Hotel de Glace (Ice Hotel), Quebec, Canada

Hotel de Glace near Quebec City, Quebec, Canada is the first ice hotel in North America.



The Ice hotel opened on New Year's Day in 2001. For its first year it was located in Montmorency Falls Park, which is on the outskirts of Quebec City,  with plans right from the beginning to move to the nearby Duchesnay resort for its next year, where it has been built ever since.

The hotel is located 5 km north of Quebec City, on the first slopes of the Laurentian mountains, in the Charlesbourg borough. It is the first ice hotel in North America and is built each December for an opening date in early January. The hotel has a four-month lifespan each year before being brought down in April. It had 22 beds when it first opened in 2000. In its last iteration it had 85 beds, all made of ice but lined with deer furs and covered with mattresses and Arctic sleeping bags. Only the bathrooms are heated and located in a separate insulated structure.

It takes about a month and a half to build with 60 workers. The Hotel makes its own snow using a special mixture to adjust the humidity. It is built with metal frames, it is allowed to harden for a few days, and then the cranes are removed. The hotel is made of 15,000 tons of snow and 500,000 tons of ice and the walls are up to four feet thick.



The hotel is usually made (the architecture and size may vary from season to season) in arches over rooms with 16 foot (5 m) and larger and higher spaces for one art galleries a club dubbed the N'Ice Club, an "Ice Café" and a 60-foot slide. The walls are over 4 feet (1.2 m) thick on average. All furniture is made of ice. In addition to using ice glasses as in the Kiruna ice hotel, the bar (and room service) also serves cold cuts on ice plates.

Amenities include a nightclub, movie theater, indoor heated washrooms and outdoor hot tubs.



The hotel has been described as a "tourist hotspot" and is backed by Quebec's tourism department. For its first year, it costs $350,000 to build, including $125,000 from the Quebec government.



There is a chapel where weddings are celebrated. The Ice Hotel has been described as one of the "10 dream wedding locations.

Eighteen weddings were conducted for the 2003 season, and the Ice Hotel had its first same-sex wedding in February 2005, after same-sex marriages became legal in Quebec in April of the previous year.

Official Hotel Website

Joule Hotel, Dallas, Texas

 



 

Tennis Court at Burj Al Arab Hotel

The world’s highest Tennis court stands atop the fourth highest and the only 7 stars hotel in the world, Burj Al Arab in Dubai. The tennis court is circular in shape ,and also doubles as a helipad, hovering 1000 feet above the Arabian gulf.



In preparation for the Dubai Duty Free Men’s Open, On February 22, 2005, the Burj al Arab hosted Andre Agassi and Roger Federer to play a match on their helipad tennis court before heading to the $1 million championship. The tennis legends couldn’t resist the temptation to have a friendly ‘hit’ on the world’s most unique tennis court.



Burj Al Arab is the world’s most luxurious hotel, standing 321 meters high on a man made island, it was Designed by Tom Wright and completed in 1999. The hotel’s helipad, which is situated 211 meters high covers a surface area of 415 square metres.

Marina Bay Sands Hotel, Singapore

The view over the side: An artist's impression shows the Skypark that tops the Marina Bay Sands hotel towers, including the infinity pool.The hotel, which has 2,560 rooms costing from £350 a night, was officially opened yesterday with a concert by Diana Ross.The Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi, estimated to have cost £2billion when it opened in 2004, was previously the world's most expensive hotel. But with its indoor canal, opulent art, casino, outdoor plaza, convention centre, theatre, crystal pavilion and museum shaped like a lotus flower, the Marina Bay Sands has taken its crown.

If you fancy a dip in this pool, you'll need a head for heights - it's 55 storeys up in Marina Bay Sands Hotel.But swimming to the edge won't be quite as risky as it looks. While the water in the infinity pool seems to end in a sheer drop, it actually spills into a catchment area where it is pumped back into the main pool. At three times the length of an Olympic pool and 650ft up, it is the largest outdoor pool in the world at that height.