Weirddd Hotels

What: Weird Hotels
Where: Berlin, the Netherlands, Da Lat, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Vlissingen, the Hague, Cape Town
When: Whenever you want! maybe vacation?
Why: Instead of staying in the usual Best Western you could try out these different hotels
How: Go to the Location


a. Berlin's Propeller Island City Lodge
Each of the 30 rooms is weird in its own way. The artist-owner, Lars Stroschen, has seen to that. One room, the first built, is made to look like a brightly painted medieval town, with an ultra-mini golf course surrounding the castle bed. Another has furniture attached to the ceiling, another has coffins for beds, and still another has lion cages on stilts (the website claims that kids "love to sleep" in them). Then there's the Freedom Room, which resembles a prison, complete with a toilet next to the bed—oh, that German humor!


b. Hotel de Vrouwe in the Netherlands
When they were owned by a Swiss château, the four enormous casks on the grounds of the Hotel De Vrouwe Van Stavoren in the Netherlands held the equivalent of 19,333 bottles of wine. Now, after some creative recycling, it's guests rather than booze that mellow out inside the casks. The richly worn and airtight oak barrels have two narrow beds, with a small sitting area outside. The grounds are quite close to tiny Stavoren's harbor, which was a major port in the Middle Ages.


c. Hang Na Guest House in Vietnam
The daughter of Ho Chi Minh's No. 2 masterminded the Hang Nga Guest House and Art Gallery in Da Lat, Vietnam, a complex that more than earns its local nickname, the Crazy House. The three main buildings are Gaudi-esque concrete treehouse-like growths that appear as if they flowed organically out of the ground. Inside, the walls seem to dissolve into the floor, and right angles are avoided entirely. Each guest room is built around a different animal theme: the Eagle Room has a big-beaked bird standing atop a huge egg, while another has arm-sized ants crawling up the wall. The animal theme continues outside — a large giraffe statue on the property contains a teahouse, and human-size "spider webs" are set up here and there.


d. Hotel Costa Verde in Costa Rica
Near a beach that's within Manuel Antonio National Park in Costa Rica, the Hotel Costa Verde doesn't lack for great sights. But few are as amazing as its own 727 Fuselage Suite, a salvaged 1965 Boeing 727-100 that looks as if it's crashed into the Costa Rican jungle (it's actually mounted atop a 50-foot pillar and reached via a spiral staircase). The jet's interior was once able to hold up to 125 passengers, but there are few reminders left of its days in the service of South African Airways and Colombia's Avianca Airlines. The suite's two bedrooms, dining area, and sitting room are now covered over entirely in teak to match the surroundings. Guests can play "spot the toucan" on the small wood deck that sits on top of the right wing.


e. Capsule Hotel in the Netherlands
Colored bright-orange for easy visibility, the '70s-era escape pods that make up the Capsule Hotel once hung outside oil rigs, ready to be deployed in case of an evacuation. Recycled by self-proclaimed "garbage architect" Denis Oudendijk, the fleet of pods now rotates among different moorings in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe. At the moment, two are in the western Dutch town of Vlissingen and another is in The Hague. For a kind of James Bond-meets-Barbarella twist, opt to book your pod with a disco ball and all the spy's movies on DVD. It's a super-kitschy nod to a similar pod's appearance in "The Spy Who Loved Me."


f. Grand Daddy in Cape Town
Cape Town's sleek Grand Daddy hotel has a surprise on its roof: a fleet of seven Airstream trailers, six of which were imported from the U.S. The aluminum-clad "rooms," which sleep two people, have been done in playful themes that incorporate icons like "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" (a blonde wig and a bear suit are available for dress-up), and John Lennon and Yoko Ono (the room's white-on-white furnishings include an enormous bed, natch). If you don't want to stray as far from the trailers' original looks, there's the Pleasantville model, an Eisenhower-era fantasia with chintz, harvest-gold curtains, and flower-covered throw pillows.




I would like to stay at the Propeller Island City Lodge in Berlin because all of the rooms have a different crazy theme!
And of course, you could always visit the Berlin Wall!