Sleek Mercy Hotel Debuts in Lisbon

Portugal is riding a wave of hotel openings, with several that debuted within the last year, including luxury chain properties like InterContinental Porto Palacio das Cardosas in Porto and Imani Country House an intimate 7-room retreat an hour outside of Lisbon) and many more still to come.

Opening on September 1 in Lisbon, the Mercy Hotel will give visitors to Portugal's capital (and largest) city a stylish place to bunk, with opening rates from 164 Euro/night. Most attractions are within a short walk from the hotel, which sits in the chic Bairro Alto district, home to nightlife, restaurants, bars, and great shopping on cobblestoned streets.

Designed by Miguel Saraiva, the look reflects the Pombaline style popular in downtown Lisbon during the 18th Century. Sleek black and neutral tones (like white, cream, gray, and khaki) are the dominant colors in each of the 47 minimally decorated guest rooms (there are six room types) with choices of quality fabrics like suede (covering some of the walls), silk, and velvet cultivating a warm, cozy feeling. Some rooms have views of Lisbon landmarks—Old Lisbon, Saint George's Castle, and the Tagus River. The best views are from private small terraces within the top-floor suites (of which there are two). Some of the rooms pay homage to Portuguese writers, with an English-language version of the book for guests to read during their stay. And free WiFi is available throughout the property.

At the on-site restaurant (Mercy Restaurant) on the ground floor, artfully plated Portuguese dishes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner are infused with flavors from other global regions. Wines are poured from the country's Douro Valley as well as Alentejo. Blue-accent walls and cherry-red chairs contribute to a chic vibe. For late-night nibbles and cocktails there are two bars (one attached to Mercy Restaurant), as well as the Belvedere Terrace where you can take in a stunning view of Saint George's Castle.

Source: http://www.fodors.com

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Load Up on Local Cherries in Montana

As you get into northwestern Montana, perhaps heading to Glacier National Park, you may be tempted to stop at one of the scores of huckleberry vendors in the area who sell jams, jellies, candy, lip balm, and all manner of goods flavored by this favorite of the local grizzly bears. But you read Fodor's, which means you don't go in for tourist traps.

Instead, make your savvy stop on Route 93 at Flathead Lake at one of the myriad unimposing cherry stands for a bag (or maybe several bags) of local, phenomenal, delicious, and otherwise out-of-this-world cherries. Cherry orchards are visible from the road, running along the circumference of the lake, and farmers have scads of ripe, sweet cherries available at ramshackle roadside stands. Hand-painted signs begin to pop up along as you approach the lake, so you won't miss your chance. I recently picked up a large bag for $6, which lasted about three days among three hungry hikers.

If you are camping, as we were, here's a trick to keeping your cherries fresh, straight from one of the orchard owners. Keep the bag of cherries OPEN in your cooler and you should get a week out of them. If you can keep from devouring them for that long.

Source: http://www.fodors.com

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Centara upgrades to a cashless island experience at Maldives

Guests arriving at Centara Grand Island Resort & Spa Maldives from November 1, 2012 can leave both their shoes and their cash behind, because from that date the resort begins its Ultimate All-Inclusive experience. Although Centara has always featured fully-inclusive accommodation, Ultimate All-Inclusive takes this concept to an entirely new level and represents the ultimate in luxury escapes.

Included are champagne breakfasts served all the way through until mid-morning, a choice of three restaurants for lunch, and sumptuous dinners that offer a daily theme buffet, Thai cuisine, Italian dining at a romantic overwater restaurant, Japanese teppanyaki cooked to order, fresh seafood, and international dishes.

Each evening begins with an invitation to a sundowner cocktail party where guests can mingle and enjoy free-flowing drinks as the sun sets over the Indian Ocean, and the night progresses with live entertainment. An open-bar service provides cocktails, beers, wines, and spirits from 10:00 am to midnight at the resort’s two bars, and the room mini-bar is replenished once daily.

Also included are credits of US$100 per person, per day, to spend at Spa Cenvaree village spa, with a range of treatments that include foot massage, Indian head massage, face relaxing massage, and a choice of body scrubs and upper-back massage.

The package also includes Wi-Fi access in the rooms and across the resort, use of fitness facilities with programs designed by a personal trainer, tennis, snorkeling equipment, motorized water sports, and windsurfing lessons.

A number of off-island excursions are also included such as a whale shark tour, sunset fishing, sunset cruises, and the local island discovery tour.

Centara Grand Island Resort & Spa Maldives is set among the perfect islands and blue ocean of South Ari Atoll in the Republic of Maldives, and offers the ultimate in barefoot luxury along with a range of exciting activities that will appeal both to couples and families.

Featuring 112 suites, pool villas, and overwater villas, the resort offers diving enthusiasts outstanding diving opportunities including a house reef complete with a dedicated sunken shipwreck and is within easy reach of the top dive spots in the Maldives.

Source: http://www.breakingtravelnews.com

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A swimming tour of Stockholm

From secret coves to its bustling harbour, Stockholm is a city surrounded by water. Anna Stothard takes a duck's eye tour of the capital's many swimming spots.

Leap of faith: cooling off in Stockholm’s Lake Mälaren, near the city centre. 

Photograph: Frank Chmura for the Observer

"Hoppa! Jump!" commands a voice from the rocks behind me. Barefoot on sun-baked cliffs, I launch myself into the icy clear water.

I gasp instinctively, but forget the cold on surfacing. Treading water in this quiet stretch of Lake Mälaren, not far from the centre of Stockholm, ducks paddle past me and a tiny wagtail, the size of a baby's fist, plays tag with waves I've made against the rocks. The lake is so clear you can see the crisscrossing roots of the water lilies. Yet a highway hums nearby.

The smooth, sloping cliffs of Fredhällsbadet are tucked away on the south-western tip of Kungsholmen, one of the 14 islands that make up Stockholm. "The most romantic bath in the city," pronounces Henrik, the bossy sunbather who encouraged my first city dip. Hauling myself from the water, I find him near the top of the cliffs, ashing cigarettes tidily into their packet and working on his suntan. On a scorching weekend this area bustles with young locals sharing beers and dive-bombing, but Henrik likes it best on warm, magical summer weekdays like today.

"Walk the coast and swim when you get hot, it's the best way to see the city," says Henrik, pointing a languid arm eastward towards a popular beach underneath Västerbron, the stylishly arched Western Bridge.

Beginning my walk I jump from the rocks surrounding a wooden jetty and later slide down a steep incline to paddle and swim in a little bay sheltered by trees. Winding stone staircases appear from nowhere, overgrown with vines and wild pink roses and, further east, a boardwalk materialises as the drone of Essingeleden motorway muddles with birdsong. The road juts right out of the rocks above my head, but somehow this only adds to the magic.

Thanks to stringent environmental laws, the waters of Lake Mälaren have been clean enough to fish and swim in since 1971. The islands of Stockholm are scattered where the lake meets the Baltic, but the lake is cleaner than the sea so urban swimmers are best to stick to the western edges of the city.

Just as I've dried off from my last rocky dip and am beginning to feel hot again, a sandy cove called Smedsuddsbadet appears around the corner, as Henrik promised, on the Kungsholmen side of the Western Bridge. This family-friendly beach has been open to the public since 1973 and becomes packed on sunny days. It doesn't have the wild majesty of Fredhäll, but it's cute. It's set in a bay with buoys marking it off from deeper water; children make sandcastles and chase ducks while teenagers lounge on a wooden dock. There are changing rooms and just beyond the sand, on the other side of a stubby finger of land, you can stop in the Kafé Kajak to dry off and buy an ice cream or fika (coffee with something sweet, usually a cinnamon bun). The café patio looks out at the Western Bridge – its swooping steel arches connecting the island of Kungsholmen to Södermalm via the smaller island of Långholmen.

The bridge was built in 1935 and stretches 602 metres, 340 of which pounce over the water like a giant bird skipping from island to island. Through its steel arches you can see the bell tower of City Hall, where the Nobel prize banquet is held, and beyond on to the terracotta facades of Gamla Stan, Stockholm's Old Town.

One of Stockholm's beaches. Photograph: Alamy

In the 13th century, these waters were crowded with pirates, trading boats and warships squeezing through the narrow passage where the freshwater of Lake Mälaren merges with the Baltic Sea. The city grew from a fortress built on the island by a Swedish statesman named Birger Jarl. Sweden controlled a key trade route and the surrounding area soon expanded into a city.

Now canoes slide among sailing boats, seagulls and the lolloping heads of swimmers.

Most of the year Stockholm is enclosed by blue ice and moody skies, so when the sun comes out this city exhales, uncurling from hibernation and heading for the water. The edges of the islands look like temples to sunshine during the summer months, scattered with locals, faces tilting towards the sky.

Långholmen island housed the largest prison in Sweden until 1975 and performed the country's last execution in 1910. It's 1.4km long and 400 metres wide at the fattest point and it offers swimming options all around its perimeter. Much of the prison has been demolished, but the remnants have been transformed into a hotel and hostel where guests sleep in "cells" and eat at colourfully chequered tables laid out in the vestiges of the "exercise yards". In a city that's notoriously pricey, Långholmen hostel is inexpensive. The prison museum is worth a look, as is the foxglove and poppy-strewn garden of Stora Henriksvik, a café serving homemade pastries and organic salads.

Eriksdalsbadet, the biggest swimming centre in Stockholm, is a shock to the system. My towel is sodden with lake water and my clothes are sticking to my body (in retrospect, a change of clothes would have been a good idea), but I get a rush of adrenaline at the smell of chlorine rising off the luminous aquamarine water. The vast outdoor pool looks alien with its concrete rims and straight lines, yet also strangely comforting. You don't have to avoid stray rocks or pre-plan your exit from the water. There are rules! And ladders! After a few laps, I collapse exhausted on the lawns covered in sunbathers and picnic tables. It's easy to lose track of time over Stockholm's long summer days, which can stretch to 18 hours of sunlight. It turns out I've been walking and swimming for five hours and my mind is beginning to turn from thoughts of water to thoughts of alcohol. This is a city walk, after all, and all good city walks end with a cocktail.

Anna Stothard in the Selma Spa's rooftop pool

The last stop of my tour is the most luxurious outdoor swimming location in Stockholm. Amble up through the middle of chic Södermalm and the bustling antique shops of Gamla Stan (or cheat and take the metro's green line west from Skanstull T-bana to Stockholm Central Station) towards a blissfully warm rooftop pool on the Clarion Hotel Sign in Norrmalm. The granite-and-glass building was designed by Swedish architect Gert Wingårdh and the inside is a homage to Nordic designers including Arne Jacobsen and Bruno Mathsson.

After a day of walking between rocky diving points, wooden piers, perfect beaches and giant pools, a quick shower and a swim in the hotel's Selma Spa heated pool, looking down on the railway and over the rooftops of Stockholm, is heaven.

A half-hour "aroma massage" and a well-deserved cocktail later, I'm swinging in the transparent egg-shaped chairs and looking out on the city from the Spa Bar. And I'm already making plans for more swimming tomorrow.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk

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Angry Birds gets its own UK theme park

The popular mobile phone game has added a new level: a playground in Nottinghamshire.

Three stars? Emine tries out the slide at the Angry Birds park in Nottinghamshire. 
Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

"Angry Birds!" shouts an excited small boy as he careers around the corner and stands in front of the fenced-off area. The sign on the fence says the new play area doesn't open until next week. Parents explain this to their disappointed children. Some of the adults look sad too. "I'm addicted to Angry Birds," says Terry Lalton, a recovery driver from Doncaster, who is here with his children and extended family.

"This looks quite good. They've got the catapult [a reference to the game]." "It looks fantastic," says one of the small boys with him. Will they come back when it opens? "I hope so," he says. I have already been on the slide and to the top of the climbing frame. I feel smug.

Sundown Adventureland, an attraction in the Nottinghamshire countryside, is home to the first Angry Birds theme park in the UK. There is already one in Finland (and an unofficial park in China), and the company licensed to make the equipment says it is looking at other sites.

Angry Birds started as a mobile phone app – if you are not one of the 200 million monthly users, it's a game where you catapult birds at egg-stealing pigs – and in March, Apple revealed it was the most popular paid app ever. Last year, Rovio, the Finnish company that created the game, reported revenues of £60.8m – nearly a third comes from merchandising. "I've got it on my iPad," says Mrs Rhodes, Sundown's 83-year-old owner. "My grandson put it on for me when it first came out and I never bothered with it, but when this came up I had a go."

What is the appeal? "The birds look strong and fearless," says eight-year-old Reece Beardsaw, who is looking through the fence at the new playground. "They're wicked." His mum adds that he doesn't play the game but he likes the characters – he has Angry Birds branded clothing and stuffed toys at home.

Whereas the game also has an adult fanbase – David Cameron is a big fan, as are Salman Rushdie and Jon Hamm– the playground is aimed at the under-10s. An Angry Birds ride is planned, as well as a small rollercoaster, but these are some way off. For now, young fans will have to make do with a selection of exciting, but fairly standard, branded playground equipment.

Sundown Adventureland's newest attracton might be birds, but it all started with a monkey. Rhodes bought one in a Worksop pet shop shortly after she and her husband John moved to a bungalow, named Sundown, in 1954. They already had chickens, goats and a donkey, but it was the monkey – very soon to be joined by more, as well as a bush baby, flying squirrels and raccoons – that made the Rhodeses think they could open their menagerie to visitors to make a bit of extra money. The bungalow came with two acres but they gradually bought more parcels of land from a local farmer until eventually Sundown became the 30-acre site it is today.

The place is charming. Aimed at young children, there are gentle rides, miniature villages to explore, and a number of really quite strange models of people and animals – in the farm area, a farmer mannequin looks suspiciously like Des Lynam and the characters in the Wizard of Oz Zone will haunt me for life.

To cynical adult eyes, parts of it seem tatty, but every child I saw looked delighted. It feels like quite an innocent place, where inspiration comes from classic fairytales and legends, not big branded moneyspinners. Angry Birds has catapulted itself right into the middle of it.


Source:  http://www.guardian.co.uk 

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