Hasta La Ideas

Three glamorous trips that will have you traveling like royalty

From private jets to hot-air balloons and exclusive palace parties, check out a few of the more over-the-top luxurious ways we found to travel below.

TCS & Starquest Expeditions

Pioneers in exclusive travel, luxury tour company TCS & Starquest Expeditions puts travelers aboard private Boeing 757s on customizable trips around the world.
The outfit specializes in highly personalized service and educational experiences, making for truly unique travel experiences.

Expeditions (all at a moderate activity level) consist of two to three week long jaunts featuring multiple destinations with the option of either “around-the-world” or more localized, “regionally-focused” trips.

Sample TCS Tours that have a global scope include a “Hidden Wonders Around The World” tour that takes travelers to ancient wonders (i.e. Temples and Shrines of Old Japan; Monumental Temples of Java, Indonesia) and “An Exploration of the World’s Greatest Treasure and Legendary Places,” transporting travelers to countries with deep influences on early human civilization (such as Machu Picchu in Peru; Cambodia’s Angkor Wat).

Trips with a narrower geographic focus range from visits to Central and South America, as well as to areas with historical medieval backgrounds—Old Quarters of Mostar and Sarajevo in Bosnia; Ancient Palmyra and Damascus in Syria—in the “Ancient Crossroads of Eurasia” tour. But our personal destination picks tend toward the more adventurous side. Gorilla Trekking through the Bamboo Jungles of Rwanda and snorkeling through the remote archipelago of Palua anyone?

While the ability to customize any of these trips makes TCS’ service luxurious enough, the highly personable service that comes with each excursion really sets the service apart. Each plane comes with a specialized crew of art and history experts, a private physician, personal chef, and an experienced flight staff that will accommodate every guest need.

To find out more on globe-trotting the world in a private jet, contact TCS& Starquest tours here.

Krug

Inspired by its Grand Cuvee , French champagne company Krug has found an alternative way to fly in style with the “Krug Is In The Air” champagne balloon tour program. It currently stands as the world’s most expensive hot air balloon ride, with a cost of roughly $77,790 for one flight. Owned by parent company, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennesy, the Krug hot air balloon premium quality design includes a wicker basket, canopy, burners by Camerons of Bristol, and white leather lining by French upholsters Bruno Domeau & Philippe Peres. With past expeditions through the U.S. (Los Angeles, Arizona and Miami), England, Italy, Japan and Hong Kong, the balloon will fly virtually to any location in the world.

Each balloon fight is set up to accommodate intimate groups of up to eight people and comes with exceptional personal butler service, gourmet meals and champagne. Krug partnered with famous food designer, Marc Bretillot, to create a menu that compliments the Krug Grande Cuvee and the Krug balloon experience. Travelers can look forward to enjoying dishes such as foie gras creme brulee with sea salt and tomato jam, pickled vegetable rolls with devil fried oysters, bluefin tuna with light sesame creme fraiche, and baked Brie feulliete with cracked black pepper, caramel, and toasted walnuts.

Flying with such great style comes at a luxurious cost, but we’re sure that nothing quite compares to floating over panoramic landscapes while sipping some bubbly.

For more information, contact their website for available departure dates and costs.

Exeter Travel

Exeter International invents a new way to explore Eastern Europe and Russia, with luxury tours focusing on privacy and intimate travel experiences. With major connections in cities all over Eastern Europe, Exeter International has been an acclaimed travel service by various travel publications including Travel + Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, New York Times, and others.

Unique excursions such as the Hermitage Gala in St. Petersburg is just one example of the exclusive (and connected) experiences that Exeter offers. The Hermitage Gala, held at the Hermitage Palace Hermitage Palace during the White Nights (the period of the June summer solstice when it remains light through the night) is an invitation-only, sit-down dinner with up to only 100 to 200 guests. Hosted in one of the Hermitage’s imperial rooms, the palace becomes a private experience for gala-goers as galleries stay open for viewing, and top ballerinas and opera singers from the Mariinsky company perform. After the intimate affair, Exeter sends their guest to stay overnight in the Taleon Imperial, the only hotel in St. Petersburg housed in a former palace.

The cost for such an opulent opportunity comes at a price of roughly $12,220 for two (including cost of Gala invitation and accommodations).

To find out more information on exclusive and unique luxury trips offered by Exeter, contact them at their site.

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pManhattan is only a few miles wide and roughly 10 miles in length, and just about every square inch has been developed. So it blows me away that cities like L.A. still have Imiles/I of property, in the city proper, that they still have the leeway to remake./p

pOne such area is L.A.’s Cleantech Corridor, a gargantuan chunk of land bordering downtown L.A., that as of yesterday became the subject of its own large-scale design competition:/p

blockquoteThe Southern California Institute of Architecture and The Architect’s Newspaper are launching the A HREF=”http://www.sciarc.edu/portal/about/cleantech/index.html” Los Angeles Clean Tech Corridor and Green District Competition/A. The competition asks architects, landscape architects, designers, engineers, urban planners, students and environmental professionals to create an innovative urban vision for Los Angeles’ CleanTech Corridor, a several-mile-long development zone on the eastern edge of downtown LA.

pThe competition, which offers more than $11,000 in prize money, is presented with the Office of the Mayor of Los Angeles and the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles, which established the Clean Tech Corridor. It asks entrants to move beyond industrial uses; creating an integrated economic, residential, clean energy, and cultural engine for the city through architectural and urban strategies. Crucially, this competition will provide an open ideas forum for provocative, even revolutionary, new visions of LA’s urban fabric and infrastructure./blockquote/p

pThe deadline is September 30th, and it’s open to professionals and students alike. Learn more A HREF=”http://www.sciarc.edu/portal/about/cleantech/index.html” here/A.br /
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Artist Takashi Murakami is thirsty for a new challenge: his own brand of bottled water. “My dream is to be in the water business!” he tells curator Allison Gingeras in a terrific Q&A published in the August issue of Interview. Like Murakami bottled water? “Exactly. It’s a natural concept because I realized the U.S. is really big, so maybe I’ll be able to find a good spring,” he says with a laugh. “It will be my original type of Evian or something like that. So this is my dream. It’s like having a garden for the lotus plants. I am super-focused on the lotuses all the time.” In his Tokyo studio, Murakami breeds lotus plants, beetles, and “very small guppies,” with the help of dedicated staff. As for the water, he wouldn’t have to look far for a test audience. Murakami says that he is planning to open a bar in Los Angeles, maybe. “It’s supposed to be like a Japanese-style social thing—like sake and shochu,” he says, explaining that he has already begun experimenting with making shochu, an alcoholic drink distilled from sweet potatoes, in his studio. It’s all part of his dream. “Every time I start a new business, I’m looking for the niche market,” he says. “The sake market is already fixed, but nobody knows shochu in America…Almost nobody.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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pema href=”http://www.dcontinuum.com/content/”Continuum/a continues their series Open for Branding, where they are sharing, from start to finish, their latest branding project for the new, nomadic a href=”http://designmuseumboston.org/”Design Museum Boston/a. They’re asking for your input, so don’t hesitate to leave your feedback in the comments below./em/p

pLast week, we created brand pillars and did our initial thematic exploration. So, what’s the next step in creating a brand identity? Presenting the boards to the client and getting their reaction. Here’s the end result of that meeting, coupled with your reaction to the boards that we posted last week./p

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pbr /
The exploration meeting with the client is always enlightening. The boards serve as a conversation starter to get the client to verbalize their needs and what they want their identity to accomplish. Here’s what museum directors Sam and Derek are looking for:/p

p-To communicate that the museum is approachable, enthusiastic, and passionate/p

p-To be able to transform the space they’re in using graphics and materials. Because they do pop-up exhibits, they need their identity to help accomplish this/p

p-To educate the public and talk to the general public, not just designers/p

p-To make sure the identity has flexibility so that they can apply it to exhibits, merchandise, fundraising material, and the website/p

p-To play up the human side of design/p

pOf the three brand pillarsmdash;dynamic, smart, and boldmdash;Sam and Derek felt that bold and dynamic best expressed the Design Museum Boston brand ideals. Overwhelmingly, you also felt that these two directions resonated best. One reader, Chris, commented, “It’s a transient museum, so BOLD is key. It’s key to grabbing instant attention and driving awareness as the museum travels about.” When different stakeholders align, it’s a good sign that you’re honing in on a solid directionmdash;a nice development. /pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/open_for_branding_week_3_exploring_the_possibilities__17129.asp”(more…)/a
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… or the pleasure of your company is requested.
the scarab hat is an antipode to alexander mcqueen’s butterfly hat (spring 2008). it marks th..