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Weird hotels: Sleep in converted 727
FLIGHT OF FANCY IS PLANE COMFORT David Ellis HEAD for a Boeing 727 where it points out towards the Pacific Ocean from Costa Rica’s Manuel Antonio National Park, and you’ll not have to worry about metal detectors, X-ray machines, pat-downs, baggage searches or any other of the frustrations of big-city aircraft embarkations. […]
Shades of Old Rangoon. The Strand Hotel
OH TO BE STRANDED IN MYANMAR David Ellis FOR the famed Sarkies brothers to have anything to do with them, hotels in colonial Asia had to be very good indeed – amongst such esteemed places the brothers founded or managed included both Raffles and the Sea View in Singapore, and in Malaysia the […]
Samuel Johnson House: there’s a word for it.
OF FOPDOODLES, BEDPRESSERS AND AMATORRULISTS David Ellis WHEN he wrote his celebrated Dictionary of the English Language back in the mid-18th century, lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson and seven assistants took eight years to complete the job – in today’s terms a seemingly inordinately long time. But across the English Channel, a French […]
Freixenet: World’s biggest selling sparkling wine, from where?
EXTERIOR of the historic Cavas Freixenet Winery in Spain,with one the company’s fleet of quirky-shaped promotionalvehicles – this one the shape of a bubbly bottle. (Wikimedia) FREIXENET BOTTLES THE SPARKLE OF LOVE David Ellis WHEN Dolores Sala Vive and Pedro Ferrer Bosch fell madly in love in the early 1900s, little did they realise that […]
Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy born from scandal
MISTRESS’S TOUCH OF ROLLER ECSTASY David Ellis YOU’D imagine she’d be British Society to her bootstraps – after all, she had been chosen as the model for the mascot on the radiator of that most British of all institutions, the Rolls-Royce motor car. But rather than coming from some famous society family, or […]
Sea Cloud sails on myth and mystery
MILLIONAIRE MARJORIE LIVED LIFE ON A CLOUD David Ellis THE Great Depression seemed to mean little to fabulously wealthy New York businessman, Edward Francis (Ed) Hutton who agreed in 1930 – Depression or not – to get a sailing boat on which he and his independently millionaire wife, Marjorie Merriweather Post could entertain friends […]
Hunter S Thompson – the original Gonzo journalist pens The Rum Diary
AUTHOR FIRED UP FOR A FITTING FAREWELL David Ellis AMERICAN actor Johnny Depp gave new meaning to “going out with a bang” when he organised the scattering of the ashes of his author-friend Hunter S Thompson on the writer’s Owl Farm in Colorado in 2005. No solemn casting of the ashes into […]
Jost van Dyke – secret Caribbean island
ISLAND TIME: REST UP AFTER DOING NOTHING David Ellis EVEN the most-seasoned travellers could be forgiven for ‘fessing-up that they’re not quite sure where to find the island of Jost van Dyke – one of the best kept little secrets in the Caribbean. Because 400 years after the Dutch pirate was plundering […]
‘NUGGET’ KNEW HOW TO BOWL A MAIDEN OVER
David Ellis WATCHING fast bowler Mitchell Johnson rout England in the First Test in Brisbane last month took us back a lot of years to another extraordinary player with not just the ball, but the bat as well, and that was the flamboyant, larger-than-life Keith ‘Nugget’ Miller. Arguably Australia’s greatest-ever all-rounder, Miller was a hero […]
MARY POPPINS: FROM BOWRAL TO HOLLYWOOD AND BACK
David Ellis SHE’S doubtless the most-famous nanny ever, and as we roll into next month the name Mary Poppins will be on the lips of the world from Bowral in the picturesque Southern Highlands of NSW where she came into being in 1910, to Hollywood where she filled-up her famous carpetbag with five […]
