Holiday Inn Macao Cotai Entertains with dream works

By StanleySobari

HOLIDAY INN MACAO COTAI CENTRAL, the 38-storey hotel housed in the Sands Cotai Central integrated resort, has launched a special wintertime DreamWorks package to cater to guest and DreamWorks fans from now. With every reservation, guests can meet and interact with animated character from internationally acclaimed works such as “Kung Fu Panda”, “Madagascar”, “Shrek”, and “How to Train Your Dragon”.

Each night’s stay includes accommodation for two in a spacious King Superior Room, each featuring ceiling-to-floor windows with spectacular city views, complimentary high-speed wireless internet access and the option to check out late at 2pm. Guests on the package will be invited to partake in complimentary “Shrekfasts”-DreamWorks-themed breakfast that come with additional entertainment from performing characters. Also included are photo sessions which allow guests to bring home a picture of themselves with their favourite animation characters to commemorate their stay at the hotel and a pair of one-way tickets on the Cotai Water Jet ferry service.

For a second night’s stay at Holiday Inn Macao Cotai Central, the hotel rewards guests with an additional breakfast for two at Sands Cotai Central resort’s Chinese restaurant, Yum Cha and tickets for two to the Ice World with the DreamWorks Gang extravaganza – the  biggest indoor ice performances event in Asia.

Each of the hotel’s 1,159 spacious rooms and 65 luxurious suites are decorated in a contemporary style and caters to both leisure and business travelers alike. Holiday Inn Macao Cotai Central is also home to several facilities including an outdoor pool, a poolside café, a garden and a fully equipped health club with its own fitness centre, spa and sauna as well as instructors who provide yoga and Pilates lessons for guests who are looking to keep fit in the midst of their relaxing stay.

Holiday Inn Macao Cotai is located a short five minute drive away from Macau International Airport and a 10-minute drive away from the Macau Taipa Fery Terminal, which provides ferry voyages to and from Hong Kong. The centrally located hotel allows guests easy access to some of Macau’s best retail, entertainment, food and beverage locations as well as Macau’s UNESCO heritage sites.

The Holiday Inn Macao Cotai Central is part of the multinational Holiday Inn brand which manages over 3,400 properties globally. Holidayinn.com/macao

OVERNIGHT | COSMOPOLITAN REVEALS ITS NEWLOOK

By StanleySobari

#Grand Deluxe Room with stunning Race Course View

SITED in a prime location overlooking the Happey Valley race course, Cosmpolitan Hotel Hong Kong is a stylish four-star hotel that is well positioned in the heart of Wan Chai and Causeway Bay on Hong Kong Island.

This places the hotel just 10 minutes away from Ocean park and the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, and within easy access to The Peak, making it an ideal choice for business travelers and tourists alike. Additionally, the hotel provides complimentary shuttle services to 15 destinations, including the Convention and Exhibition Centre and Hong Kong Airport Express Line Hong Kong station.

The hotel has recently launched the new Grand Deluxe Room, which is elegantly furnished with Oriental and Victorian elements. Dangling crystal lamp and a velvety Victorian-style bed headboard add an extra touch of luxury to the room, while the beautifully crafted work desk with mother-of-pearl tabletop will appeal to one’s sense of aesthetics. All Grand Deluxe Room guests can expect stunning and panoramic views of the race course or Causeway Bay city skyline.

Besides the newly renovated Grand Deluxe Room, Cosmopolitan Hotel Hong Kong also offers a themed suite series. There is OSM suite, which is fully stocked with a range of massage equipment; the SONY’s 3D Entertainment suite that offers a whole new level of 3D experience; the A-FONTANE suite where guests can expect a relaxing and luxurious slumber; the Ocean Park suite which is furnished with stuffed toys and includes free admission to the Ocean Park; and the Toy Suite, which is perfect for guests wit hchildren

DAY 4.

By StanleySobari

#The path through the woods from Fornalutx to Soller.

THE RESURRECTION TREE Make the best use of the last morning by enjoying a gentle stroll (two miles, 45 minutes) from Fornalutx down to Soller. Take the bus back to Deia to explore the Robert Graves Museum and the beach before catching a taxi to the airport.

I awake to a calm, bright morning in Fornalutx, the air lemony and busy with bird song, the sun just stretching over the easterly peaks. Out of my window villagers are buying salad and fresh dates from a little market in the square. After breakfast, Jesca and I set off to walk to Soller. We make our way downhill in the dappled sunlight, past sheep with bells around their necks, through olive groves and citrus orchards. The sun rises in the sky, bringing with it the smell of warm, damp earth.

The lovely, unspoilt town of Soller is famous, among other things, for the valiance of its women and the excellence of its ice dream. We immediately verify the second claim with an orange-flavoured cone fro mteh Fabrica de Gelats, a Proustian experience that compresses every sunny Mediterranean moment into a single lick. The first claim, which springs from a 16^th-century incident in which two sisters beat off marauding pirates with a big stick, we have no cause to doubt.

Back in Deia, we head for the house of poet and novelist Robert Graves, which is now a museum. Graves moved to Deia in 1929, where he wrote many of his most famous works including I, Claudius. When Franco seized power in 1936, he and his wife fled the island. In the decade beforetheir return, he must have wondered what had become of his house and his belongings. Yet his neighbours had looked after it all for his so conscientiously that Graves commented: ‘If I had felt so inclined, I could have sat down and …started work straight way.’

We stroll down through pine woods to the Cala de Deia, a little rocky inlet with smooth white boulders gleaming under the turquoise water. High above, a small, square lookout tower stands, squat and imperturbable. Invaders will come and go, it seems to imply; here in the Tramuntana we take the long view.

On the way to the airport Jesca suddenly pulls over. ‘Look! Before us lies a valley of almond orchards that have somehow avoided the storms, still covered in blossom. ‘And long ago,’ wrote DH Lawrence,’ the almond was the symbol of resurrection…’ We sit on a rock and drink in the sight of them, bright as brides in the sun.

Deia is home to the famous Es Raco d’es Teix, Josef Sauerschell’s Michelin-starred restaurant. Perfect for treating yourself after a long walk, his original hearty cooking is some of the best in Mallorca (esracodesteix.es).

# ‘The sun rises in the sky, bringing with it the smell of warm, damp earth’ The Cala de Deia

DAY 3.

By StanleySobari

#From Valldemossa, navigate forest and steep coastal paths to hilltop Deia, heading by bus to Soller and on to Fornalutx

SAINTS AND ARCHDUKES For one of the most striking walks in Mallorca, join the GR221 on the outskirts of Valldemossa and head up a steep path through the woods. After an hour or so, you meerge on to ‘the Archduke’s path’, a cobbled track along the bar, rocky limestone ride, with grandiose views alogn the north coast. A steep descent through forest leads you to the charming village of Deia (six miles, five hours), from where to bus to Soller takes half an hour. Finally take a taxi or walk the two miles up to the village of Fornalutx.

#In the midst of the Serra de Tramuntana at an altitude of 425 metres, VAlldemossa is one of the highest towns in Mallorca

During the night, I am woken by rain and drumrolls of thunder in the mountains, but by early morning the graceful spire of Valldemossa’s Carthusian monastery stands out against a clear blue sky. Frederic Chopin’s lover, George Sand (a pseudonym for Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin), made the town and its inhabitans famous after she wrote a mealy-mouthed description fo the winter the couple spendt renting rooms in its cloister; this morning it is hard to sympathise with her moans.

I light a candle before an image of another celebrity resident, Santa Catalina Tomas, a beloved 16 th century saint. A painting in the monastery illustrates an episode from her early years: sent up into the hills with lunch for the shepherds, the little Tomasseta stumbled and fell down the cliff. She was caught, miraculously, in the hands of St Bruno, the founder of the Carthusians movement.

#Valldemossa’s Carthusians monastery dates back to the 14^th century

Behind the town, Jesca and I set off on a small, rocky path that climbs steeply through the oak woods, hair pinning back and forth. After an hour or so the oaks thin, the first rays of sun pour in, and we are out in the open, among limestone crags as airy as cloud. Our path runs along the edge of a cliff face; a stone’s throw to the left, perhaps just where the saint lost her footing, the rock drops sheer to a wooded valley almost a hundred metres below, and on down to the jagged dark line wit hits white collar of surf where the rocks meet the sea. The coast is sketched out before us; the villages of Deia and Soller floating in azure haze and, far beyond, the cliffs of the Cap de Formentor. All around us the early sun is dressing the pale rock in the pinks and golds of a church ceiling.

Santa Catalina walked these hills before the fine cobbled path that we are treading existed. It was laid in the 1860s under the auspices of the Archduke Ludwig Salvador, a minor Habsburg and passionate fan of Mallorca. He is remembered affectionately for his generosity (no doubt this path was an early employment-creation scheme) and his poor dress sense, thanks to which the expression to ‘dress leke an archduke’ is still a euphemism for scruffiness in Mallorca. At this time of year the Archduke’s path is almost empty, and the few people we see are largely Mallorcan, with the easy, measured stride of lifelong walkers. For a while, we walk alongside two friends who have been coming up here every week for more than a decade. When I ask the elder of the pair what it is that draws him back, again and again, to the Tramuntan, he doesn’t answer immediately. ‘As a boy,’ he says at last, ‘I was a shepherd in the Alpujarras. So, you see,’ he shrugs, ‘the mountains are my life.’

A little further on our path an ebullient, chamois like fellow hails us with the cry, ‘Oye, que pasa?’ (‘What’s going on?’). he bounds up to tell us what’s going on with him, a torrent of news about his daily walks, the large distance he regularly covers, and the adventures that befall him up here in the hills.

‘These mountains remind you how fragile life is,’ he says, still beaming. ‘I love them for that’. We take care down the steep and slippery path to Deia, the limestone clinking like porcelain under our feet, the air hot and incense-scented, as though we were descending from some low-lying heaven.

Outside Deia we pass a small almond orchard, battered by storm of the previous night. Soggy brown petals lie in drifts beneath the stark, iron black branches. Here and there, a flew blossoms remain, looking forlorn. This year they have lost their gamble with the seasons.

The elegantly furnished Ca’n Reus in Fronalutx has the feel of a handsome 19-th century Mallorcan house. There’s leafy garden and a pool with mountain views (canreushotel.com).

Ca N’Antuna is locally famous for its oven-cooked lamb and other meats. Dine on the terrace fro grand views across Fornalutx and the surrounding mountains. (Carrer de Arbona Colom, 14).