Editor's Note

When you look at the exquisite image here and those with the story beginning on Page 8 -- a hotel carved from pure ice -- what would best describe your response?

(a) I'd be thrilled to tour this unique hostelry, then enjoy the memories over a warming beverage in a heated, insulated and very traditional hotel room.

(b) I totally want to sleep there.

Post staff writer Juliet Eilperin may have surprised herself, but she is definitely the latter kind of person, as you can read in the piece that accompanies the photos. And, in that way, she perfectly represents the spirit of the Magazine's travel franchise. We go for the kind of travel where you dig in and get your hands dirty or your feet cold, where a voyage is first and foremost a surefire way to develop a plotline.

I'm not necessarily talking about adventure travel in the classic sense of riding rapids or climbing mountains. I mean adventure in the sense of going to great lengths to put yourself somewhere that's a long way from the cozily familiar -- creating enough distance between traveler and routine to pretty much guarantee an experience worth writing home about.

I have to admit that my first thought when I saw those beds of ice was, "Checkout, please!" But the more I considered it, the more I realized that some of my most memorable travel experiences involved less-than-traditional sleeping quarters.

Broke and backpacking on the Spanish island of Ibiza, I bedded down in an abandoned beach house with vaguely menacing French graffiti on the walls. All night I listened to an impromptu battle of the bands: the waves pounding on the rocks 30 yards away versus the crackle and pop of the seaweed I'd piled beneath my sleeping bag to cushion the cement floor. In Scotland, a wrong turn led to an isolated country church, whitewashed and ancient, nestled between two bald mountains and surrounded by sheep. The caretaker took pity and let me and my friends sleep inside, among the empty pews. In the Ten Thousand Islands of southwest Florida, a canoe trip through mangrove channels ran afoul of wind and tide. Night was falling with no known dry land in reach. My companions and I were paddling as hard as we could just to keep from getting blown to sea. As the mangrove forests faded to black, our hopes threatened to go with them. In the last moments of light, we noticed a mound of broken shells to starboard. That ancient midden, laid down over centuries by Calusa Indians, proved to be our salvation -- and the evening's bed. Hard, sharp and unforgettable.

Even if all the above doesn't make you want to run out and find your own bed of nails, or ice, to sleep on, it still makes a darn good story.

Tom Shroder can be reached at shrodert@washpost.com.