Autor: Macsim Elena Adriana, clasa a XII-a C
Sursă imagine: https://www.booking.com/searchresults.en-gb.html?aid=318615&label=New_English_EN_RO_
PRISON HOTELS
Built in 1905, Karosta naval jail in Latvia originally housed badly behaved Russian sailors. Now a hotel, it offers guests ” an opportunity to stay overnight on real prisoners’ benches and mattresses’. The hotel’s website goes on describe Karosta proudly as ‘ unfriendly, unheated and uncomfortable’. They are not lying. This is more a reality jail experience than a hotel. ‘Reception’ is a dark corridor where a former prison guard explains the rules to you ( no luggage except a toothbrush, no attempts to escape), and then fires his gun in the air to show you he is serious. After a meal and sweet Russian tea, ‘guests’ are given five minutes to wash before making up their own bed from a wooden bench and thin mattress. Sound unpleasant? It is. Mind you, for $ 12 per night, what do you expect?
PERIOD HOTELS
Do you fancy stepping back in time to America’s Wild West? Virginia City in Montana, a former gold-rush town of the 1860s, was a ghost town until it began to be restored for tourists in the 1950s. Owned largely by the state government, the town now operates as a large open-air museum. Nearby is the Nevada City Hotel and cabins where you can sit out on the porch and enjoy life as a cowboy. The rooms feature period furniture and downstairs there’s a real Wild West saloon. The cabins look extremely basic from the outside, but inside they have large double beds and private bathrooms. Bear in mind that if you stay during the week, you might be disappointed. The city only really comes to life at weekends when actors walk around dressed as sheriffs, cowboys and gold prospectors.
CAVE HOTELS
If you have even more primitive accommodation in mind, why not try a cave hotel? Cold, damp, dark? It doesn’t have to be. The caves of Sassi di Matera in Italy are Bronze age homes that were given a makeover in the Renaissance with vaulted ceilings, doors and shutters. More recently, until the 1950s, they were the homes of local peasants who lived there with their animals. But now they have been renovated to provide hospitality in a historical setting. Although visitors to Le Grotte Della Civita must do without television or fridges, the rooms are comfortably furnished with antique furniture and beautiful oak chest of drawers. The owners wanted the caves to still feel authentic, so they have left as many original features as possible, like the iron rings where peasants tied up their animals. Prices start at a less peasant-friendly $ 300 per night.
ART HOTELS
A modern art gallery is a place where you can lose yourself in an artist’s vision of the world. A hotel is a place where you can spend the night, in more or less comfort according to your budget. As its advertising promises, Propeller Island Lodge in Berlin manages to combine the two. Situated in a former apartment block, the hotel is a collection of individually designed rooms – the upside-down room, the all-orange room, the mirror-filled room. In most art hotels, you can forget the art and simply enjoy the comfort of your surroundings. Not in Propeller Island. The decoration is so extreme that you are forced to get into the spirit of it. The rooms can be small and claustrophobic ( although some have balconies) and often you have to share a bathroom with other guests. But if you don’t mind that, it’s the next best thing to spending the night in an art gallery.
