Phileas Fogg Would Weep: Travel Around The World In Seven Days

Four star country resort Hotel Rangá has been a favoured local city escape destination for years. Only an hour out of Reykjavík, right off the ring road in the Southern low lands between Hella and Hvolsvöllur, Rangá offers views of Mt. Hekla, river Rangá and the Northern lights (“subject to availability”) accompanied by all the luxuries of the civilized world, including a fine dining restaurant and a bar menu featuring a different martini for each day of the week.

With its brand new World Pavilion™, featuring seven suites, each built and decorated in a style inspired by a different continent, Hótel Rangá will soon dish out global as well as local flavours.

Here you can travel around the world in seven days” says the hotel manager Björn Eriksson. “It is an ecological choice too: you don’t have to take a single flight.”

In the Antarctica suite, everything is black and white, luxurious and futuristic. “I went crazy on this one,” laughs Björn, the mastermind and head designer behind the pavilion, while leaning on the Jacuzzi in the corner of the living room. “I call it the suite for aristocrat penguins.”

A couple of metres down the hall brings the visitor to another world – or at least another continent. The ceiling of the African suite resembles a tent, lowering in the corners of the room. Björn plays a little solo on the African drums while I take a closer look at the tribal artwork that serves to decorate the room.

The walls of the Asian room are painted with an interior coating rarely found in Europe to give them the right kind of soft feel, Björn tells me, while the ceiling is built according to models from 13th century Japan. Futon and tea served at a Japanese Chabudai style table come without saying.

Everything from furniture to decoration items and building materials are especially flown in from the respective continents.

Currently Björn is busy mixing a unique soundtrack for each room to complete the multi-sensory experience. In the Australian suite, for example, a didgeridoo concerto will start up as soon as the electricity is switched on.

The suites still need some touching up before the summer season, but the only one that still resembles a construction site rather than a hotel room is the Icelandic suite. Then again, it only makes for a truly authentic experience of the post-financial crisis Reykjavík, with its many half-built torsos. “It is like, take a hammer and build yourself!” Björn says laughing.

Hótel Rangá 851 Hella

What we think: Here you can travel around the world in seven days