Travel: A Fairy Tale Hotel

Flavorwire treats us to some fantastic hotels inspired by literature, from an Ice Palace, to a romantic couples themed hotel, to one organized by the Dewey Decimal System! The one we are chiefly interested in, however, is the Maison Moschino in Milan, Italy, a fairy tale themed hotel! While Flavorwire showcases the Alice in Wonderland room, I loved the Little Red Riding Hood Room with it's strange wolf in comforter clothing!

While the other rooms don't strictly reference any one fairy tale, their design evokes strong images that crop up on many:

Life is a Bed of Roses: 

Luxurious Attic (with magical secrets hiding in boxes):

The Forest:

Sleeping in a Ballgown:

Sweet Room (very Hansel and Gretel):

Blue:

Half a Room (a bit Alice in Wonderlandy too!):

Zzzzzzzzz:

Places: La Balade des Gnomes, a Fairy Tale Bed and Breakfast

A few weeks ago, Io9 posted an article about a fantasy-themed bed and breakfast in Belguim called La Balade des Gnomes (The Walk of the Gnomes). Each room looks straight out of a fairy tale:

If you'd like to sleep inside a fairy tale (and not the parts where you're being eaten by wolves or danced to death by enchanted shoes), you might want to pay a visit to La Balade des Gnomes, a quiet bed and breakfast where you can live out your fairy tale dreams, including one inside the belly of a wooden bull.

La Balade des Gnomes sits outside Derby, Belgium, and includes ten rooms, each with its own fantastical theme: a cabin in the forest, a neighborhood on the moon, stars in the desert, the legend of the trolls, and, of course, the Trojan Horse, which is actually a bull. Presumably, you can't liberate the Trojan bull room to invade enemy nations. (Full Article)

Here is the video.

Article: Into the Woods: A Whimsical Journey on the Brothers Grimm's Fairy-Tale Road

From Conte Nast Traveler (via Breezes from Wonderland):

"Once upon a time, the Fairy-Tale Road north of Frankfurt was known as a kitch- and schnitzel-strewn diversion. On the bicentennial of the Brothers Grimm's first volume of stories, Raphael Kadushin follows the breadcrumbs and discovers one of Germany's most underrated pastoral dreamscapes (plus what might have really happened to those lost children of Hameln). "

"The fact that the sucker punch of the Grimm's stories could survive even Disney's neutered translation suggests the way the tales can still throw down their own kind of curse. Sure, there is usually a happy ending. But before the wedding coems a cavalcate of our fears, marching out like the seven pitiless dwarfs: abandonment, infantacide, boiling caldrons, chopped limbs, witches warmped and creaking like old wood. And those missing children, where did they go?"

See the full article here: Into the Woods: A Whimsical Journey on the Brothers Grimm's Fairy-Tale Road

Map of the Fairy-Tale Road:

From CNTraveler.com