Is it just me, or do most hotels give everyone a weary sense of déjà vu? Don’t
get me wrong. I love Egyptian-cotton sheets, and it’s hard to tire of Jo
Malone grapefruit bath oil and retractable widescreen plasma TVs, but I want
somewhere so unique, so different, so far from the office grind, that
they’ll have to march me home and nail me to my desk at the end of my stay.
I want somewhere wacky.
We’re not just talking plain old Jacuzzi-in-the-bedroom-type wacky here,
either. We’re talking bring-your-own-straitjacket bonkers. Tree-house
hotels? Too mundane. I want one where they’ll pull the ladder out and leave
me overnight. A cabana with its stilts in lagoon? Too mainstream. I want a
room right down inside the lagoon. A converted yacht? Too last century. I
want one frozen in pack ice, 900 miles inside the Arctic Circle.
Trouble is, wacky hotels are hard to find. Brochures don’t know what to make
of a room in the cockpit of a 1950s freighter plane. Or in a cliff-face cave
280ft above the New Mexico desert. But we do. We stick them on a
cut-out-and-kooky list of the most startling hotels on the planet.
Prices are per person, based on two sharing. Unless otherwise stated, flights
are from London; contact the operator for details of regional departures
THE LIFE AQUATIC
Jules’ Undersea Lodge, Florida
Talk about sleeping with the fishes. Once a research lab, this two-bedroom
lodge off the coast of Florida is the only underwater hotel in the world. To
get there, guests must dive down 21ft to the bottom of the Emerald Lagoon,
in Key Largo (non-divers are given a three-hour crash course), then watch
the world swim by through the 42in window in their room. A chef will dive
down to cook your meal; otherwise, it’s just you and your lagoon.
What can you do? The lodge has its own dive school, where you
can go from scuba virgin to certified diver within three days (£233,
including equipment hire). Advanced courses start at £217. Certified divers
can enjoy unlimited dives from the lodge, with barracuda, parrotfish,
angelfish and snapper all regularly seen.
Kook factor: 9 — utterly surreal, rising to a decadent,
freakishly abandoned 10 if you book the lodge for exclusive use (£656 per
night, sleeping up to six).
How to book: room prices start at £162 (3pm-9am), half-board,
rising to £217 (1pm-11am); book on 00 1 305 451 2353 or visit www.jul.com.
No UK operators feature Jules’ Undersea Lodge, but Premier Holidays (0870
043 5995, www.premierholidays.co.uk) has a week in Florida for £867,
including six nights, room-only, at the Marriott Key Largo Bay Resort,
flights with American Airlines to Miami and car hire.
CLIFFHANGER COTTAGE
Kokopelli’s Cave, New Mexico
Blasted out of a cliff face 280ft above the New Mexico desert, this one-room
hotel is the most preposterous B&B on the planet. Access is via a
vertiginous footpath from a clifftop 70ft above, with only the occasional
handrail to keep you from a fatal dip in the River Plata below. Your reward
— from a balcony off your “room” — is a stupendous desert panorama taking in
Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado.
What can you do? Soak it all up in the Jacuzzi after hiking
or rafting spectacular canyons all around. Mild To Wild (00 1- 435 259 7818,
www.mild2wildrafting.com) has rafting, hiking and 4WD expeditions throughout
the Four Corners area (where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado meet),
as well as cultural tours to Native American reservations.
Kook factor: 10 — once they show you to the cave, you’re on
your own, and boy, you’d better like solitude.
How to book: prices start at £36, B&B; book on 505
325 7855 or visit www.bbonline.com/nm/kokopelli. No UK operators feature
Kokopelli’s Cave, but Bon Voyage (0800 316 0194, www.bon-voyage.co.uk) has
one-week fly-drive packages in the Four Corners area from £815, including
six nights’ three-star accommodation, room-only, flights with United
Airlines to Albuquerque, via Chicago, and car hire.
BARKING MAD
Dog Bark Park Inn, Idaho
As invitations go, they don’t get much more tempting than this: “Come and stay
in the world’s biggest beagle!” And as you drive into less-than-bustling
Cottonwood, Idaho, there he is: Sweet Willy, a two-storey B&B mutt
(sleeps four) with an entrance where the sun don’t shine, a comfy queen-size
bed in his tummy, a loft room in his head and a reading nook in his muzzle.
What can you do? When you’re not wagging your tail with glee
at the ridiculousness of it all, have a chat with the proprietor, Dennis
Sullivan, who is (wait for it)
a self-taught chainsaw artist. Really. His on-site studio features a wide
range of “whimsical chainsaw artwork” — mostly dogs, of course, but fish,
cats and bears as well. Away from the pooch, go white-water rafting, take in
the drive-in movie theatre, or stroll the picturesque wilderness area of
Gospel Hump.
Kook factor: 10 — eight for the beagle, two for his madcap
Michelangelo master.
How to book: Bon Voyage (0800 316 0194, www.bon-voyage.co.uk)
has a week’s Rocky Mountain fly-drive,with one night at the Dog Bark Park
Inn, from £959, including flights from Heathrow or Manchester and car hire.
For more on the Inn, visit www.uhotw.com.
YOU MAY BE SOME TIME
MV Noorderlicht, Norway
Forty miles from the nearest habitation, locked over winter into the pack ice
of a frozen fjord 900 miles north of the Arctic Circle, MV Noorderlicht is a
two-mast, 10-cabin schooner, built in 1910 and reached only after an
eight-hour mush or three-hour snowmobile trip across the spectacular wilds
of Svalbard. Reindeer wander beyond the prow, 1,500lb polar bears sometimes
approach at first light and arctic foxes can be seen at dusk. Inside, the
ship is cosy but basic, with four showers and five toilets shared between 20
guests.
What can you do? Sip hot toddies on deck as the northern
lights blaze overhead. By day, there are dog-sledding tours of surrounding
Tempelfjorden, including a trip to the magnificent snout of the Von Post
glacier.
Kook factor: 9 — an awesome chance to live out your Captain
Scott fantasies. They won’t even let you off the boat without an armed guard.
How to book: Exodus (0870 240 5550, www.exodus.co.uk) has a
five-day snow-mobile/dog-sledding expedition on Svalbard for £1,739 (March
2-6 and April 15-19, 2006), with one night aboard MV Noorderlicht and three
at the Trapper’s Lodge, Longyearbyen, including all activities, most meals,
and flights with SAS to Longyearbyen via Oslo and Tromso. Visit
www.basecampexplorer.com/svalbard.
BILL ODDIE’S PARADISE
Hotel Woodpecker, Sweden
If this isn’t the weirdest hotel in the world, it’s definitely the smallest.
Perched 43ft above the ground in a vast oak tree in the central park in
Vasteras, near Stockholm, Hotel Woodpecker is a misanthrope’s dream of a
treehouse, with just one single bed, a kitchen, a veranda and, mercifully, a
toilet. Guests climb to their “room” by ladder, which is then whipped away
for the night, with meals served via a basket and pulley.
What can you do? Free your mind — at least that’s the hope of
Mikael Genberg, the local artist who dreamt up the Hotel Woodpecker.
Otherwise ... not a lot, obviously, although, while in Vasteras you could
also visit Otter Inn, the second of Genberg’s outlandish hotels, effectively
a red garden shed moored in the middle of Lake Malaren, nearly a mile from
the shore.
Kook factor: 10 — conceived as a living art installation in
which guests are the unashamed centre of attention, it was initially free.
Genberg only started charging when he realised that people were suspicious
about getting something for nothing.
How to book: from £53, half-board, including bedding; book on
00 46 21 830023 or visit www.konst.org/genberg). Couples are welcome, but
they’ll have to share a single bed. No UK operators feature Hotel
Woodpecker, but Kirker (0870 112 3333, www.kirkerholidays.com) has three
nights’ four-star accommodation in Stockholm for £563, B&B,
including flights and transfers.
PORRIDGE, ANYONE?
Hostel Celica, Slovenia
Used as a military prison by the Austro-Hungarian empire, and by the Yugoslav
army until Slovenian independence in 1991, this has to be the only hotel in
the world with barbed wire and graffiti on the perimeter walls and bars for
windows and doors. That said, it is one of Ljubljana’s hippest hotels, with
the 20 cells designed and refurbished by leading local artists.
What can you do? There’s live music every Tuesday evening in
the old prison refectory, and art exhibitions are frequently staged in the
former prison corridors. It’s on Metelkova Street, 10 minutes’ walk from the
heart of Ljubljana, so you’re only ever a break-out away from the castle,
cathedral, museums and galleries of the Old Town.
Kook factor: 8 — yes, it’s lock-up lite, but you still have
to strip your own bed, and some of the cells (number 118, for example) don’t
feel far off the real thing.()
How to book: the specialist operator Just Slovenia (01373
814230, www.justslovenia.co.uk) has three nights, B&B, at the Hostel
Celica for £247, including flights with Adria Airways from Gatwick to
Ljubljana and transfers. Visit www.hostelcelica.com.
COLD COMFORT FARM
Ice Village, Switzerland
Ice hotels are old (woolly) hat these days, but this is the first ice-village
hotel in the world. Best enjoyed as a one-night excursion from the Hotel
Meisser, in the Toblerone-box village of Guarda, the Ice Village, above
Scuol in the Engadine Valley, is reached only after a 2,000ft chairlift
ascent and snowshoe trek. Built by Adrian Günter, who has lived among Inuits
in Alaska, the 20 two- to six-person igloos are made to traditional designs,
albeit with the luxury of a sauna, an ice bar, heart-shaped floors in the
honeymoon igloos and polar-expedition sleeping bags to go with your
sheepskin-covered ice bed.
What can you do? Strap on your skis and slap on the factor
50. With only 20 lifts and two gondolas, Scuol isn’t the biggest ski resort
in Switzerland, but, cradled between the Silvrettas and Dolomites, it is one
of the sunniest.
Kook factor: 7 — rising to 9 if you splash out on a two-
person igloo.
How to book: Inntravel (01653 617906, www.inntravel.co.uk)
has seven nights at the Hotel Meisser from £799, half-board, between January
and March, including one night in the Ice Village; add £45pp for a
two-person igloo. The price includes flights with Swiss to Zurich and
transfers. Visit www.iglu-dorf.com.
ALL YOU NEED IS LAVA
Undara Lava Lodge, Australia
Bought from the Queensland Railway in 1989 and transported to a gum-shaded
cattle station 180 miles southwest of Cairns, Undara Lava Lodge’s
century-old — but beautifully restored — railway-carriage rooms were the
brainchild of Gerry Collins, a fourth- generation member of the first pioneer family to settle the eastern edge of the Gulf Savannah. Meals are
taken in the dining car or around the campfire, under the stars.
What can you do? If you think the carriages are bizarre, wait
until you see the lava tubes. Formed nearly 2m years ago, when a vast
volcano spewed 5½ cubic miles of lava across the desert, the Undara Lava
Tubes are like vast Jurassic arteries stretching across the desert — the
longest lava flow from a single volcano on the planet. The lodge runs guided
tours of the tubes and underground caves.
Kook factor: 8 — carriage conversions aren’t new, but the
tubes ratchet up the oddness.
How to book: Austravel (0870 166 2070, www.austravel.com) has
12 nights in Queensland from £1,099, including one night, half-board, at
Undara Lava Lodge, a tour of the lava tubes, 11 nights’ three-star
accommodation in Cairns, room-only, and flights to Cairns with Japan
Airlines, via Tokyo. Visit www.undara.com.au.
CARRY ON CAMPLY
The Witchery, Edinburgh
Spirited away up must-be-haunted spiral staircases off Edinburgh’s Royal Mile,
The Witchery is a shamelessly camp temple to too-muchness, with a
star-studded guest list that includes Jack Nicholson and Michael Douglas and
Catherine Zeta-Jones. Made up of seven outrageously gothic suites, it boasts
a four-poster bed made of pulpits in the Old Rectory, military-uniformed
mannequins in the Armoury, a stuffed mallard by the bath in the Inner
Sanctum, and dripping candelabra and blood-red velvet everywhere in between.
Part weird, part sexy, it’s the “perfect lust den”, according to Dannii
Minogue.
What can you do? It’s just a broomstick-hop from the castle,
and the best of Edinburgh is only a walk away. And don’t neglect the
Witchery restaurant: almost as camp as the rooms, James Thomson’s eaterie,
lit only by church candles and hung with medieval tapestries from Burgundy,
is one of the top three in town.
Kook factor: 8, rising to a 10 if you book the Vestry, with a
bedhead made of organ pipes, Watts of Westminster wall- paper (as
notoriously favoured by Derry Irvine) and antique bishop’s mitres and
vestments all around.
How to book: all suites cost £275, including breakfast in bed
and a bottle of Pol Roger champagne on arrival. Book on 0131 225 5613 or
visit www.thewitchery.com.
DESERT SONG
Wolwedans Dune Camp, Namibia
Marooned on a sea of dunes at the edge of Namib Desert, Wolwedans Dune Camp is
as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get without a camel. Eighty
miles from the nearest town, then 20 bone-jarring minutes by 4WD from the
road head, the camp’s six tents — built into an 800ft-high dune on wooden
platforms raised on stilts — are constantly under threat from the shifting
sands. By day, it is a parched, parboiled outpost where dung beetles scuttle
for shade and jackals shelter beneath your tent, but by late afternoon, as
the dunes blaze red and the shadows lengthen across an epic foreverness of
sand and rock, it becomes the most impossibly surreal hotel setting you’ll
ever try to get your head round.
What can you do? Sossusvlei — Namibia’s iconic dunescape — is
less than two hours up the road, and is offered, along with fascinating
desert drives and walks in search of jackals and hyenas, ostriches and oryx,
as a guided day trip from camp.
Kook factor: 10 — it will change your life. Boer legend says
a man cries twice in the Namib: once when he arrives, once when he leaves.
Watch the sunset from your deck and you’ll understand why.
How to book: Sunvil Africa (020 8232 9777, www.sunvil.co.uk)
has 10 nights in Namibia from £2,645, including three nights at Wolwedans,
and stays in Windhoek, Sesriem (the gateway to Sossusvlei), Swakopmund,
Damaraland and Etosha. The price includes all activities, direct flights to
Windhoek with Air Namibia and car hire. Visit www.wolwedans.com.
BRUCE, MEET BRUCE
North Star Inn, Australia
A classic Aussie watering hole 170 miles north of Adelaide, North Star Inn is
the oldest pub in Melrose, serving copper miners since 1854. It’s littered
throughout with mining tools, recycled hubcaps and reclaimed station
windows, but the hotel’s most bizarre rooms are housed in three converted
trucks. The first is called Bruce; the second Bugger; while the third,
Remarkable, is a 1945 Diamond T American recovery vehicle with a reading
room in the cab and balcony views of the Flinders Ranges that are worth the
170-mile hike from Adelaide on their own.
What can you do? The hotel can arrange 4WD tours of Mount
Remarkable National Park, as well as guided day walks in Alligator Gorge,
either north across the remains of a fossilised lakeshore or south through a
spectacular narrow red canyon alive with frog calls. There are also tougher
hikes to Mambray Creek, where wedge-tailed eagles and large groups of wild
emus are sometimes seen.
Kook factor: 6 — okay, it’s certifiably two prawns short of a
barbie, but this far into the outback, that’s just normal.
How to book: through Audley Travel (01869 276245,
www.audleytravel.com), 14 nights in southern Australia start at £1,995, B&B,
with two nights at North Star Inn and two at a converted Adelaide fire
station with a 1942 fire engine and a fireman’s pole in your suite. The
price includes flights with Qantas to Adelaide, via Melbourne, and car hire.
Visit www.northstarinn.com.au.
STAR WARS HOTEL, IT IS
Hotel Marhala, Tunisia
So weird that it starred as an alien disco in the original Star Wars movie,
the Hotel Marhala is a rabbit warren of underground rooms and corridors 20ft
underground in the troglodyte village of Matmata. Nearly 300 miles south of
Tunis, Matmata was first recorded in the 4th century, dug out as an escape
from the sun by ancestors of the fair-skinned Berbers who inhabit it today.
What can you do? Release your inner Luke (the Hotel Sidi
Driss, nearby, is where Skywalker’s uncle and aunt lived on the desert
planet of Tatooine), then release your inner Ulysses 50 miles away on
Djerba, the Land of the Lotus Eaters in Homer’s Odyssey, now an
overdeveloped yet beautiful island of beach resorts. The Hotel Marhala can
also organise camel treks from nearby Douz, “gateway to the Sahara”.
Kook factor: 9 — utterly surreal. Up top, a man could fry his
eyeballs in the heat, but your room is a constant, cool 17C. The sheer
antiquity is also quite disturbing.
How to book: Explore (0870 333 4001, www.explore.co.uk) has
14 nights in Tunisia for £762, with one night at the Hotel Marhala, a
three-day camel safari and visits to Carthage and the holy city of Kairouan.
The price includes flights with British Airways to Tunis, some meals and all
transfers.
THE SURREAL ESTATE
Woodlyn Park, New Zealand
With accommodation in a subterranean hobbit village, a railway carriage and in
the cockpit and tail of a Vietnam-veteran 1950s Bristol freight plane,
Woodlyn Park is the barkingly oddest hotel on our list.
What can you do? Jump-start your adrenal glands. Woodlyn Park
is the only commercial operator in New Zealand that allows you to drive a
100hp jet boat yourself (£18). A two-minute walk from Waitomo’s glow-worm
cave (www.waitomocaves.co.nz), the park is also a great base for the most
magical tour in the country, by boat or inflated inner tube, through a cave
system lit by thousands of luminous larvae.
Kook factor: 7 — too self-conscious for top marks, but the
caves alone are worth the points.
How to book: with Travelmood (0870 066 4556,
www.travelmood.com), 10 days on North Island start at £999, room-only,
including two nights in Woodlyn Park’s plane, flights to Auckland with
Korean Air, via Seoul, and car hire.
