Yunak Evleri: A Cave Hotel in Turkey

In Cappadocia’s magical landscape of fairy chimneys, in the ancient village of Urgup, is a luxurious hotel carved into a mountain cliff, the Yunak Evleri. This hotel includes six cave houses, 30 rooms dating back to the 5th and 6th centuries and a 19th century Greek Mansion.

Cappadocia, located at the heart of Turkey, is a popular tourist destination for its unique geological, historic and cultural features. The Cappadocia region is largely underlain by sedimentary rocks formed in lakes and streams, and ignimbrite deposits erupted from ancient volcanoes. The volcanic deposits are soft rocks that the people of the villages at the heart of the Cappadocia Region carved out to form houses, churches and monasteries.

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Rome Builds a Hotel From Beach Trash

Last week a hotel constructed from rubbish collected from beaches opened its doors in Rome, to highlight the growing problem of litter in European beaches. The Corona Save the Beach Hotel was built using 12 tonnes of trash, including plastic bottles, cans and even car exhaust pipes collected from the Capocotta beach in Rome.

"Teaming up with environmental artist HA Schult, best known for his extraordinary ‘Trash Men’, we have created a pop-up hotel in the centre of Rome made almost entirely from rubbish collected from beaches across Europe," says its creators.

The hotel's first visitor was Danish supermodel Helena Christensen who spent a night in there.

"When you're inside the house, there are walls as there would be in a normal house, but they are all made of inorganic waste," Ms Christensen, who is also an environmental campaigner, told the BBC. "And then the outside... is completely covered in everything that we throw on beaches.
"And so you can basically just go around the house, and look at a lot of very personal objects, and some of them make you really wonder what made a human being throw this away on a beach."
The hotel, which stands beside the 2nd Century Castel Sant'Angelo on the banks of the Tiber, was open for only 4 days from June 3 to June 7.

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Infinity Pool at Marina Bay Sands Hotel

The Sands SkyPark in Singapore is an awe-inspiring engineering wonder. This unique structural masterpiece, designed by visionary architect Moshe Safdie, floats atop the three soaring Marina Bay Sands hotel towers 200m in the sky. At the top of the 55 storey building is a 150-meter infinity swimming pool.

But swimming to the edge won't be quite as risky as it looks. While the water in the infinity pool seems to end in a sheer drop, it actually spills into a catchment area where it is pumped back into the main pool. The pools have two circulation systems. The first functions like that of a regular pool, filtering and heating the water in the main pool. The second filters the water in the catch basin and returns it to the upper pool.


The infinity pool on the roof of SkyPark spans the three towers of the hotel. The platform itself is longer than the Eiffel tower laid down and is one of the largest of its kind in the world. At three times the length of an Olympic pool and 650ft up, it is the largest outdoor pool in the world at that height.
The hotel, which has 2,560 rooms costing from £350 a night, was officially opened last week with a concert by Diana Ross. The £4billion hotel makes it the world's most expensive hotel.

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Honest Restaurant

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Boeing 747 Airplane Hotel in Costa Rica

What can you do with an old Boeing 727? You can sent it to a junkyard or you can rebuild it, refurbish and turn it into a hotel, like the Costa Verde Hotel in Costa Rica.

The airplane in question, a 1965 model, spent decades flying as part of the South African Airways, and later Columbia’s Avianca Airlines, fleet. When it was time for the plane to be retired a group of investors bought it and flew it to San Jose. From there the plane was divided to five sections so that trucks could transport it 150 kilometers (90 miles) to it’s current location on the grounds of the Costa Verde Hotel.


The plane turned hotel, perched up on a tree offers an unusual sight for visitors. On the outside of the plane there are wooden decks above each wing with hand-carved teak furniture. From these perches visitors can spot toucans, monkeys, butterflies and sloths, to say nothing of the crash-bang sunsets over the ocean.
Inside, nearly the entire plane has been gutted and paneled with locally-sourced wood—if it weren’t for the curvature of the walls and the shapes of the windows you’d never know you were inside a plane. The entire plane is rented out as a suite that includes a kitchenette-dining foyer, a lounging area with flatscreen TV and two air-conditioned en-suite bedrooms. Rates for the 727 suite are sky-high  - $300/night in the low season, $350 in high.

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Floating Flip Ship (6 pics)

FLIP - Weird Flipping Ship
FLIP (FLoating Instrument Platform) is an 355 feet long open ocean research ship designed to partially flood and pitch backward 90 degrees, resulting in only the front 55 feet of the vessel pointing up out of the water. FLIP was designed to study wave height, acoustic signals, water temperature and density, and to collect meteorological data.

Flipping Ship

Because of the potential interference with the acoustic instruments, FLIP has no engines or other means of propulsion. It must be towed to open water, where it drifts freely or is anchored. When the ship is in horizontal (traveling) position, the long, hollow ballast area trails behind. Once it reaches the targeted location, the tail is flooded with 1500 tons of seawater and the nose sticks straight up into the air. It takes about 28 minutes to flip from horizontal to vertical position.

  

During the flip, everyone stands on the outside decks. As FLIP flips, these decks slowly become bulkheads (the name sailors use for walls). The crew step onto decks that were, only moments before, bulkheads. Inside, decks have become bulkheads; bulkheads have become decks or overheads (ceilings).

Some of FLIP's furnishings are built so they can rotate to a new position as FLIP flips. Other equipment must be unbolted and moved. Some things, like tables in the kitchen and sinks in the washroom, are built twice so one is always in the correct position.

 

Because most of its length lies in the untroubled waters beneath the waves, FLIP fulfills the scientific need for a steady platform even in stormy conditions. A 30-foot wave only causes FLIP to move 3 feet vertically in the water column.

Floating Instrument Platform was conceived and developed in 1962 by the Marine Physical Laboratory (MPL) at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. To date, FLIP was used in over 300 operations worldwide.
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