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Google Street View has now made a virtual tour of Venice possible using their Street View Trekker technology. Their team of backpackers made sure to take photos of this picturesque city, even giving us a view of what it’s like to be on a gondola. Many of the attractions have been mapped out, such as the place where typographer Manutius created the Italics font, the Synagogue of the first Jewish…
Luxury Hotel Allows Visitors To Book Their Stay Using Twitter By Kelly Koo, 19 Nov 2013 COMMENT SHARE Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on pinterest_share 2 Microblogging site Twitter has been pervading the world of social media with unique services including emergency and natural disaster alerts, Starbucks’ tweet-a-coffee service, and the list goes on. Recently, the luxurious…
Created by David McCracken, this sculpture is a staircase that seems to stretch on to the heavens and beyond. Part of this year’s annual Sculpture By The Sea exhibition in Bondi Beach, Australia, this piece, “Diminish and Ascend” is breathtaking and inspiring. We wonder if it is possible to climb to the top, but that seems to be both dangerous and exhausting.
For more than 1350 years, pilgrims have travelled to the city of Makkah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for Haj, and today about 3 million Muslims take part every year from all over the world. Haj: The Journey Through Art exhibition has been curated by the Museum of Islamic Art, in collaboration with the British Museum. It takes visitors on a journey exploring and illuminating the Muslim pilgrimage of Haj.…
The Museum of Fine Art in Boston is displaying pages of the Quran from medieval times to the present in an exhibition called, "Sacred Pages." This exhibition offers visitors a way to broaden their understanding of the Qur’an, Islam, and Islamic art. The collection of 25 loose pages of the Quran date from 750 AD to modern times. Besides displaying the sacred pages, the Museum of Fine Art in Boston invited…
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is promising to speed up passport services by improving the Passport Department's online offering and overall staffing issues. Currently, the Abshir online system is not working as efficiently as it should, resulting in a need for extra staff. Once the system has been updated, there is a hope for less overcrowding at the department's offices around the country. Citizens can…
Officials in the Philippines have urged tourists not to abandon the country as it comes to terms with the aftermath of super typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), an unprecedented category five storm, which struck the country last week. The storm, which claimed thousands of lives, was the strongest in recorded history to make landfall in the country. A state of emergency has been declares across much of the…
The Kerry Hotel in Shanghai broke the record for the world’s largest ball piton Oct. 30 and filled a swimming pool with 1 million pink and green balls. The world-record stunt was for a good cause: raising awareness for breast cancer prevention. Three hundred of the guests were cancer survivors from the Shanghai Cancer Recovery Club.
It’s the ideal scenario for jetsetting shopaholics: skip into a Louis Vuitton store or Zara one minute, and into your hotel room the next. In a growing trend emerging out of the Middle East, hotel developers are partnering with major shopping centers to build properties inside sprawling retail spaces, points out a wide-sweeping trend report released out of the World Travel Market in London this week.…
They’re among the most anticipated ski resort openings of 2013: a 5-star chalet set in the French Alps, the first alpine property out of the W hotel chain, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s “world-class” ski resort. Here are a few of the most luxurious ski resort properties opening up in the next few months L’Apogée Courchevel Courchevel 1850, France - Opening date: December 11 A new luxury…
Adventure is out there, and an intrepid Swiss pilot Yves Rossy, aka “Jetman”, shows us how it’s done. Since 2006, the gutsy adventurer has been been exploring locations such as the Grand Canyon and Rio de Janeiro by flying on a hand-made jetpack. Driven by his dream to fly in the most natural way possible, Rossy had experimented extensively for 10 years, developing more than 15 prototypes before finally…
Popcorn is getting truffled, sodas replaced with fancy juices and bags of M&M’s swapped for fairytale macaroons in a trend that’s elevating the cinema-going experience into a gourmet treat. Following the lead of New York and London, the menu at filmmaker Luc Besson’s newly opened multiplex cinema outside Paris includes munchies like caviar, smoked salmon, and macaroons by one of the country’s top pastry…
After a hard day on the slopes, nothing beats an après-ski spa treatment. Here are a few of the world’s best luxury hotels and spas that will surely hit the spot. Bagni di Bormio Spa Resort, Bormio – Italy A spa town since Roman times, Bormio is home to the five-star Grand Bagni Nuovi, which first opened as a spa resort in 1836. Along with Murano glass chandeliers and art nouveau flourishes, the hotel…
In what’s being described as a partnership of titans, Sir Richard Branson has teamed up with reality TV czar Mark Burnett for a new series that will send the winner into space. In line with Burnett’s wildly successful TV franchise “Amazing Race,” “Space Race” will take the concept of cross-planetary treasure hunts to new heights and give an ‘everyday person’ a seat aboard Branson’s Virgin Galactic…
It’s a move that makes sense: for many tourists, taxi drivers are their first point of contact as the chauffeurs shuttle freshly arrived visitors from the airport to their hotel, a route that’s likewise often their first introduction to the city. According to The Khaleej Times, nearly half of the city’s 3,504 cab drivers have completed a tourist awareness training which teaches drivers about key…
The Christian tradition of All Hallows Evening which was celebrated in remembrance of the dead has now spread into a world wide phenomenon. From Karachi to Dubai and from Indonesia to Morocco, Halloween parties and "trick or treat" visits by children have become commonplace - reflective of the influence of media on culture. "Soul cakes" were distributed to the poor in medieval Europe to pray for the souls of…
The Ottoman Sultan Abdul Majid dreamt of connecting Europe with Asia but technology in 1860 failed him. The new "Ottoman Emperor" as the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyeb Erdogan, is famously referred to, inaugurated the first underground tunnel to link the European and Asian parts of Istanbul. The Marmaray rail link will be just a part of the tunnel whose tube like structure will facilitate the movement…
Frank Sinatra used to coo that love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage but if some activists have their way, the horses used in horse drawn carriages in Central Park New York may end up on a restaurant's menu. Activists for cleaner and safer streets in New York have convinced the two mayoral condidates in New York to agree to the end of horse drawn carriages in the city. While horses usually…
