A painting by French neo-impressionist Paul Signac and estimated to be worth 100,000 euro has been discovered in Hotel Spaander in Volendam, spokes person Marcel Rutten confirmed to AD yesterday.

The painting was a payment for the painter’s stay at the hotel in 1894. Hotel Spaander has a collection of about 1,400 paintings. It billed itself as a painter’s hotel back in the day, still does, and apparently it was not uncommon that residing artists paid their bills with their art. The Signac’s value though was unknown to management, which estimates that this is the best paid bill in its history.

The Signac representing a view of the harbour used to hang off a rusty nail in the lobby. Artists who wish to stay at the hotel can still do so in exchange for paintings, as long as the subject is Volendam, according to RTL Nieuws.

Signac was a contemporary of Vincent van Gogh, with whom he corresponded.

The painting’s true value was discovered during the preparations of an exhibition of the hotel’s art for the Zuiderzeemuseum in Enkhuizen.

(Photo of the roof of Hotel Spaander by Flickr user FaceMePLS, some rights reserved)

The owner of an Amsterdam canal apartment had to suffer the indignity of just seeing a wall whenever he looked out of his bathroom window, so interior designers i29 fixed that for him: they added a vertical garden to the wall.

This was enough to land them the Bathroom Design Award 2010 in the Home category. (Unfortunately, the entire ’site’ is made of Flash, so I cannot link to the 2010 page directly. Just click “Winnaars 2010.”)

The other category, Hotel, was won by Marjolein Garritsen for the bathroom in the Ilyushin Il-18 based hotel room we wrote about two weeks ago.

(Photo: Horizon Photoworks, used with permission. Link: Bright.nl)

Designed by Belgian artist Carsten Höller, you are looking at a revolving hotel room installed in Rotterdam’s Boijmans van Beuningen Museum. You can book this art hotel room for somewhere between 275 and 450 euro a night and have access to the entire museum to visit and enjoy in peace. The big glass plates that the furniture is placed on is what revolves very slowly.

This hotel room is part of an exhibition by Höller entitled Divided Divided, running until 25 April.

(Link: rtl.nl, Photo: boijmans.nl)

This is the inside of a popular Soviet era airliner, the Ilyushin Il-18, which was turned into a big hotel room at Teuge Airport.

It’s got a whirlpool, separate shower, infrared sauna, mini-bar, 3 flatscreen TVs, and so on.

For more remarkable hotels in the Netherlands, see here.

(Source photo: Hotelsuites.nl. Link and more photos: Gizmodo.)

According to a press release issued by the Westin Resort on the island of Aruba (part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands), the hotel is offering couples a 210 euro cheque (300 USD) for conceiving babies at their establishment.

“Couples who were inspired by Aruba’s coral mating ritual during their fall getaway (September 1 – December 19, 2009), and can prove they conceived during their stay [by way of a doctor's note], will receive a $300 ‘Conception Credit’ towards a return visit to the resort in 2010. With all the stress of preparing for a new arrival, the expecting parents will surely be in need of a pre-baby Caribbean retreat.”

Just remember that Dutchman Joran van der Sloot, the guy who allegedly kidnapped and killed American Natalee Holloway pretty much ruined any kind of tourism on the island for a very long time. I guess desperate times call for desperate measures.

(Links: bizz, frommers)

‘Gecekondu’ is a type of housing in Turkey that literally means “built in one day,” and that exploits a legal Turkish loophole that says that if you built a house in one night, the authorities cannot tear it down. Estimates say that up to half of the buildings in Istanbul are ‘Gecekondular’ (plural).

It is also the name of a one-room hotel in Amsterdam that DUS architects came up with. The building is entirely made of big square shopping bags and sits atop a pontoon. Visitors can draw the bridge at night to keep unwelcome visitors away. Staying a night is ‘free,’ that is to say, you are expected to perform chores in payment.

Parool calls it surprisingly cool (Dutch).

(Photo: DUS Architects, which has an extensive web page about this project.)

Camping ‘t Buitengewoon Groenhoff in Vriescheloo, Groningen, is using sewer pipes to build a ‘bear hotel,’ although intended to house paying human guests instead of bears.

The ‘caves’ will each have a bed and two chairs, and are meant to house the participants of team-building sessions and similar outings. Apparently, the brainstorm that led to this idea was drenched in beer. Staying a day under these spartan conditions will set one back about 100 euro, a price that includes three meals.

The camping is not the first to use sewer pipes as rooms, a hotel in Austria has done something similar before.

See also: 25 years of wine barrels as hotel rooms.

(Photo: ‘t Buitengewoon Groenhoff. Link: Bright.)

Hotels in Amsterdam literally come in all shapes and sizes, from villas to houseboats. More often than not, they are already booked, overpriced (just compared them to Brussels and even Paris) and I’m sorry to say, do not have the friendliest service in Europe.

Instead of trying to fool people with fancy words like many hotels do, the Hans Brinker Hotel in Amsterdam just tells it like it is: they are the worst. They have even turned this fact into an English book, which you can buy from Amazon.co.uk. Apparently, it’s only in English and aimed at the British market, surely a substantial amount of their business. At 25 euro (!) a night, I’m not surprised.

So basically, if you’ve checked into the worst hotel in town, you can’t complain afterwards. And according to the NRC newspaper, if you plan to get very drunk, you can ask to have your arm stamped with a map showing the location of the hotel and the words: “Please return me to the Hans Brinker.”

If that’s not service, I don’t know what is!

(Link: nrc.nl, images: Hans Brinker hotel )

City hotel Queens in Amersfoort has a serious problem that is basically killing their business. The city council decided to place a urinal, albeit a nifty one that rises above ground at 10 pm, right on their terrace. Can you picture taking a leak while people are having a drink on a terrace watching you? Would you want to be watching while having your drink? Ickeepoo. Well, other people don’t want to either, and so the hotel owner is pissed (pun intended).

After having spent hundreds of thousands buying and renovating an old building on the popular Groenenmarkt, the city council chose her outdoor terrace as the place for the urinal. And according to the owner, Paula Brouwer, the day before she was to receive the terrace permit, there was talk of a urinal, and her permit has been tied up in red tape ever since.

The city council came up with a deal: we’ll give you the permit, but you have to close your terrace at 10 pm. All the other terraces are allowed to stay open until 1 am, so imagine how much business she’d be losing. She has refused and has lawyered up. Why does this have a maffia feel to it? It’s also proof positive the city screwed up.

(Link: ad.nl, photo: urilift)

The Vrouwe van Stavoren hotel in Stavoren, Friesland, has been offering Swiss wine barrels as hotel rooms for the past 25 years. The barrels with a volume of 14,500 litres are furnished with two single beds, a small living room with TV, and a bathroom with a shower and a toilet. They are located on the porch of the main hotel. Owner Bauke Kolk copied the idea from a foreign hotel. It has been so successful that there’s an actual waiting list for those who want to stay in one of the barrels.

Good news for the hobbit wannabees among us though: Kolk has bought 8 more barrels, French ones from the château Corcelles that were used to store Beaujolais. These will have room for a double bed; Kolk believes that these are more suited to young couples. The French barrels are currently located at a carpenter’s in Stavoren, where they are presumably being made rock-proof.

The hotel is named after a legend (Aarne-Thompson index 736A) that explains the decline of the once proud city of Stavoren into a mere village (though the real reason is really more prosaic).

Via Zibb (Dutch).