Stay and Play

Are you bored with boutique hotels? Does the phrase "designer accommodation" fill you with ennui as you contemplate the unvarying Minimalism and terrible pretension that it so often conjures up? Then Swedish artist turned hotelier Mikael Genberg can help you. Located in Västerås—one of Sweden's oldest cities and just 100 km west of Stockholm—his Hotel Woodpecker and Otter Inn will bring out the inner child in any jaded traveler.

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The Hotel Woodpecker, tel: (46-70) 775 5393, is a little red hut perched among the branches of a huge, old oak tree in the middle of Västerås'...