Nutritix

Tag: Travel

  • The gigantic luxury hotel in the middle of nowhere

    The gigantic luxury hotel in the middle of nowhere

    Nothing much lies on Qatar’s border with Saudi Arabia. A few sunbaked outposts and miles and miles of vast, empty desert in all directions. 

    Then, earlier this year, something very different appeared in the middle of this nowhere: A huge, gleaming luxury hotel complex, complete with its own theme park.

    The Hilton Salwa Beach Resort & Villas is clearly no ordinary hotel. 

    Seen from the air it resembles an entire coastal town. Pristine twin beaches peel away from a central harbor. Above the sands, bright white villas and buildings cluster around blue swimming pools. Behind them, an oasis of greenery. It’s one of the Middle East’s largest resorts.

    So what happens, when a gigantic upscale hotel appears miles from anywhere just as a pandemic freezes global travel?

    It gets really busy, according to Etienne-Charles Gailliez, the resort’s general manager. On opening its doors in February it became a staycation hit with locals, he says. More recently it’s been a popular destination for visitors and business travelers from the wider region.

    There’s plenty of room. Hilton Salwa Beach has 84 villas, ranging from two to four bedrooms, with private pools and direct access to the white-sand beach (prices from US$ 1,500 a night). There are 31 Arabian village-style apartments and villas, while the main hotel has 246 rooms and suites.

    The huge grounds also contain more than 20 food and drink outlets, including seven gourmet dining options, a high-end spa with VIP suites, sports courts, swimming pools surrounded by landscaped gardens, corporate facilities, and a marina.

    On top of that, there’s Qatar’s largest theme park, featuring dozens of attractions, including “King Cobra,” a thrilling twin tube ride that sends riders into the mouth of a massive snake-like structure.

  • The song that changed the US

    The song that changed the US

    With Happy Birthday, Stevie Wonder successfully campaigned to honor Martin Luther King Jr with a national holiday, in a long career of socially conscious songwriting, writes Diane Bernard.

    On 15 January 1981, music legends Diana Ross and Gladys Knight, along with the “godfather of rap”, Gil Scott-Heron, joined renowned musician Stevie Wonder on stage at the National Mall in Washington, DC. The 50,000-strong audience chanted: “Martin Luther King Day, we took a holiday,” according to Scott-Heron’s 2012 memoir, The Last Holiday, as the stars began to sing Wonder’s hit song, Happy Birthday, a tribute to the murdered civil rights leader.

    “I just never understood/ How a man who died for good/ Could not have a day that would/ Be set aside for his recognition,” they sang, electrifying the crowd.

    The 1980 song represented the start of Wonder’s campaign to make the birthday of renowned peace activist, Martin Luther King Jr, into a federal holiday. For three years Wonder put his life on hold and dedicated tours, rallies, and marches to bring his vision to life – a quest that would establish the first holiday in the US that honored a black American.

    This year marks the 40th anniversary of US President Ronald Reagan signing into law the bill that established Martin Luther King Day. Many today might be surprised to realize the instrumental role Stevie Wonder played in getting the legislation passed. But in fact, the global superstar’s artistry and political activism were intertwined throughout his career, even before the MLK Day drive, as he repeatedly called attention to social issues of mid-century America.

    After Dr. King’s assassination in April 1968, US Representative John Conyers Jr from Detroit, Michigan, and Wonder’s congressman, introduced a bill to make the activist’s birthday a federal holiday. But for 13 years, the bill languished, facing opposition from southern Democrats and conservative Republicans. For years, Wonder had quietly advocated for the holiday. But then, in 1979, he shared a dream he had with King’s widow, Coretta Scott King. In a 2011 interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Wonder said: “I said to her… ‘I imagined in this dream I was doing this song. We were marching with petition signs to make Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday.’”

    Scott King was excited, Wonder explained, but she also doubted his dream could come true at a time the nation was turning more and more conservative with the rise of Reaganism and New Right politicians in the Sun Belt (the Southern US), a reaction against President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s liberal agenda of the 1960s. But Wonder felt compelled by his dream and the next year he wrote Happy Birthday, for Hotter than July, a 1980 album that peaked at number three in the US charts and number two in the UK. Joined by Scott King, Wonder used his 1981 tour for that album as a worldwide drive to advocate for the holiday.

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