Sleep underwater
The Swedish artist Mikael Genberg has
created a little cottage called Utter Inn,
which floats on Lake Malaren, an hour west
of Stockholm, but has a bedroom below
water level, with large aquarium windows.
So you can count fish instead of sheep.
Details From £200pp per night;
unusualhotelsoftheworld.com/utterinn
42 Tall-masted ship
The 103-year-old Barken Viking, moored
in Gothenburg Harbour, Sweden, is
centrally located and has 29 cabin rooms
(all with TV and en suite shower).
Details Double rooms cost from £65 pp,
with breakfast and free entry to the
The choice is yours
Treehouse in Lazio, Italy,
above (34); L’auberge des
VoyaJoueurs, France, right,
above (5); Rogner Bad
Blumau Resort, Austria,
right, below (47)
Liseberg Amusement Park; 00 46 31 635
800, www.liseberg.se/en
The Netherlands
43 Think different
At the Hotel de Filosoof in Amsterdam,
each room takes a philosopher as its motif,
Stay overnight in a concrete tube, with a
porthole to look out of, a front door to
close, and a cosy nest to snuggle into
(low-slung futon, bedside lamp, etc). It’s
novel, it’s bold, and the idea is that you pay
as much, or as little, as you want.
Details At Ottensheim, near Linz, Austria;
00 43 650 841 5850, dasparkhotel.net
47 Storybook village
At the heart of Austria’s amazingRogner
Bad Blumau Resort is a thermal spa, but the
surrounding buildings are designed in
The Hotel-im-Wasserturm is a
heritage-listed structure in Cologne that
was once the largest watertower in
Europe. The entrance hall is 30ft high, and
all the furniture and fittings mirror the
building’s circular and cylindrical shape.
Details Doubles from ¤175 per
night; 00 49 2212 0080,
www.hotel-im-wasserturm.de
Hungary
50 Art house
On the banks of the Danube, overlooking
the Hungarian Parliament, stands
the chic Art’otel. On its walls, along the
corridors and even in the bedrooms
are 600 paintings and sculptures by
the influential American artist
Donald Sultan.
Details Double rooms from ¤119;
00 800 814 70000, artotels.com
Additional writing by Will Hide