Landmark72 is Hanoi’s tallest building, hosting Sky72 viewing deck experience on its 72nd floor. You can beat the system and save on the admission cost if you stay at InterContinental Landmark72, which occupies a few floors right below the viewing deck. The hotel occupying higher floors (62 through 71) calls for a peculiar check-in situation, where as soon as you arrive in the ground-floor lobby, you’re whisked into an elevator taking you to the 62nd floor, where the actual check-in occurs. The rest of the building is occupied by offices, which have their own set of elevators. Inside the hotel […]

If you read a guidebook on Hanoi, there are several distinct areas that are recommended for visiting: InterContinental Westlake is one of many hotels located on the shores of that lake, and it’s a pretty spacious property, with main hotel building surrounded by a bunch of overwater buildings. The over-water buildings are connected by walkways. My room was spacious, featuring hardwood floors, a small seating area and access to two balconies. In the bathroom there was a shower cabin (with full shower door, a rarity by today’s diminishing hotel standards), bath and a Japanese toilet. The amenities in the room […]

I took a 9-day guided Peru trip with Exoticca. The itinerary starts off and ends in Lima, with a city tour by Exoticca partner, Condor Travel, that includes bus transportation to the city center and a walking tour with an English-speaking guide. Exoticca’s choice of Ibis Miraflores Reducto was reasonable. Miraflores is a walkable nicer area of Lima with access to oceanfront walk and some great restaurants. In Lima’s crazy traffic compounded by constant honking and dirty air it was still not fun to go through four airport transfers, some of which took over 2 hours in bumper-to-bumper standstill traffic. […]

Arriving in Athens airport and getting into a taxi is a pleasant experience – open vistas, bright sun, friendly drivers and modern multi-lane highway. Pretty soon the city starts – mainly concrete buildings, excessive gridlocks and unclear lane-changing rules (blinkers recommended but optional), several cars parked bumper-to-bumper in any tiny area that would allow parking (and if not, pedestrian sidewalks are a popular alternative). In residential areas a weird occurrence would be seeing a recently built luxury building next to something rundown and sometimes abandoned, with windows missing, boarded up or sometimes covered in plastic tarp. I guess the gentrification […]