England travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises spa and resorts

Valencia
All eyes will be on Valencia later this year when the Spanish city hosts the coveted America’s Cup, the world’s biggest and most prestigious yachting event. Valencia is the first city in Europe to stage the race, despite the event’s long history. Already a popular short break destination with savvy travellers, Valencia benefits from a great location a short hop from the resorts on the Costa Blanca and is well served by no-frills airlines. But it is a charming city in its own right, home to the original paella, and it offers an exciting mixture of old and new, with cutting edge modern architecture and traditional baroque barrios. Check out the futuristic looking Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (the City of Arts and Sciences) designed by local architect Santiago Calatrava, featuring Europe’s largest state-of-the-art marine park, complete with a 30m- (98ft-) long shark tunnel, a dolphinarium, huge fish tanks, a colony of Humboldt’s penguins, and a very surreal underwater restaurant . The harbour area, Europe’s largest urban regeneration project, will be at the centre of the action during the Cup.

Continue reading Top hot destinations 2007

Gather your friends together for a ‘girlie’ weekend or get body beautiful for winter with the ultimate ‘pamper holiday’ to a luxury spa resort. Here i have selected our ten favourite spa resorts in the United States – you’ll have a fantastic holiday and will leave feeling great!

Continue reading Top 10 Destination Spas in the United States

The United States Virgin Islands are a group of islands in the Caribbean that are an insular area of the United States. The islands are geographically part of the Virgin Islands and are located in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. The U.S. Virgin Islands consist of the four main islands of St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix, and Water Island, and many smaller islands. It is the only part of the United States where traffic drives on the left. The total land area of the territory is 346.36 square km.

Continue reading U.S. Virgin Islands are the most popular destination in the Caribbean

The world’s largest casino isn’t in Monaco, or Las Vegas. It’s right here in New England,in Mashantucket, Connecticut and is open daily 24 hours. Foxwoods Resort Casino just celebrated its 14th year in 2006. With his 340000 square foots the casino offering more than 7400 slot machines, as well as a bingo room, keno.
The casino has got 380 gaming tables including blackjack, craps, roulette, poker room.
Highlights of the resort’s 27 globe-spanning restaurants include gourmet dining at the Grand Pequot Tower’s Paragon, which features a Continental menu, and Al Dente, which serves southern and northern Italian dishes. For casual fare, guests head for the California Pizza Kitchen, Pauli Motos, and the Festival Buffet, 1 bar and 3 hotels with 1416 rooms. There’s a luxurious, high-tech Race Book, as well as the world’s largest Bingo Hall. For conventions and group events, Foxwoods features more than 55,000 square feet of meeting space and 25 conference rooms.

Continue reading The largest casino in the world

The Eiffel Tower, an immense stucture of exposed latticework supports made of iron, was erected for the Paris Exposition of 1889. The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII of England) officiated at the ceremonial opening. Of the 700 proposals submitted in a design competition, one was unanimously chosen, a radical creation from the French structural engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (b. Dec. 15, 1832, d. Dec. 28, 1923), who was assisted in the design by engineers Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier, and architect Stephen Sauvestre.

However, the controversial tower elicited some strong reactions, and a petition of 300 names — including those of Maupassant, Emile Zola, Charles Garnier (architect of the Opéra Garnier), and Dumas the Younger — was presented to the city government, protesting its construction. The petition read, “We, the writers, painters, sculptors, architects and lovers of the beauty of Paris, do protest with all our vigour and all our indignation, in the name of French taste and endangered French art and history, against the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower.”

Continue reading The most famous tower on the Earth

The four figures carved in stone on Mount Rushmore represent the first 150 years of American history. The birth of our nation was guided by the vision and courage of George Washington. Thomas Jefferson always had dreams of something bigger, first in the words of the Declaration of Independence and later in the expansion of our nation through the Louisiana Purchase. Preservation of the union was paramount to Abraham Lincoln but a nation where all men were free and equal was destined to be. At the turn of the Twentieth Century Theodore Roosevelt saw that in our nation was the possibility for greatness. Our nation was changing from a rural republic to a world power. The ideals of these presidents laid a foundation for our nation as solid as the rock from which their figures are carved.
Each man possessed great skills and leadership of the brand our nation needed for the times. Today millions of visitors come to see Mount Rushmore and gain inspiration from these four great men.

Continue reading The Four Faces. Mount Rushmore.

Nacreous clouds glow brightly with vivid iridescent colours. They are wave clouds and their undulating sheet-like forms reveal the winds and waves of the stratosphere.

Continue reading Nacreous Clouds

In Dubai, space for hotels and beachfront villas is being created on four artificial islands being constructed off the crowded coastline. The first and smallest was completed in 2004 and is shaped like a palm tree. A phase under construction will comprise 264 smaller islands forming a vast map of the world. Altogether, four of these huge new projects are to be crafted out of rock and sand. Once building construction begins, concrete will flow in huge amounts.

Continue reading Dubai invests in artificial resort islands to attract tourism dollars