What do the Loch Ness Monster and the Pope have in common? (Hint: It’s not the long neck). Find out in my latest story for Wine Dine + Travel magazine.
Urquhart Castle on the banks of Loch Ness. © Amy Laughinghouse
The Matterhorn, Zermatt, Switzerland. Copyright Amy Laughinghouse.
Check into The OMNIA in Zermatt, Switzerland for a 007-worthy view to a thrill. Cinematically situated in a cleft valley beneath the nipple-peaked Matterhorn and accessed through a secret(ish) subterranean tunnel, this Alpine aerie has the sleek, sexy appeal of a Bond baddie’s lair. Read more about my five-star stay in Go World Travel Magazine.
The OMNIA hotel in Zermatt, Switzerland. Copyright Amy Laughinghouse.
Years ago, I travelled with a woman who claimed she could pack for a week’s skiing holiday in a handbag. Not the skis themselves, mind you, but she insisted she could fit every other essential in one average-sized, over-the-shoulder satchel.
My comrade had already proven her mysterious superpowers, having employed said sack for a trip we shared to Edinburgh.
But…how?
Did she possess some sort of pret-a-portable TARDIS, equipped with entire wardrobes instead of zip pockets?
When she went camping, could she crawl in there to sleep at night?
Given that every handbag is legally obligated to devote at least half its capacity to crumpled receipts, wadded tissues and lint-covered breath mints, did the thing require its own household staff to tidy unfathomable mounds of discarded detritus?
Okay, so this isn’t her…and this isn’t the magic bag, but it wasn’t much bigger than the one carried by Duane Hanson’s remarkably lifelike sculpture at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.
As our train chugged back to London, I longed to ask her to turn her bag inside out so that I could explore its enigmatic dimensions. But somehow, it didn’t seem right to request that she dump her unmentionables on the tray table.
Nor did I wish to risk being sucked in by the gravitational pull of what I can only assume was her pocketbook’s fifth dimension.
Fortunately, given my own everything-but-the-kitchen-sink penchant for disaster packing, I have discovered the next best thing to Mary Poppins’ magic carpet bag.
Behold, my friends: patented CX™ Expansion-Compression Technology from Briggs & Riley. (more…)