Filed Under: Laptop Landmark Tour of the World

No time to travel the world? No worries, with Google’s new Photo Tours feature in Google Maps, you can explore immersive 3D photo scenes at landmarks around the world—over 15,000 of them. The tours are created using public, user-contributed Picasa and Panaromio photos. Google explains the process:

We start by finding clusters of overlapping photos around major landmarks. From the photos, our system derives the 3D shape of each landmark and computes the location and orientation of each photo. Google Maps then selects a path through the best images, and adds 3D transitions to seamlessly guide you from photo to photo as if you’re literally flying around the landmark and viewing it from different perspectives.

We’ll be taking a Trevi Fountain lunch break!

FILED UNDER: HOTEL LAUTNER

skibinskipedia:

Hotel Lautner, Desert Hot Springs, California. Designed by John Lautner in 1947, and updated by Tracy Beckmann and Ryan Trowbridge.

BRB, booking right now.

Mr. Schrager’s new Chicago hotel, Public, is sure to shake things up among mid-range hotels seeing that it offers a luxury travel experience with extremely affordable prices (rooms start at $135).  Public refurbished what was once the historic Ambassador East Hotel and is indulging frugal travelers with large rooms, warm lighting, huge flatscreen tvs, eclectic custom-designed furniture, luxurious bedding, a private concierge, a posh screening/performance room…the list goes on and on.  A 24-hour lobby vending machine offers favorite Chicago snacks, beverages and forgotten personal items.  On top of that, chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten was brought in to oversee the restaurant and room service (which arrives to your room within six minutes of ordering and is packaged in a brown paper bag for guests on the go).  His menu is affordable, fresh and healthy. 

Next city to be graced with a Public hotel is New York where an affordable room is rarer than a three dollar bill.

photos courtesy of http://www.publichotels.com/

Trendera just went to Austin! One of our favorite spots we visited in The Weird City was Hotel Saint Cecilia, a favorite of local legend of director Roberto Rodriguez (which would explain its unparalleled exclusivity). The hotel not only had a functioning vinyl record library with a record player in every room, but upon check in each guest got a hand written (chicken scratch!) note welcoming them with homemade cookies.  Immaculately decorated, the hotel lounge (above) showcased a lovely taxidermic white peacock, while the lap pool instead showcased an enormous “SOUL” neon light. The hotel gift shop/ front desk showcases goods from local artisan/ etsy (below) seller Jen Pearson (below, a fire kit) which we have written about on this very blog before! What a place.

Y’s are funny about Bohemia. We want it in very practical, secure doses; surfing, camping, spelunking, trailer road-tripping. Which is exactly why El Cosmico in Marfa TX is a fantastic idea- a hotel campground of beautiful retro airstream campers and teepees, outdoor showers, and fireside kitchens where Y’s can pay a moderately affordable amount to let go of the reins of our tech-saturated day to day. A retreat into rustic, southwestern bohemia, no internet or indoor restrooms? Yes please.

Sometimes you just want the comforts of home while thousands of miles away. Well, with Airbnb and European counterpart start-up 9Flats, you can easily enjoy the comforts of (someone else’s) home—and these are actually cool homes, apartments, chalets, treehouses, cabins, castles, and more. No navigating awkward local websites, this marketplace for private accommodations allows for pictures, reviews, and networking—the whole shebang. 9Flats is raking in funding, accumulating more than $10 million in just six months after being founded. The company aims to be a “major player” in the international travel industry—which it is definitely poised to do from a business standpoint, and also from a cultural standpoint of everything local and peer-to-peer getting increasingly more popular, desirable, and mainstream.

Listings range from a spot on a couch for €15 to flats in posh neighborhoods for €500 per night on 9Flats. Among the more extensive global listings on Airbnb, I found a house shaped like a shoe in New Zealand, an ancient castle in the UK, and a beautiful mid-century house made for partying in Palm Springs. Way more fun than the advertisement and fine-print overload of Travelocity! 

While living in Europe last year, I used the CouchSurfing network to stay for cheap (i.e. €0) in pricey areas like Geneva, Paris, and Florence. While it was great to get to know locals and all, sometimes they were a liiiittle too friendly (i.e. wanted to do everything with us). 9Flats and Airbnb are a more user-friendly, risk-free way to travel economically (or not), and will definitely be on my list for the next time I hit the road or the skies.

Last weekend in San Francisco I stayed at The Hotel des Arts in the French Quarter Downtown. The boutique hotel features the work of local artists in the hallways and in the painted rooms, and as such, no two rooms are alike.

I had no idea what to expect and had the pleasure of spending the weekend in Room 410, the “San Francisco Love” painted room, featuring the mural artwork of Chris Pastras and Josh Feldman. The walls were covered in life size, whimsical cityscapes which captured the bohemian and artistic spirit that infiltrates the city by the bay.

Lately, I have become very familiar with the Ace Hotel brand. Having been to the Seattle, Palm Springs and New York Ace Hotels, (I need to make a trip to Portland to round out the full Ace hotel experience.) I continue to find myself impressed at the hotel’s inherent hipness and identifiable branding that makes them so relatable to Gen Ys. 

While each hotel has a totally different vibe, they each feel authentically rooted the city they are in. It is interesting to me that more brands are not seeking to establish a subtle connection with the people and places they are a part of.

Case in point: could our hotel room feel any more Seattle?

I know I’m already in Seattle living with the repercussions of off-trail hiking (read: big welts of poison oak on my back and bottom), but I’m just getting to telling you about my yurt-living in Big Sur. Now being from the Midwest, I had really only heard about yurts in the historical context of nomads traveling through Central Asia with these portable, home tent things. As it turns out, Yurts are becoming fashionable alternatives for green builders , as they more easily allows occupants to live an off-the-grid lifestyle. They are seeing such a rise in popularity that Down East Magazine christened 2010 “The Year of the Yurt.”

While I’m not mentally prepared to live a totally off-the-grid lifestyle, it was nice to do so for a weekend at Treebones Resort. The resort is entirely off the grid—has generators for the limited electricity it uses, it’s own spring for water, and a small organic garden which the kitchen used in meals. (My only complaint is that the kitchen insisted on drowning these goodies in buckets of melted butter to the point of almost inedible.)

We stayed in yurt Number Nine which had a beautiful view of the ocean, a deck perfect for gazing at the stars, watching the red sun shrink into the teal water, or catching a glimpse of the gray whale migration. It was so nice to take a break from cell phone reception and internet, each night I found myself lighting the fire and curling up in bed reading while sipping a small cup of smokey whiskey. I’d like to think that Henry Miller would have been proud.