Table of Contents: April 2008

For our 10th anniversary, Monograms and Budget Travel (together "Sponsors") are giving away one trip over each of the next seven issues. To enter the second contest, launch the photo scramble at right and complete it. If you complete the scramble correctly, you'll be eligible to win the 8-day Vienna and Prague trip for you and a guest. The prize includes hotels, sightseeing, and the train ride between the cities (but not flights to/from Europe, and not all airport transfers). For more on Monograms' no-hassle independent travel options: 800/250-7614, www.monogramstravel.com. You can enter beginning March 1 at 12 p.m. through midnight on March 31, 2008 by correctly completing the photo scramble. Only one entry per person, and individuals who submit multiple entries will be disqualified. Winner will be selected through a random drawing of all eligible entrants on or about April 4, 2008. Residents of the 50 U.S. states, except Arizona, are eligible to win; winner must be at least 18 years old and both winner and guest will be required to sign an affidavit of eligibility and release. Employees of Sponsors, and each of their parents, affiliates, subsidiaries, divisions, advertising and promotion agencies, and immediate family members or persons living in the same households of such individuals are not eligible to participate in this promotion. Prize's estimated retail value: $3,100. The prize is subject to availability, nontransferable, and nonnegotiable. Blackout dates may apply. Only one prize will be awarded and your odds of winning depend on number of entrants who correctly finish the scramble. Winner will be notified by e-mail. In the event that any prize notification e-mail is returned as undeliverable, or if any attempted notification is not successful within seven (7) days, the prize will be forfeited and Sponsors reserve the right to randomly select an alternate winner from among the remaining eligible entries. Winner agrees to the use of his/her name and likeness in publicity without any additional compensation (except where prohibited). By entering this contest, winner acknowledges that Sponsors have the right to publicize, by any medium, winner's name, voice, and likeness, the fact that winner won, and all matters incidental thereto. Void where prohibited. No purchase necessary. Any taxes related to the prize are the sole responsibility of the winner. The sponsors of this contest are Budget Travel (530 Seventh Ave., New York, NY 10018) and Monograms (5301 S. Federal Circle, Littleton, CO 80123). By entering this drawing, each entrant forever discharges, releases, and holds harmless Sponsors and each of their parent companies, subsidiaries, affiliates, and each of their respective directors, officers, employees, and agents from any and all liability, claims, losses, damages, causes of action, suits, and demands of any kind arising from or in connection with the promotion, including, without limitation, responsibility for property damage, loss of life, or personal injury resulting from or in connection with participating in the sweepstakes or from or in connection with use or receipt of the prize, however caused. For the name of winner, after April 20, 2008, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to Photo Scramble Contest Winners, Budget Travel, 530 Seventh Ave., New York, NY 10018, and include the text: BUDGET TRAVEL PHOTO SCRAMBLE CONTEST. Requests received more than sixty (60) days after April 20, 2008, will not be honored.

We recently took a wonderful trip to Costa Rica, and when we left I captured this beautiful sunset from the plane. Enjoy. —Wendy Foster I travel to France every year and shot this photo of the Louvre in Paris in the summer of 2007. —Patricia Myers When my boyfriend and I first moved out to California, we took a trip to Venice Beach. After a day of hot dogs, cheese fries, local art, and skateboarding bulldogs, we sat down to watch basketball on the often-filmed basketball courts there. The sun set as we sat on the bleachers, and this photo reminds us every day of why we still live here. —Adele Rogers June sunset in Kota Kinabalu, Borneo, taken with a Kodak Easy Share Z760. —Curt Rutledge Using your techniques the very same day I got the e-mail from BudgetTravel.com, I ventured to Sunset Point outside of Marquette, Mich., to take photos of the sunset over frozen Lake Superior. What a lucky (and cold!) evening I had to take photos of the sunset! —Sarah Roberts A glass of wine, a Greek salad, good friends, and a fabulous sunset over the caldera in Santorini, Greece. —Terrie Santamaria Sunset off Maui just after I got married on Kauai. —Martrese White My wife and I traveled to southern Africa in 2007. One evening, we were in Chobe National Park in Botswana observing a herd of elephants. We stopped the vehicle and broke out the drinks, and my wife snapped this photo as the elephants passed in front of the setting sun. It was the perfect ending to another perfect day on safari. —Richard and Patricia Thompson During my husband and my fourth anniversary trip in Key West, Fla., we saw this full moon. I do believe the picture tells the story! —Linda Allen Clifton Destin, Fla., in winter: The picture says it all. —Melanie My husband and I refer to this as our "$850 picture." We were sailing our 32-foot motor yacht to a restaurant when one engine quit. We tried to limp home, but about five miles out, the other engine quit. We dropped anchor and called for a tow. Insurance covered $100, and we paid the remaining $850. But we did get this picture, taken at Burnt Store Marina in southwest Florida. —Shan Meils I was in Hawaii last year and took this sunset photo from a boat off Waikiki. —Marilyn Ball My wife and I live on Lake Panorama at Panora, Iowa. Life doesn't get much better than this, does it? —Robert W. White Trees and flags; the picture was taken in Spanishtown on Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands. —Lauren Here is a sunset that ranks right up there with our most memorable: Taken from a sailboat off Key West, Fla., on January 5, 2008—a beautiful ending to a beautiful day. —Jackie Diffenderffer Picture this: You're cruising up the Grand Canal your last night in Venice as the sun slowly sinks behind you. You step onto the pier and turn to get your bearings and¿magnifico! The sunset of a lifetime. It was so stunning, I cried—and took a couple of photos to treasure. —Cynthia Howland-Hodson

Meet the giraffesWithout sacrificing its estate-in-the-country dignity—or all of it, anyway—Giraffe Manor in Langata, Kenya, is arranged so that roaming giraffes can poke their heads into any open window or doorway with impunity and lather guests with their sticky, prehensile tongues. Your guesthouse is their guesthouse, so the silly creatures pop up everywhere, including over the breakfast table, in the lobby, and through the curtains of the five guest rooms for adults. Regrettably, as of this writing, the U.S. government had issued a travel warning for Kenya. For the latest info, visit the State Department website. 011-254/20-890-948, off-hours: 011-254/20-891-078, giraffemanor.com.Photos of Giraffe Manor 1 of 2 The open-sewer experienceArtist Andreas Strauss designed Das Park Hotel to be an elegant exercise in simplicity and recycling: It consists of three unadorned, 10-ton segments of drainage pipe, each 6.5 feet in diameter and barely long enough to accommodate a double bed. Strauss punched the pipes with skylights, added doors with electronic locks, and then laid the trio artfully in the grass by the Danube River, in Ottensheim, Austria. Amenities are skimpy, as you might expect: You get a lamp, a mattress, and a few sleeping bags. On the positive side, the hotel has no fixed rates. You leave whatever amount you think is fair. dasparkhotel.net, reservations online only.Photos of Das Park Hotel 1 of 1 Hang out like a TeamsterFor savoring the windswept Dutch landscape, nothing will lift you higher than the Harbour Crane, which for almost 30 years toiled at unloading timber at Harlingen, a port city an hour outside of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Since 2003, the massive crane has housed a luxury hotel room for two, roughly 60 feet above the harbor docks. Don't expect to sleep in an oily industrial hutch—the hotel's lighting system is touch-screen operated, the chairs are Eames Lounges, and the spindle of structural steel around you has a certain sculptural elegance. But the big payoff: You and your guest can jump into the cockpit and seize the controls, swinging the 143,000-pound crane a full 360 degrees. 011-31/517-414-410, vuurtoren-harlingen.nl.Photos of Harbour Crane 1 of 3 Gone to the dogsAfter years of selling dog sculptures that they chainsawed out of wood, Dennis Sullivan and Frances Conklin sank their considerable profits into constructing Dog Bark Park Inn, a two-story, beagle-shaped B&B in Cottonwood, Idaho. Guests enter the structure from the deck that lines one side of the pup's rib cage. The main quarters are in the belly of the beast; the sleeping loft is in the pooch's head. And, yes, pets are allowed. 208/962-3647, dogbarkparkinn.com, open April through October.Photos of Dog Bark Park Inn 1 of 2 A trailer with a viewHotel Everland is a one-room portable inn created by Switzerland-based installation artists Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann. It's mobile, like a trailer home, but it's fancy, too, with pastel walls that swirl and swoop. The artists are moving the inn around Europe; through 2008, it will reside in Paris on the rooftop of the Palais de Tokyo museum, with its heart-swelling views of the Seine, 100 feet below, and the Eiffel Tower, in the near distance. Unfortunately, Hotel Everland becomes a contemporary art exhibit by day. So you can only stay for one night, and you have to be cleared out before the museum opens for business—or risk becoming part of the exhibit yourself. everland.ch, reservations online only.Photos of Hotel Everland 1of 3 Take this hotel for a spinThose of us who miss the Carter administration-era craze for revolving rooftop cocktail lounges will no doubt be pleased to learn that in certain parts of Turkey, it's still 1977. In sunny Antalya, Turkey's version of Miami Beach, you'll find the world's first hotel that has a rotating annex: the Marmara Antalya. Two dozen of the hotel's rooms are built atop a foundation that spins, completing a full rotation every seven hours; guests are rewarded with shifting views of the Mediterranean Sea. 011-90/242-249-3600, themarmarahotels.com.Photos of Marmara Antalya 1 of 2 Hobbit habitats for humanityIf you queued up for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, you'd probably feel right at home in the Hobbit Motel, in Otorohanga, New Zealand. The motel's two hillside burrows are faithful replicas of the fictional hobbit dwellings—right down to the circular windows and doorways, red-and-beige walls, and camouflaged exteriors. The real-life rooms are scaled to human proportions, though, so actual hobbits might find them disagreeable. The Hobbit Motel is only one part of Woodlyn Park, a bizarre collection of lodgings that includes a 1950s railway car, a dry-docked patrol boat, and a grounded airplane from the Vietnam War. As if that weren't eccentric enough, the complex caters to visitors of the nearby Waitomo Caves, where the star attraction is a colony of glowworms. 011-64/7-878-6666, woodlynpark.co.nz.Photos of Hobbit Motel 1 of 2 Up a treeHuman beings spent millions of years evolving to the point where they wouldn't have to sleep in the trees. That job done, there's just one direction for them to go: back up. The owners of Out 'n' About Treesort & Treehouse Institute just outside of Cave Junction, Ore., fought nervous zoning authorities to permit the construction of their 18 unorthodox treehouses—some enclosed, some open to the bugs, and some perched in oaks and Douglas firs more than 35 feet above the ground. The Swiss Family unit, for instance, is connected by a suspension bridge to a special kids' area. The Treeloon unit looks like an Old West saloon, complete with swinging doors. And the Cavaltree, a duplex in the branches, feels like a pioneer fort. Most of the rooms are equipped with modern conveniences, like sinks and refrigerators, but bathrooms are in a cabin on the ground. Given all the spiral staircases at the 36-acre complex, you have to pity the chambermaids. 541/592-2208, treehouses.com.Photos of Out 'n' About Treesort & Treehouse Institute 1 of 2 Pioneer wagons get an upgradeIn Christchurch, New Zealand, the two-year-old Wagon Stays company has come up with a marketing slogan for its tricked-out, ecofriendly, mock Conestogas: "Where luxury meets history." The settlers of New Zealand would have considered themselves lucky to bunk down in these bad boys, which feature queen-size beds, computer-controlled showers, flush toilets, fully equipped kitchens, and satellite TV. The carriages also have glass doors that open onto balconies, which are perfect for kicking back with a pint of ale after a long day of going absolutely nowhere. 011-64/3-322-8277, wagonstays.co.nz.Photos of Wagon Stays 1 of 3 >> See all 20 hotel photos