Jetsettersblog

Visitors to Ljubljana can now access city visitor guides via their mobile phones.

The new mobile website has been adapted for small screens and will use the minimum amount of data transfer to help reduce mobile internet browsing costs.

The website will offer information on accommodation, the sights of Ljubljana, events, weather information and organised excursions in the surrounding area.

To access the site visit http://m.visitljubljana.si  from the standard browser on any mobile device.

For more information about Slovenia visit www.slovenia.info  or call 020 7928 6108.

The four-star Hotel Kras has opened in Postojna, in the immediate vicinity of the world-famous Postojna Caves, the largest known cave system in Slovenia.

The hotel has 24 double rooms and three superior suites as well as a conference room, which can hold up to 50 people. The hotel’s terrace offers stunning views of Nanos Plateau, an area of limestone landscape features popular with cyclists and hikers. Room prices start from €62 per night and more information can be found at www.hotel-kras.si

The four star Bohinj Park Resort and Spa is now open on the edge of Triglav National Park, one of Slovenia’s most popular tourist areas. The Bohinj Park Hotel has been ecologically designed to be energy efficient and have a low impact on the surrounding environment.

For example, the hotel is lit by LED lamps that use up to 40 times less electricity than normal light bulbs. Windows in bedrooms are also fitted with sensors that shut down the air conditioning when they are open. A low-temperature regime has also been employed throughout the hotel, with underfloor heating and climate beams helping reduce the energy consumption.

The hotel has 102 standard rooms, seven luxury suites, a honeymoon suite and a presidential suite with its own terrace and outdoor pool.

A wellness centre is located at the top of the hotel with a swimming pool offering panoramic views of Bohinj.

Room rates start at €69 per night and more information can be found at

www.park-hotel-bohinj.si/eng

The Hotel Špik in Gozd Martuljek, northwest Slovenia, has undergone a full refurbishment with a new building containing 56 rooms and two suites added to the original 60 rooms, which have been fully renovated.

The rooms in the new wing all have balconies offering views of the Julian Alps.

The hotel is managed by the Hit Holidays group, which also offers accommodation in nearby Kranjska Gora.

For more information visit

http://www.hitholidays-kg.si/accommodation/Hotel-Spik

To boost its family friendly offering, The Barceló Torquay Imperial Hotel has invested just under £100,000 on the development of two new fantastic children’s play areas to welcome more families to the hotel.

The UK’s very first Barcy Club is a dedicated children’s area that consists of an outdoor and an indoor area and will be available to family residents come rain or shine all year round.

Paul Harnedy, Regional Manager for Barceló UK Hotels said: “The new Barcy Club concept has already proved very popular with children and their parents and we are currently looking at other venues in the UK to roll out this concept. We will look to open another three Barcy Clubs by the end of 2009 with an investment of around £250k.

This coupled with some of our other family friendly initiatives, such as our new Children’s menus and our all inclusive holiday concept means that Barceló Hotels UK really is going Family Friendly.”

The Club, inspired by the Barcy Club Worldwide model, is designed for children between the ages of 2 to 5 and 5 and 14 years old to ensure that they can have a safe, fun environment in which to play on holiday.
Inside the Barcy Club is a brand new colourful creative play area for younger children, as well as a separate games room to entertain older children, which features table tennis, table football, games consoles, board games and furnished with comfy bean bags.

Outside there is a full play centre with a selection of mini rides such as sit-on tractors and a safe Astroturf play surface, plus, of course, the hotel has its own outside swimming pool.

The Barceló Torquay Imperial Hotel is a splendid seafront hotel that includes an outdoor and indoor pool, 152 luscious bedrooms including 92 sea facing bedrooms to choose from plus a Health & Leisure Club that includes a gym and a spa. The hotel has also recently spent £100,000 in upgrading TVs in all its bedrooms.

A limited number of rooms are still available for August and please visit www.barcelo-hotels.co.uk  or call 0870 168 8833 for more details.

Yorkshire brides have been reluctant to walk down the aisle this year due to the soaring costs of weddings and the dreaded current climate.

Yorkshire Registrars office has reported a decline in the number of couples wanting to marry in 2009 and romantics at the York Pavilion want to encourage couples to tie the knot.

The York Pavilion Hotel has always been a popular wedding venue for hundreds of brides. The Georgian hotel, which is based in Fulford, has seen a decline in the number of weddings being booked this year, as more and more brides are putting plans on hold due to the current climate and are either waiting to save more money or scaling down their wedding plans.

Sales manager Vanessa Render said: “The house comes alive when there are weddings held here as it is such an intimate venue for wedding parties to take over the whole of the house and use all the old rooms which suit a celebration.

“The hotel has a lavish interior design in-keeping with the original Georgian style of the house and is a special venue which looks magical in photographs with its large Georgian entrance covered in ivy, its wall to ceiling bay windows which open onto a private walled garden and its large bedrooms with huge four-poster beds.

The hotel has recently launched a range of wedding packages which are aimed at brides who want to be careful with costs but still have a wedding with plenty of style. The wedding packages start at only £999 and include the costs for the whole event including food and a room at the hotel for the evening for the bride and groom.

The package includes;

• Complimentary room hire for the civil ceremony
• Red carpet on arrival
• Congratulatory glass of Champagne for the Bride & Groom
• Hire of cake stand and knife
• Hotel master of ceremonies
• Hire of room for your evening reception
• DJ for evening entertainment
• 7 item evening buffet for 70 guests
• Room for bride and groom with full English breakfast
• Cash bar with private bar tender

The wedding packages are advertised on the hotel website at www.yorkpavilionhotel.com  or by calling 01904 622099.

Right before the outbreak of the Second World War, the community of Slovenia’s fourth largest city, Kranj, began the construction of underground tunnels which could be used to shelter and protect residents.

The tunnel network included a 1,300m-long bunker that was frequently used during Slovenia’s occupation in 1944 until the end of the War, when the danger of bombings increased.

70 years on from the start of construction, the fascinating history of these tunnels can be explored on guided tunnel tours, available for visitors on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and Saturday and Sunday mornings and costing €3 per person.

The tunnels measure two metres across and concrete was used to reinforce the walls.

Nowadays, the environment inside is very close to that of the Karst caves. Stalactites and stalagmites grow from the ceilings and the ground, while animals such as cave crickets, the European cave spider and bats can all be found living there.

Kranj is situated around 20km from Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana. For more information about the tunnels and tours visit www.tourism-kranj.si

Getting some shuteye in Alaska’s largest city is now easier with the addition of nearly 600 rooms to Anchorage’s hotel inventory. The new hotels follow the completion of the $111 million, 215,000-square-foot Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center in the fall of 2008. As Anchorage expects continued growth in the meeting and visitor industry, hotels have followed suit, hoping to accommodate the additional market for meeting delegates, business travelers and leisure visitors to Anchorage. Additions include the 78-room Comfort Suites Anchorage International Airport and the full-service, luxury midtown hotel, Embassy Suites.

For more information, visit www.anchorage.net/2581.cfm

An assortment of new visitor attractions has been added to the menu in Fairbanks.

The Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center will offer a series of evening cultural programs throughout the summer.

Among them, Trimble Gilbert and youth dancers present 100-year-old traditional Gwich’in Athabascan dance and fiddle music;

a dog mushing show with competitive sprint racer and Upper Tanana Athabascan, Jennifer Probert; and a program featuring the nation’s second largest park, including the film, “Gates of the Arctic:

Alaska’s Brooks Range” and dramatic readings from the works of pioneer conservationists Mardy Murie and Bob Marshall.

At another of Fairbanks’ newest attractions — the Chez World Cooking School — visitors can learn the art of cooking with Alaska salmon, reindeer sausage, moose, halibut, sourdough and birch syrup.

Cooking demonstrations and hands-on dinner classes are offered daily.

For more information on visiting Fairbanks, visit

www.explorefairbanks.com

A range of relaxation and beauty options are on the menu at a new spa just a short plane ride from Sitka. The Mermaid Therapeutic Spa is in its first full year of operation at the Baranof Wilderness Lodge, located on Baranof Island’s Warm Springs Bay.

The spa resides in the lodge’s historic Bahovec cabin with stunning views of Chatham Straight — a place of relaxation and beauty. The island is known for the remarkable natural hot springs, enjoyed as much by today’s guests as it has been by the Tlingit Indians for centuries.

The spa menu includes reflexology, deep tissue and hot stone massage, sea salt exfoliation and other treatments. The Baranof Wilderness Lodge offers abundant and diverse salt and freshwater fishing in the waters around the lodge.

Guests can also explore the surrounding wilderness through hiking, kayaking and wildlife viewing while enjoying spacious cabins and deluxe meals. For more information, visit www.flyfishalaska.com/massagecenter.htm

New polar bear viewing tour offered out of Fairbanks

Travelers can take a walk on the wild side with Warbelow’s Air Ventures Inc. and view Alaska’s most treasured Arctic mammal, the polar bear. The two-day journey takes guests on a scenic flight from Fairbanks to the Inupiat Eskimo village of Kaktovik, located 260 miles above the Arctic Circle.

Accessible only by air, Kaktovik is the only village located within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The scheduled departures of September 5, 12 and October 3 correspond with the annual subsistence whale hunt. Polar bears arrive to forage on the remains of the hunt and are so frequently seen, bear sightings are guaranteed or travelers receive a full refund.

For more information, visit www.warbelows.com

Vote for the Dead Sea to become one of the 7 Wonders of Nature!
The Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth and one of Israel’s most popular tourist sites, is one of 28 finalists for the shortlist in an international competition to grade the seven natural wonders of the world.

At over 400 meters below sea level and with luxury hotels in the Ein Bokek area, the Dead Sea is known as the lowest and largest natural health spa in the world.

Due to its mineral rich mud and oxygen rich air, this natural phenomenon offers tourists and health-seekers relief from various ailments including muscular tensions, rheumatic pain, asthma and various skin diseases.

Tourist attractions in the area, among others, include the Roman fortress at Masada, the Ein Gedi and Einot Tzukim nature reserves and Qumran – home to the Essenes sect and the area where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

The Dead Sea was selected from an original list of over 440 sites from 220 countries The Megillot Dead Sea Regional Council proposed the candidacy of the Dead Sea for the competition in order to promote tourism to the region.

The competition organizers expect over a billion people from around the world to participate in the online voting at www.new7wonders.com , which will continue into 2011, when the finalists will be announced.

To find out more about travel to Israel visit

www.thinkisrael.com

Rock Harbor Lodge

HOUGHTON, Mich.— Sometimes the only way to recover from a rough patch is to get away from it all – to get off the beaten path. A trip to Isle Royale brings vacationers way off the beaten path, because this remote location has no roads, no cellular service, and no television signal.

And the escape begins before one foot is placed on the island — because Isle Royale is accessible only by water and air.

This 45-mile long island in the northwest corner of Michigan’s Lake Superior looks much the same way it did hundreds of years ago, as 99% of the land is designated wilderness and is protected from development because it makes up Isle Royale National Park. Isle Royale Resort/Rock Harbor Lodge is the only lodging facility on the island, and offers both motel-style accommodations with private baths and fully-equipped cabins, furnished with kitchenettes so guests can enjoy a “home away from home.”

With Rock Harbor Lodge as a home base, visitors to Isle Royale can participate in many self-guided activities, including hiking, canoeing, kayaking, fishing and birding. Isle Royale Resort is seasonal and is only open from May through late September, and space is limited — so make your reservations soon.

For more information, or to book a room, visit www.isleroyaleresort.com