Skip to main content

Would you spend the night in a hotel made of sand?


Many tourists only come to the Netherlands to visit Amsterdam. But this small yet fascinating country has a lot to offer outside its capital. There are many wonderful canals, splendid beaches, picturesque windmills, colorful flower fields and unique hotels: Castles in the countryside, trendy boutique hotels, hotels situated on the water, and these two new hotels built entirely out of sand.

The SandHotels were constructed recently in the Dutch cities of Oss and Sneek, as part of the Friesland and Brabant sand sculpture festivals. The lodgings, which took four weeks to complete, include fully furnished one-room suites decorated with intricate sand carvings. The one in Oss looks like a medieval castle, while the one in Sneek is inspired by Chinese architecture and features sculptures of dragons and the Terracotta Army.

Rooms go for $172 a night, which includes free breakfast, a guided tour of the festival grounds, a bottle of Prosecco and other treats. Like the ice hotels in Sweden and Finland, the SandHotels are only temporary, but the organizers plan to build the hotels again next year.





[h/t: gizmag]

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Gilbert Legrand turns mundane stuff into delightful characters

Gilbert Legrand doesn't see the world like the rest of us. You see a scrubbing brush, he sees an Apache chief. You see a a pair of scissors, he sees smooching lovers. The French artist's imagination is so wild and unrestricted that he can turn the most ordinary objects into unexpected sources of delight. I just spent half an hour lurking on his website, and you should, too.

The Salimbaa

Here's a strange tribal instrument I never heard of before now. Originally from the Tinananon tribe of southern Philippines, the bowl-shaped Salimbaa is made of metal and wood, has 30 bronze wound strings, and is played using two small sticks.  Caleb Byerly, who makes lost/extinct musical tools in his North Carolina workshop, has an interesting story on how he made his first Salimbaa. WATCH: More details about Caleb and his craft over at  Our State .

Italy's True Movie Poster King

What you see here is the hand-crafted magic of Renato Casaro, the late Italian designer who practically defined an era of cinematic cool. His work wasn't just advertising; it was art. Casaro's journey into becoming one of the most recognizable poster artists wasn't by chance; it was a pure obsession. As a kid, he was fascinated by billboards, trying to mimic the styles of Norman Rockwell and Angelo Cesselon. Think of a teen so determined that he was drawing right onto the walls of a local cinema just to snag a few free tickets. Casaro created posters for a lot of Spaghetti Westerns. His big break came with A Fistful of Dollars in 1964. The movie starred Clint Eastwood and was directed by Sergio Leone. The poster didn’t just promote the film; it helped make it a global hit. Naturally, Leone came calling again, commissioning posters for My Name Is Nobody (1973) and the epic crime saga, Once Upon a Time in America (1984). A Casaro poster is easy to spot because of his uniqu...