A Food Fun Travel Guest Post
Have you heard the news? Plush hotel beds in cookie cutter hotels are out and in their place come newer, bigger, better … dare we say stranger places to rest your head at night while on your vacation. It’s not enough to get away, you need to have an experience.
All over the world, there are entrepreneurs hoping to entice travelers to stop over in their city or venture out into brand new landscapes. And they’re doing it by changing the way we think about where we sleep.
The following are just a few of the choices you have when booking your next stay abroad.
Downsize your accommodations in a pod hotel
There are the eponymous Pod Hotels in New York, of course, but tiny pod-size or capsule rooms are cropping up worldwide to give the savvy traveler a way to save more money on their room so they can spend more time exploring their destination. Micro-hotels are where it’s at, especially in places where real estate prices are literally sky high. The entrepreneurs behind these endeavors believe that great things come in small packages and these rooms make great use of their space, maximizing efficiency so that you want for nothing when you come home from a long night on the town.
Rooms range from 100 square feet to a space not much larger than a bookshelf that contains your bed, a light, and some basic necessities.
Snooze Among Great Works of Literature
In the age of smartphones, 24/7 internet, and entertainment, sometimes you just like to curl up with a good book and drift off to sleep … in a 3 by 7-foot cubby. Wait, what?
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This is the experience on offer from the Book and Bed, which offers six locations around Tokyo. Hotel rooms can cost hundreds of dollars and truly break the bank in some of the city’s posher neighborhoods. If you’re willing to cozy up in the bunks on offer among the books, you will probably end up spending around $50, giving you plenty of money left over to experience all this fantastic cosmopolitan city has to offer. You might even learn something from the books on a nearby shelf.
Sleep with the fishes!
Hotels in such far-flung locations as Dubai and Zanzibar are building their rooms under the sea to give guests a view of the passing ocean while they sleep. No worries, though. You won’t have to don a wetsuit to go to bed at night.
Hotel rooms built with this unique view offer every single amenity you could possibly imagine, but all of your high-life enjoyment will occur within view of thousands of sea creatures passing by. At the ultra-pricey Lovers Deep in St. Lucia, your accommodations are all built upon a submarine, and each customer can decide where they want to drop anchor for the night. These places really take “ocean view” to a whole new level.
Rock Yourself to Sleep While Vertical Camping
It used to be there was only one kind of camping: horizontal! Then that turned into glamping, where no expense is spared in setting up your tent away from home. Vertical camping kicks things up even further for an experience that is not intended for the faint of heart.
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Chill out in an ice cave
Ice caves form when spring water from melted ice in the spring and summer form rivers that seep through cracks in glaciers, melting away portions of ice and forming openings that harden in the fall in winter. Those who never let a little ice stand in the way of a good night’s sleep are hiking into these locations to stay the night to enjoy one nature’s most beautiful phenomena.
There are locations throughout Scandinavia, Iceland, and North America if you want to give an overnight glacier camping trip a try. Most tourist organizations will recommend that you do not try this unaccompanied and instead secure the assistance of a trained guide who understands the capricious nature of ice and these miraculous structures.
Conclusion
So what are you waiting for? Grab your best travel pillow and book those tickets. Life is too short for ordinary, when you can sleep extraordinary.
