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• Photo tour: inside Abu Dhabi's most palatial suite
• Gulet-cruising: Wood's the way when sailing the Turkish coast
• 6 ugliest buildings in Britain nominated

Photo tour: inside Abu Dhabi's most palatial suite Posted: 21 Aug 2013 01:08 AM PDT A private pool, a games room and mini-cinema; at 2,100 square meters and $35,000 a night, St. Regis Saddiyat Island Resort's Royal Suite is the biggest in the U.A.E. There was quite a bit of travel news in the Middle East this week, from the announcement that Qatar's upcoming $15.5 billion airport will feature two 100-room luxury transit hotels to the news that Gordon Ramsay signed his return to Dubai. That was immediately followed by a staunch denial from Ramsay's spokesperson. Drama, drama. The big hotel launches, however, were both from the St. Regis brand. The first was August 15 launch of the St. Regis Abu Dhabi, which won "One to Watch" at the Virtuoso Best of the Best Hotel Awards in Vegas last week, with the second being the St. Regis Saddiyat Island Resort's introduction of a new Royal Suite.   The Royal Suite has its own private pool and terrace.At 2,100 square meters, the Royal Suite is now the largest hotel suite in the United Arab Emirates. To see just how huge it is by comparison, check out our previous list on the world's most expensive hotel suites.  Here's one example: the Hugh Hefner Sky Villa at the Palms Resort in Vegas is a comparatively measly 836 square meters. For 130,000 dirhams a night ($35,390) you get two floors, four bedrooms, a mini-cinema, a games room and a private swimming pool with sea views. St. Regis Saadiyat Island Resort, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; +971 2 498 8888, rooms start at $303 More on CNN: Insider Guide: Best of Abu Dhabi

Gulet-cruising: Wood's the way when sailing the Turkish coast Posted: 20 Aug 2013 11:00 PM PDT Turkey's traditional wooden sailing boats are the best way to see the country's remote areas I leap off the prow of our two-masted gulet into the warm water and, with a splash, the night is definitively over. After sleeping the night on deck on one of these traditional wooden sailing ships, a dawn plunge is a great way to wake up. Gulets sleep a dozen or so guests in comparative luxury below deck, but sleeping in the open air, below the Mediterranean stars, is the better way to do it. Like most out of the port city of Bodrum, our gulet voyage has kept close to the coast so far. They call this the Blue Cruise route after the Turkish novel of that name, "Mavi Yolculuk," published in 1962 by Azra Erhat. It was this book that first encouraged Turks to holiday on their country's southern coastline. Now the whole world comes here. Blue sails Much of what the Turkish coast has to offer -- rock-cut tombs, abandoned villages -- isn't sign-posted on land, but on a gulet the attractions glide into view.The quaysides in Bodrum, Kaunos, Kalkan and Göcek are full of these polished wooden ships, often with distinctive blue sails or blue-cushioned deck furniture. We have a typical Blue Cruise adventure when, just after breakfast, our captain puts into the once-busy coastal port of Knidos, now a series of ruins round a small circular bay. Serkar, our guide, explains that in the fourth century BCE Knidos, like Kos and Halicarnassus, was part of a federation of six great Greek trading cities along the coast of what is now Turkey. It fell into decline partly because it was only accessible from the sea. This is part of the appeal of a gulet cruise. You get to see places that would take hours in a four-wheel-drive overland. Much of what the Turkish coast has to offer -- rock-cut tombs, abandoned villages, remote mosques and ruined fortresses -- isn't even sign-posted on land, but on a gulet the riches glide into view. After breakfast, Big Mustapha, our ship's shaven-headed steward, helps us into his dingy four at a time and pilots us over to Knidos.  Cicadas buzz as Serkar and I climb to the top of an old marble amphitheater and gaze back at our gulet.  Wiping his brow, Serkar explains that Turkey has more Greek and Roman remains than modern day Greece and Italy. "And in better condition," he tells me proudly. The only problem is the midday heat.  Soon Mustapha begins ferrying people back to our gulet, but my wife can't wait. She dives off the jetty and sets off swimming back to the ship. Three others follow her.  Gulets let you see parts of Turkey you'll never see any other way. Hugging the coast The rest of our journey follows this pattern. Hugging the coast, we drop anchor to explore ruins or shop for souvenirs at little villages or call in at Greek islands such as Nisyros, Symi and Kos. Almost all the islands you see along the Turkish coast have been Greek since the end of World War I. One afternoon we sail to Palamut Buku, a beach with a mosque and one small shop where Captain Bekir and Osman the chef go to fetch fresh supplies. The food along the way has been so good we ask for a cooking lesson, which Osman gives us on deck -- I think he's grateful not to be working in that hot galley kitchen for once. Of all our landings my favorite is Loryma, a coastal fort built by people from Rhodes in 411 BCE and which saw action in the wars between Alexander the Great's generals. It's a steep climb but we have the ancient, sheltered place to ourselves, just our party of 12 and the cicadas. The following day we moor off a little wooded beach called Arymaxa, which is beneath an abandoned Roman settlement called Lydae. Once again Mustapha pilots us ashore and gives me the walkie-talkie to call him when we want to come back. The going is hot under a blazing sky, but the last part of the route is under the cover of some very hardy pines. Around one corner we meet a group of startled donkeys sheltering from the heat. At the top of the path, in a saddle between two big hills, we find ruined mausoleums from the third century. They look familiar and according to Serkar contain the earliest known examples in Turkey of the Byzantine arch used to such great effect in Istanbul's Hagia Sofia. Hidden places Much of what the Turkish coast has to offer -- rock-cut tombs, abandoned villages -- isn't sign-posted on land, but on a gulet the attractions glide into view.Captain Bekir takes us to many hidden places along the coast, but our next stop, Kaunos, is busier than normal. We transfer to a shallow ferryboat that takes us up river to a 200-meter crag on top of which rests the ruins of the Kaunos acropolis, founded about 30 centuries ago. Elaborate, pillared tombs are cut into the rock below. It's too hot to visit the acropolis straight away so we spend the afternoon rolling around in the mud baths of nearby Dalyan (admission $2.60). In the bar hangs a photo of a rather bemused Dustin Hoffman, who you imagine coming here to get away from it all and inevitably finding himself recognized. But that's part of the joy of these gulet cruises. You can visit parts of the Turkish coast you couldn't reach any other way. Many companies offering gulet cruises of the Turkish coast and Greek islands. Peter Sommer Travels is a British-based company with seven-night, full-board, guided cruises out of Bodrum and Gocek that combine the Turkish coastline with Greek Islands. Prices from $3,456 per person. Exclusive Escapes, another British-based outfit, has seven-night, full-board cruises along the Turkish Mediterranean from various ports. Prices from $1,919 per person based on two sharing a cabin, or private gulet charters from $13,823 based on eight sharing. For more information on touring Turkey, visit GoTurkey.com. Sunset from a gulet -- waking up with a dive into the warm ocean after sleeping on deck is part of the experience. Tags:  turkey sailing cruise vacations Greece

6 ugliest buildings in Britain nominated Posted: 20 Aug 2013 07:00 PM PDT Shortlist announced for annual award for (dis)services to architecture -- have you seen worse? Grace, sophistication, sheer cleverness of construction … all elements entirely lacking, apparently, from the six buildings shortlisted for Building Design Magazine's Carbuncle Cup, which crowns -- if that's the right word -- the ugliest building in Britain. Student housing figures prominently this year among the entries, nominated by readers, for an award launched eight years ago as a humorous version of the prestigious Stirling Prize. Indeed, Castle Mill Housing, a graduate accommodation block abutting an ancient and -- once, at least -- beautiful sward of grazing land on the outskirts of Oxford, has received more nominations than any other building in the history of the Carbuncle Cup. "A deeply unimaginative and impoverished design which would lower the spirits, whatever its setting," is how one of its nominators describes it. An "excellent example of facadism," says Building Design, sarcastically, of another shortlisted student block, 465 Caledonian Road, named after the busy London thoroughfare on which it's located. Facadism is the practice of knocking down a building but including its frontage in the building that replaces it -- or a face transplant that went terribly wrong, to describe the current example another way. The Shard. Which other (arguably) ugly buildings were unfairly left off the Carbuncle Award shortlist?"Inappropriately" named is how BD describes another apparent London design grotesque, Avant Garde. The magazine prefers "monstrous" and "grotesquely over-scaled" as labels for this building modestly titled after a whole aesthetic movement. Elsewhere in the British capital, a chain hotel, one of those repeat offenders when it comes to deadening architectural blandness, has produced, "a travesty in more ways than one." "We shudder at its lumpen form," says the magazine of the Premier Inn, Lambeth, "and mourn the building demolished to make way for it." Outside London once more, in shivery Wales, the squat Port Eirias Watersports Center is known to locals "not so affectionately as 'The Dumpster,'" according to BD.  The final Carbuncle Cup-shortlisted entry is a peg-shaped tower in the oddly named seaside resort of Redcar, which you could describe as sticking out like a huge sore thumb wrapped in garish bandages by a maddened nurse. But ugliness, like beauty, is in part, at least, in the eye of the beholder. Several commentators on the Carbuncle Award shortlist bemoan the exclusion this year of the Shard, for example, London's tallest new building, jabbing at the sky like a street weapon. Which is the ugliest building you've ever seen in Britain or beyond? Let us know in the comments section below.

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