Burj Al Arab
The Burj Al Arab is a luxury hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The hotel is known for being the fifth tallest hotel in the world, although almost 40% of the hotel’s total height is unusable space. The hotel was built on an artificial island that is 280 metres from Jumeirah Beach and is connected to the mainland via a private curving bridge. The hotel was designed to look like the sail of a ship.
The beachfront where Burj Al Arab and the Jumeirah Beach Hotel are located was previously known as Miami Beach, with the name changing to give the location more of an Arabic sounding name.
The hotel was designed by the consultancy firm Atkins, with the project led by the architect Tom Wright, who has since gone on to become the co-founded of WKK Architects. The design and construction of the hotel were managed by Rich Gregory of WS Atkins, who is a Canadian engineer. It has been pointed out that the hotel bears similarities to the Vasco da Gama Tower in Lisbon, Portugal, although the designers of Burk Al Arab dispute this. Construction took place over 5 years, beginning in 1994, and at its peak it hired over 2,000 construction workers.
The exact design of the hotel comes from the billowing spinnaker sail of a J-class
yacht. The architect Tim Wright told journalists that the client desired that would become an icon or symbol for Dubai, similar to the Sydney Opera House or London with Big Ben. To that extent, the hotel has become a success.
One of the most visible parts of the entire building is the hotel’s helipad, which was designed by the Irish architect Rececca Gernon who went on to found her own architecture and interior design company, Serendipity By Design, which is headquartered in Dubai.
Numerous complicated construction techniques had to be used during the construction of the hotel, most notably the construction of the hotel’s foundation, an artificial island. To secure the foundation, construction workers had to drive 230 concrete piles into the sand, which were forty metres in length. Engineers then created a surface layer of large rocks to protect the foundation from erosion. The construction of the island took up most of the construction time, with the actual construction of the hotel taking less than two years.
Two of the world’s most notable restaurants are found within the Burj Al Arab, the Al Muntaha and Al Mahara. The Al Muntaha is 200 metres above the Persian Gulf, offering a view of Dubai. The Al Mahara is accessed via a simulated submarine voyage, and the restaurant features a large seawater aquarium, which holds almost one million litres of water.
The Plaza Hotel, New York City
One of the most well-known hotels in New York City, the Plaza Hotel, is famed world-wide for its luxury suites, as well as classic architectural style. The Plaza Hotel is located on 768 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, New York City.
Construction of the hotel originally started in 1883, on the site of the former New York Skating Club. The construction company ran out of money, leading to the New York Life Insurance Company deciding to foreclose and hire the greatest architects of the era, McKim, Mead & White, to complete the construction of the hotel, which was finally opened to the public on the 1st of October, 1890.
Unfortunately the first hotel was far too small to be able to keep up with interest from guests, and the hotel was demolished in 1905 by its new owners, Fred Sterry, Harry S. Black, and the German financier Bernhard Beinecke, all of whom envisioned a much larger hotel. Construction began on the new hotel, a 19 story building in French Renaissance inspired chateau-style building by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh. The new hotel was c
onstructed in just 27 months, at huge expense, costing $12.5 million at that time.
The new Plaza Hotel opened on the 1st of October, 1907, with rooms costing just $2.50 a night, equivalent to $67.22 in 2018. The same room cost over $1,000 a night in 2001. The hotel proved to be so popular with guests that a 300-room annex was added from 1920-1921 along 58th Street.
There are a number of facilities available to guests of the hotel, including a butler on every floor, baby-sitting, a shopping centre, as well as numerous meeting rooms, managed by CPS Events.
The hotel has been featured commonly in popular culture, with a number of famous novels using the hotel as a meeting point for characters, such as Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan confronting one another in a suite in The Plaza Hotel in the novel The Great Gatsby.
The hotel also features in over 20 films, notably Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, which focuses around the main character staying in the hotel by himself. The hotel is also featured on a number of popular television series, including Friends, as well as a number of episodes of The Sopranos.
Planning a Relaxing Weekend at the Pub
Modern life can be very stressful, and for that reason, we tend to cling to any moment when we can take a break, and get away from the things which keep us so busy. Heading away to a countryside pub for the weekend is an excellent way of unwinding, but, like most things, the experience tends to be that little bit better, if you do some advance planning, to make sure that everything goes smoothly. In this article, we’ll give you some tested tips and advice, to help make your next trip run like clockwork.
Choosing the Best Place
As tempting as it can be to head off and explore further away areas of the country, it’s often better to choose somewhere which isn’t that far from where you live. This might not feel much like a holiday, but it also reduces the amount of time that you will have to spend travelling before your trip actually begins. Open the map function on TripAdvisor and see what there is in your local area; you may well be surprised by how much choice there is.
While you should consider the reviews which you find, remember that most B&Bs and pubs with rooms don’t set out to offer luxury standards of accommodation and that not everyone takes this into account when they are writing reviews, so take the most negative ones that you find with a pinch of salt.
What to Do When You’re There
If you are going to be spending more than a day in your destination, then take a look at what activities are on offer, and think about how you’re going to get to them. If you don’t drive and are going to rely on taxis to get you to and from the pub, then your expenses might start to mount up more quickly than you expect! If food and drink is your favourite thing, then the English countryside is genuinely a great area to visit; there are all sorts of cafés, pubs and farm shops to explore, many of which offer food for taking away, which you can continue to enjoy when you get home.
Remember that the infrastructure in the countryside tends to be a bit more basic. Public transport will stop earlier in the day, and access to medical facilities doesn’t tend to be as convenient. For this reason, it’s worth having an app such as livi.co.uk on standby in case of any problems.
A little bit of preparation is all that it takes for an enjoyable and relaxing trip to the English countryside, which will help to relax you, and set you up for whatever challenges may lie ahead in the rest of the year.
Black Pearl, Melbourne
The Australian bar Black Pearl was opened 15 years ago and has been named the Best Bar in Australia a number of times at the World’s 50 Best Bars Awards. The bar has also been ranked at number 22 in the world in the list overall.
The current head bartender is Chris Hysted-Adams, who has worked at the bar for a number of years and is responsible for helping keeping the bar’s reputation as one of the best in the world.
The Black Pearl has a reputation of being a friendly, easy-going bar that is welcoming to both tourists and regulars, an important part of any bar’s reputation.
The bar serves a numb
er of locally brewed beers, as well as having an extensive cocktail menu, their cocktails are inspired by the large number of Asian alcohols that are prevalent in the region, such as their Harajuku Highball cocktail, which uses Hakushu distiller’s reserve Japanese whisky as its main liqueur. One of their other main cocktails is their “Three Drop Swizzle”, which consists of Qanqueray number 10 gin, lime, pine, and becherovka. Although their cocktails have been considered by many to be on the pricier side, most who have visited the bar maintain that they are worth the money.
The bar also serves home cooked food instead of traditional bar snacks, with their sausage rolls being a particular favourite amongst bar visitors. As well as western style foods, they serve some eastern style snacks as well, and are known for their baba ghanoush bar snacks.
Tavern
A tavern is a place of business where people gather together to consume alcoholic drinks as well as be served food. A tavern is different from a bar, in that a tavern typically serves actual meals, instead of a bar which typically serves just snacks. Taverns also very commonly offer lodgings to travellers, and taverns that are licensed to do so will host any guests as lodgers. The word derives from the Latin word “taberna”, which originally meant a shed, workshop, or pub.
Taverns have been present in some form in every alcohol consuming country in the wo
rld, but some of the best known come from either Europe or America. Famously, the first shots ever fired of the American Revolution happened at the Buckman Tavern in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Taverns have also been important social gathering points throughout history, with a number of professionals making contacts through taverns, notably working-class jobs.
Taverns have also been a part of maritime culture for centuries, with the first thing that many sailors do after reaching land being to visit a tavern. Although there have been criticisms of taverns over the years, they remain popular today.
Beau-Rivage Palace signing of the Treaty of Lausanne
The Beau-Rivage Palace is one of the oldest hotels that is still in service in Switzerland. The hotel is famous not just for its architecture, but also as being the location for the sighing of the Treaty of Lausanne, which took place on the 24th of July, 1923.
The Treaty of Lausanne was an agreement to settle the conflict that had existed between the Ottoman Empire and the Allied French Republic, British Empire, Kingdom of Italy, and a number of other countries where hostilities had existed since the onset of World War I. Originally the treaty was written in French, but translations are available in nearly all major world languages. The treaty was the second attempt at a treaty after the first, the Treaty of Sevres, failed. The Treaty of Sevres originally failed because the Kingdom of Gree
ce and the Turkish national movement fought against the previous terms which included serious loss of territory. The newer Treaty of Lausanne ended the conflict and defined the borders of the modern Turkish Republic, in the treat itself, Turkey gave up all claims to the remainder of the Ottoman Empire, and in return the Allied western nations recognised Turkish sovereignty with its new borders.
The treaty was ratified by Turkey on the 23rd of August, 1923, and all original signatories ratified the treaty soon afterwards, with the treaty ultimately coming into force on the 6th of August, 1924, when the instruments of ratification were officially deposited in Paris.
The current president of Turkey, Erdogan, is seeking revisions in the treaty, although it is unknown if this is political posturing or if he is genuinely seeking to improve the lives of Turkish peoples.