Hotels’ Eco-Friendly Initiatives Are Weird, Wonderful and Even Wild

Are you in search of a "Green" hotel?
Photo of
Danish Backpackers(Photo by Kurt Forstner)

SOUTHLAKE, Texas – June 20, 2011 – Less wacky and more wild and wonderful, this gorgeous Hawaiian retreat invites guests to help protect the endangered local sea turtles. Linen-reuse programs are nothing new to most eco-friendly hotels. To really impress customers, today's green hotels develop unique initiatives to save the planet--and the results are experiences and amenities that make the hotels themselves destinations. Travelocity, the only major online travel company to flag eco-friendly hotels site-wide, has identified some of the most cutting-edge green hotels around the world. From rooftop beehives to encouraging guests to generate energy for the hotel by working out in the gym, these properties are helping build a greener tomorrow and having a little fun while they're at it.

Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers – One of the greenest properties in the world, this Danish hotel offers guests the chance to partake in its green efforts first hand--and receive a tasty treat in return. The hotel's gym has two unique stationary bikes where guests can pedal to generate power for the hotel. Once a threshold is reached, they earn a free meal in the hotel's restaurant.

The Fairmont Royal York – This Toronto hotel keeps more than 10,000 live bees on site that produce honey for its restaurant. Dubbed the Honey Moon Suite, the beehives are located in the hotel's rooftop garden and provide guests with sweet treats while being gentle on the environment.

TRAVELOCITY AND MATCH.COM REVEAL SUMMER’S TOP 10 U.S. DESTINATIONS FOR SINGLES

Cities are Favorite Destinations for Single Travelers

SOUTHLAKE, Texas – July 20, 2011 – If your plan this summer is to finally find that special someone, choose a sizzling city as your summer vacation destination. Travelocity teamed up with Match.com to see if singles were traveling and where they were headed this summer.

63 percent of singles on Match.com report they love to travel, especially in the summer months. So where are they headed? Travelocity travel experts analyzed summer travel booking data and found that the majority of singles were headed to the nation’s major metropolitan cities this summer.

“From East Coast to West and many places in between, single travelers are overwhelmingly choosing cities as their preferred vacation destinations this summer,” said Genevieve Shaw Brown, Editorial Director at Travelocity. Match.com Relationship Insider, Whitney Casey added, “When it comes to summer travel, singles are looking to meet eligible bachelors and bachelorettes.”

Copper Canyon Lodge

Copper Canyon Lodge is a gorgeous inn for visitors to the Black Hills region interested in visiting sites such as
Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial, and Rapid City, South Dakota.

Finding those out of the paradigm places to stay makes traveling an adventure.  Recently, while on a film shoot for a documentary in the Black Hills of South Dakota, I happened across the most peaceful and refreshing place to rest my bones at the end of a long day and a place to get away from the hustle and bustle of the highway and tourist crowds - Copper Canyon Lodge.

The Corn Palace

The Corn Palace stands tall in a small town in South Dakota.( Photo by Parkerdr-Wikipedia)

Everyone has heard of many of the major tourist attractions in South Dakota:  Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial, Deadwood, and Sioux Falls.  But few have heard of a place called The Corn Palace.  So, if you are headed to Mount Rushmore, check out one of the more agrarian wonders of the region.

The Land of the gods: A Journey Through Italy, Greece, and Turkey

Are you looking for a family vacation that could bump a few things off of your bucket list?  Smithsonian Journey's has you covered.  They are currently offering a stunning voyage to the lands of Gods and Heroes.  This trip is a family adventure through Italy, Greece and Turkey that lasts from July 26 to August 6, 2011. 

Dinosaur Ridge, Colorado

Though I thoroughly enjoy milling through history-filled museums, I find that some of the best exhibits can be found in nature.  The Morrison Fossil Area National Landmark, located in Morrison, Coloarado just west of Denver, is a rare find, one worth visiting.  It contains some of the best examples of open air, viewable fossils in North America: Dinosaur Ridge.  The ridge is one of the world's most reknowned fossil locations.

Oriental Institute exhibit examines commerce, trade in ancient Near East

A new exhibit at the Oriental Institute Museum, “Commerce and Coins in the Ancient Near East,” examines the role of commerce and trade from 3000 B.C. to the third-century B.C. On view in the museum’s Mesopotamian Gallery from Aug. 11-28, the exhibit is presented in conjunction with the American Numismatic Association’s World’s Fair of Money, which is being held Aug. 16-20 in Chicago.

Commerce, trade and early forms of currency can be documented for thousands of years before the first coins were minted in southwestern Turkey in the sixth-century B.C. Exchanges of goods and services before that time were tracked by detailed receipts and notations that took many forms. Among the earliest are represented in the exhibit by clay balls that contain small tokens that represented numbers and commodities. Once the delivery was made, the ball was broken open to verify that the amount of goods matched the tokens in the ball.

Among the other receipts in the show is one for the delivery of a dead sheep written in wedge-shaped cuneiform script on a clay tablet. A third tablet, dating to about 2000 B.C., is a request for money to purchase a female slave.

Egyptian and Mesopotamian weights and measures document the standardization of trade in early barter economies. In Mesopotamia, the adoption of a silver standard that equated measures of barley with a set amount of silver is illustrated by a rare example of a spiral coil of silver dating to about 1500 B.C., lengths of which were snipped off to pay debts.

Among the early coins is a silver stater coin probably of king Croesus (570-547 B.C.) of Lydia (southwestern Turkey) that was excavated by the Oriental Institute at Persepolis in southwest Iran, and large bronze coins from Egypt that illustrate the state’s effort to spread the use of standard coins.  Other examples of very early coins from Egypt include a gold stater of Ptolemy I (305 B.C.), and coin molds that show how Roman coins were made and forged.

Brittany Hayden and Andrew Dix, both doctoral students at the Oriental Institute, are curating the exhibit.

This story was a press release from the University of Chicago.