The Britannia Hut is one of the most popular huts in the Swiss Alps – quite an achievement when you consider how many of them there are. It was built in 1912 while many other classic huts were also built around that time. I think it has to do with the extension of railway lines into the Alps bringing in more tourists who demanded more places to stay.
Britannia Hut lies 3030 meters above sea level and can sleep up to 134 guests. Details about its hundred-year history are sketchy although apparently in 1951-1952 “the roof leaked” – grave times indeed. However, a full renovation took place in the 1990s, and now it is one of the best, most well-situated huts in the Alps - perfect for hikers, climbers, and mountain enthusiasts.
The road in has 29 switchbacks and occasionally gets buried by snowstorms. The walls are covered in autographed photos of skiing legends. There are no televisions in the rooms. And yet people come back here, year after year, for generations. Hotel Portillo, the iconic yellow and blue fortress perched at …
A place that opens with "We're not a wellness fortress with animated breakfast buffets" is making a specific promise. At Zu Kirchwies, a small chalet village in Laion, South Tyrol, you won't find golden taps or petting-zoo charm. What you will find: Scottish Highland cattle wandering the property, a family …
Imagine waking up to Mount Fuji framed in floor-to-ceiling windows, then stepping onto your private terrace to toast marshmallows by a built-in fireplace – all while someone else handles the cleanup. Welcome to HOSHINOYA Fuji, where camping meets five-star comfort in the most unexpected ways. Japan's first glamping resort takes …
Fancy spending the night dangling off a cliff face in Argentine Patagonia? OVO Patagonia has opened four transparent capsules bolted to a rock wall, offering what might be the most vertigo-inducing accommodation experience on the planet. This isn't glamping – it's something altogether more unhinged. The concept is simple, if …
Many Glacier Hotel sits on the shores of Swiftcurrent Lake in Glacier National Park's northeastern corner, a five-story structure with brown wood siding and Swiss chalet flourishes that has been welcoming visitors since 1915. When a forest fire roared down the mountain in 1936, employees fought flaming debris with fire …
There's a secret door built into a hillside in Kenya. Step through it, walk a short tunnel, and you emerge to one of the most disorienting views in East Africa: a vast, golden sweep of Maasai Mara plains stretching 2,000 feet (610 meters) below you, lit by shafts of afternoon …
There are 26 pyramid-shaped villas arranged around a thermal lake in Fort Myers, Florida. The water bubbling up from 30 meters below the surface smells faintly of sulfur, changes color with the seasons, and is loaded with magnesium, potassium, calcium, and selenium. The Austrian woman who runs the place will …
There is a small wooden cabin perched on the edge of the forest on Mount Fløyen, above the rooftops of Bergen, Norway, and it will cost you absolutely nothing to spend the night in it. The catch? You have to have a child under 12, you can only stay once …
There are places that photographs simply cannot do justice to, and Emerald Lake in British Columbia’s Yoho National Park is one of them. The water shifts between seafoam green, bright teal, and a blue so vivid it looks edited – and then the light changes, and it starts all over …
Somewhere in western Belize, a waterfall is tumbling into a turquoise pool that almost nobody sees. It isn't on a popular trail or a backpacker's bucket list. It's just sitting there, doing its thing, above the jungle canopy of the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve, which stretches across 107,000 acres …
