NYC. Everything, nothing happens in New York City. While you can party all night and spend the night at the library or Balducci’s in lower Chelsea, most likely you need a place to sleep. You could stay at the Y for $120 or for $625 you can hang at the Hotel Gansevoort. A great semi-boutique hotel in the Meat Packing district, the Gansevoort has all the amenties needed for summer fun. Rooftop deck with pool? Rooftop bar with loungey sitting on thingies? Spa and exclusive lounge area below? Japanese style adjacent restaurant? Check to all of those. You can usually get a really good rate, i.e. $300 per night through Tablet Hotels, which Mobissimo will shortly search. Give it a shot, until then, you can visit the hotel site directly.

blog@mobissimo.com (Mobissimo)

 With temperatures shooting through the roof and no sign of respite yet a great place to go which is near Rome and also easy to get to is Bracciano Lake. It is a lot less crowded than the beach as you can imagine with everyone going of to Ostia for the day.
 From Rome Termini station you take line b in the direction of Laurentina. You get off at Piramide metro stop and then take the regional railway line, linie fm3 for trains to Bracciano or Viterbo.
 Braccaino town which can be found near the lake has a castle in the historic centre. It is very important as it is the most well preserved building of its kind and type in Italy.
 Tom Cruise and Kate Holmes also got married at this castle earlier this year. There are also plenty of other activities to do like boating and going on tours in the town […]

Xtine71

So how about renting one and have some fun driving around Rome. If you have never ridden a scooter before then go somewhere quiet first to learn how to. It is really great when you get the hang of it and once you have driven on one of these in traffic you wont want to drive anything else.
 
Its great when you are driving inbetween the cars and racing all the other scooters. Well don’t go too fast until you know what you are doing. I was a passenger on my friends scooter and she has been driving it for years so she has loads of experience.
The most common type of scooter is the 125 cc. Its popular because its small but powerful and fast enough in the traffic and it can take a passenger as long as the person isn’t too big. You also don’t have to have a seperate […]

Xtine71

Yes I have been here for nine months already and it feels like time has been flying. Let me just tell you a little about the impressions of Rome that I felt and some of the experiences I have had so far.
 
I arrived in September and the weather was pleasent. Not too hot and not too cold but just right. The first thing I did was a bit of sight-seeing and visiting my friends who I had not seen for about six months. The city was still pretty busy even though it was not peak tourist season. To tell you the truth Rome never has a peak or a trough. The flow of tourists seems constant and the city is always busy. Scooters are all over the place and in between all the cars jostling for the best spot until the lights turn green again. Cars are all over the […]

Xtine71

 It was such a great night!  We hosted a lovely reception in Confederation Park on Sunday evening (June 24th) and despite the cloud burst, our guests were kept dry and comfy under the protection of the tent we had compliments of our friends at the Ottawa International Jazz Festival. 
As long-time sponsors of the Jazz Festival, we were able to invite our guests to a great night under the stars with the amazing drums of the Conga Kings - an 11 piece Rumba Group with 3 of the master congueros of Afro-cuban music.  It was a great evening .. great music, fabulous food and drink and great company.
To our delight, this year, our partners at the Ottawa Jazz Festival awarded the Lord Elgin Hotel with the ‘Corporate Award of Distinction’.  We have been working with the Jazz Festival for well over 10 years and it was so rewarding to have this award […]

Annie

In April, we have had the great pleasure of hosting the children that qualified for the annual CanSpell Spelling Bee, that is put on by CanWest.  These are the brightest and most talented winners and runner ups - 41 of them, that come the Ottawa annually to participate in this week full of fun, learning, adventure and finally, to compete in the final spelling bee that took place this past Saturday.
This is our third year hosting these children and it is a great honor to be a part of this great cause - that is to promote literacy in our kids and then celebrate those that excel.  As a mother of four boys, I certainly know what reading has done to enhance our kids lives.  My son, who is 19, has taken his ‘gap’ year to circle the globe…first Australia and now is in Europe.  Whenever he calls, his voice […]

Annie

   This hotel is fortunate to be right on the starting line of the ING National Capital Marathon, which has turned into a huge event here in Ottawa.  Even better, ING stays with us through this exciting weekend, so we are really caught up in all the excitement and I love it.
I have been running all my adult life, starting when I was 16 or so and still at 50, I try to get out a few times each week.  A couple of years ago, my husband decided he was going to train for the 1/2 marathon.  Hey, I have always been the runner in our family… what’s this??   Now he was giving me tips on running.
Well, this year has been my third participating.    I started to train with Fred (my husband) and suddenly I was up to 10 km first year, so thought - why not?  I ran the 10 K […]

Annie

I have been hearing that phrase quite a lot lately and I am really not surprised. The weather for the last few days has been absolutely fantastic but it has also been devilishly hot. The past few days have been around 31.5 degrees. Thats just a bit lower than the record for Rome a couple of years ago at 32 and a bit degrees.
If this is what its like now in spring i dont know how its going to be in summer. Anyway a few tips on how to survive the heat in Rome for the time you are here. The first and most important thing to remember is to drink plenty of water. Thats no problem in Rome because there are loads of fountains in the streets and the piazzas.
The second things you should do is try to stay out of the sun when it is the strongest.
That would […]

Xtine71

Sunday was a really great day. Well, it was, until one of my flatmates woke me up from my extremely deep and relaxing slumber. He reminded me that this was the last day to go to the museums for free. Free is a magic word so I listened very carefully after that. Yes we were going to go to Villa Borghese today. Finally, I thought after having been here for 8 months I would finally see it. So we got the metro at Vittorio Emanuele. Then we got off at Barberini and then got a bus from Via Veneto. This however turned out to be a rather round about way of doing things. Bus 910 from Termini stops right outside the park, steps away from the museum.
 So we were about to see the museum with all the art inside until………………signs notifying us dashed my hopes. The museum was full. No […]

Danne75

Yes, I know I have mentioned it before but this time I actually did go buy some stuff. I was down to one last pair of jeans and the zip had just broke and I thought enough was enough. Another annoying thing was having to wash my clothes and then having nothing to wear while they were drying.
 
I had decided to limit myself to spending € 100. I was very surprised with what I bought for that amount. My first stop was Via Nazionale. There are a lot of very reasonably priced clothing stores. One of them was Brooks which has jeans, t-shirts, shirts, jeans, and jackets. The clothes were all reasonably priced the 2 shirts I bought were only 10 euros each. Ok, they weren’t  100 % cotton and I didn’t buy them from a boutique in Via del Corso but they fit really well. Now I needed to get […]

Xtine71