For the rates Venetian gondoliers charge you might expect a massage and a 3-course meal during your cruise of the canals. With the introduction of the Voga Voyage at Loews Coronado Bay Resort Gondola Company, you can at least check the massage off the list.

Your vessel for the journey among the Coronado Cays will be a softly wrapped, sun-warmed massage table. In turn, that table will ride upon an authentic 33-foot gondola that launches from the resort's private marina and then embarks on an hour-long cruise of Mediterranean-like waterways. Forty minutes of that will be occupied by masseurs tending to your physical needs, which includes the laying on of sunscreen before the more serious application of massaging hands. The last ten minutes of the trip will be given to sight-seeing, if you're in any mood for that, while you and your chère company feast on the gondola's supply of champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries.

Booking the $499 Voga Voyage also gets you a free night at the resort and its amenities, spread out on a secluded, 15-acre peninsula. And having saved on airfare to the Italian province, you just might have enough left over for the 3-course meal. It's certainly not what Iago meant when he mentioned "creating the beast with two backs," but this ride has a far less drama and a much happier ending...

For $219 you can enjoy a beautiful room at the Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego, taking advantage of the hotel's three pools, spa, golf course and luxury amenities including breakfast for two. But for the cash poor or adventurous the hotel has come out with the Survivor package. Your rate goes down depending on what you are willing to give up. Forgo breakfast and you are down to $199, give up the honor bar--$179 and so on, all the way down to $19 providing you are willing to go without lights, air conditioning, a bed and all the other niceties of a hotel stay. The package is available from August 16 to 31.

[via Mercury News]

Yet another fancy home for sale is throwing in a luxury car to sweeten the deal. The owner of a four-bedroom home in the San Diego area town of Cardiff is including his 2007 Bentley convertible with fewer than 15,000 miles on it with the home. He was asking more than $2 million for the home but now the price is $1.799 million. But wait, there's more, act now and they'll throw in all staged furniture, too. The contemporary home has ocean views and an open floor plan. The listing is here.

[via San Diego 6]

Another W Hotel is in trouble. We've heard of troubles facing the W in Phoenix but now the W San Diego has a battle of its own ahead. Yesterday Sunstone Hotel Investors Inc. announced that will default on the June mortgage payment for the property. The real estate investment trust cited the travel downturn as well as the opening of other luxury hotels in the area as a reason for being unable to make the payments. Sunstone had sought lower interest rates and made the decision that, like many people in the U.S., it was underwater in its mortgage. So the investors are doing the corporate version of jingle mail and returning it to the lenders. The company says that the property which it purchased for $96 million in 2006 is worth less now. Right now the hotel has a $65 million, fixed-rate commercial mortgage-backed securities loan with a 6.14 percent interest rate due at the start of the year in 2018. This works out to more than $250,000 in debt per room.

A statement from the company says that it ""maintains more than adequate liquidity to support or repay this mortgage" but believes that turning it over to the lenders is in the best interests of stockholders. Sunstone Hotel has said that it may make the same move with selected other mortgaged hotels in its portfolios. It also owns properties under the Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and Fairmont brands. The W San Diego remains open.

San Diego is hoping that when you dock on the West Coast you'll want to pull your yacht into Fifth Avenue Landing. The 12-slip facility welcomes yachts between 65 and 300 feet. It is located near the San Diego Convention Center and offers concierge service, wireless internet connection, parking and controlled access. The marina is part of San Diego's bid to become the boating capital of the West. There are several other marinas in the area including Kona Kai Marina and Shelter Island Marina. The San Diego Superyacht Association was formed in 2008 to bring together the city's leading marine businesses and cater to the megayacht market. The 225 ft Feadship megayacht Attessa already spent several weeks at the facility this year.

[via SYNFO]

It has certainly happened before and as much as it stinks to draw another comparison to the Great Depression it seems country clubs made of 'new money' may follow the same path as one-third of the clubs did back then. Across the U.S. clubs are shutting their gates and greens one after another from the Gold Creek Golf Club in Dawsonville, Georgia to Golf Club of California in San Diego. Even Sea Island in coastal Georgia, which once ranked near the top in golf courses of the nation, recently laid off 400 employees.

As quickly as individuals came into fresh cash it disappeared on Wall Street and the like. $85,000 entrance fees once meant to keep the unworthy out have been reduced to free! I guess the 'old' clubs will continue to hang on -- that's how they earned the term 'old'.

A few years ago the trend was that hotels were being turned into condos. Now the real estate slump has brought the reverse, condos being turned into luxury residence hotels. Constellation Property Group a developer of high end condo projects, has announced domus STAY, a new brand which will launch with the domus@STELLA in San Diego in early 2009. The Stella Condominiums have been converted into temporary residence units with furnished bedrooms, kitchens, dining areas and living rooms. They will offer the domus Pantry food and beverage service and a café concept named Check In. The Check In cafe at domus@STELLA will open with Aussie Chef Raffaele Petrazzuolo, preparing modern Italian-Australian fusion food.

To celebrate its 20th anniversary this fall, the San Diego Automotive Museum (SDAM) is staging a a $75 million Ferrari exhibition. Ferrari: Cavallino Rampante will run from October 1st through the end of the year. Over 30 classic Ferraris will be on display, some for the very first time, during the exhibit which is being mounted in partnership with the Ferrari Owners Club of America.

SDAM will host a variety of events during the three-month show, including a two day Autostrada dei Deserto (From Shore to Sands) rally on Oct. 10-11 complete with a lavish party at the chic W Hotel San Diego. The first half of the exhibit will feature historic racing Ferraris, and the second half will focus on classic touring vehicles including a 1963 Ferrari 250 GT/L "Lusso", valued at over $2.5 million, and the beautiful 1965 275 GTB pictured above. See the gallery for more.

The Sapphire Tower condominium project in downtown San Diego takes a unique approach to attracting attention by using public art. While most public art is at the base of a structure, the Sapphire Tower's Borgonovo sculpture will stretch 80 feet from tip to tail. The design from artist Betsy Schulz is a modern metal and glass structure with two different textured glass colors set as the shimmering gemstones. Borgonovo will be made of two-tiered mesh, aluminum panels, textured and laminated blue and clear glass, and blue-LED string lights to illuminate the glass at night. Borgonovo is one of two major art pieces being installed at Sapphire Tower both designed by Schultz and costing just under a half a million dollars total.

Sapphire Tower is a 32-story project located on the southwest corner of Kettner Boulevard and A Street in downtown San Diego. The project will include 97 units in one and two bedroom, loft and penthouse layouts. Building amenities include a pool, hot tub, sundeck and gym. The building is set to be finished by the end of the year and prices start in the $600,00s with penthouses starting at $2.5 million.

Housing developers are really getting desperate. I've seen a car offered with purchase before but never the offer of an additional house. But in Escondido, a town in Southern California, Michael Crews Development will give away a four-bedroom Escondido row home worth $400,000 with the purchase of one of their $1.6 million-and-up estates in the Royal View community. It's a controversial move but one that the developer is willing to make in order to move inventory. The row homes originally sold for $540,000 before the housing slump.

Another lavish new resort is set to open in the San Diego area. The Grand Del Mar plans to open on October 6, 2007. The 249-room resort located on a coastal canyon preserve near Del Mar and the design was inspired by the design style of 1920's architectural visionary Addison Mizner, (perhaps best known for his work in Boca Raton, Florida). The resort has the look of an old-world Mediterranean estate and is on 380 acres amid The Grand Golf Club, an 18-hole Tom Fazio-designed course. There are four swimming pools of varying sizes including an adults-only spa pool, a children's pool and one for toddlers. Other features include tennis courts, a fitness center and a 21,000-aquare-foot spa. The resort includes six restaurants, the Addison, a stand-alone fine dining restaurant, the Clubhouse Grill, Amaya, an all-day restaurant with the hotel, a poolside venue with lighter fare, a gourmet shop with coffees, pastries and sandwiches to go and the Lobby Lounge which will offer cocktails and aperitifs, as well as afternoon tea. The resort is located 20 minutes from San Diego.

The resort also has eight two-story villas that are fractional ownership property. The large three-bedroom villas are 1/10 ownership which entitles owners to five vacation weeks each year, with additional nights based on availability. Details include a 1,500-square-foot master suite with his and her baths, covered terraces, outdoor fireplaces, outdoor Jacuzzis, two-car garages, luxury golf carts, media rooms, elevators and even a baby grand piano. Each villa also has ten plasma TVs and home offices that includes computers with printers. Prices for each share start at $400,000.

We are back in San Diego today because I couldn't see this development and not comment on it. The Shapery Park Tower as conceived by developer Sandor Shapery is in the news because the design has been called phallic by Gwynne Pugh, an architect hired by the downtown redevelopment agency to review building designs . Shapery has said that he thought the 40-story residential tower, created by architect C.W. Kim resembled the shape of a flower. Now he finds himself in the awkward position of having to perhaps tone down the design.

The building is to contain 90 hotel/condominium suites, 30 one bedroom condominium suites, 42 two bedroom condominium suites, one penthouse condominium suite, a spa/health club, pool and 164 parking spaces located in the project parking garage. The building would be crowned by a restaurant, a roof-top bar and an observatory topped out with back lit canvas petals.

The design of the tower had and additional purpose, energy conservation. The plan was to use ice blocks in the air conditioning system and then reuse the melted water in the swimming pool, laundry and for irrigation. The project's water features are also designed to function as cooling towers for the air-conditioning system. Photovoltaic glass will be installed on the south side building balconies to reduce each tenant's electrical requirements.

I've always thought the Aegon Center in Louisville had a similar problem, especially when lit up at night. Boing Boing has an excellent list going of buildings and structures that also resemble nature's most excellent design.

The latest luxury condo-hotel complex in San Diego, the building formerly known as The Diegan has promised to bring a new level of luxury to San Diego. The 23-story downtown condominium-hotel will be home to 185 condo units (that include 24 penthouses). The Diegan, which will now be known as the Setai San Diego (we've covered the Setai in South Beach multiple times) is being developed with the House of Blues. The interior was created by famed hotel designer Dodd Mitchell and feature 10-foot ceilings and interiors that use lots of imported stone, marble, exotic woods and art glass. Units will be furnished with Italian furniture and silk draperies and the bathrooms will have floor-to-ceiling stone walls finished in Jerusalem Bone, teak vanities and limestone floors. Penthouses will have balconies and full Italian kitchens with designer appliances. Amenities will include a business center, restaurant, lobby bar, spa, meeting rooms, a private screening room, a recording studio, a fitness center, a pool deck with a bar and cabanas, and The House of Blues.

The units are being offered from the $400,000s to $3.8 million. But there may be trouble in the soon-to-be-launched paradise, The San Diego Union Tribune has a provocative piece on the developer Steve Rebeil, whose past is full of lawsuits, odd real estate dealings and even a tax-related felony conviction. Apparently in June when he was testifying in a child support dispute with a former girlfriend who is the mother of his 6-year-old son he said that he is not certain that the condo part of the building will work out. He said that he may be returning deposits to those who have bought in to the project. Another partner in his development firm has also said that consultants are advising them to run it as a hotel. That's quite a shift from the beginnings of the condo-hotel boom that we have seen over the past few years. The most recent run on condominium-hotel projects began because hotels couldn't fill their rooms and went condo as a way of making sure they had guaranteed money. Now with the shaky state of real estate, the reversal seems to have begun.

Sex sells, and in the land of upscale hotels designers are taking advantage of that in a bolder way than ever before. Although photos of women in fishnet stockings, scantily-clad workers, and red patent leather furniture isn't a new idea in hotels and restaurants, it hasn't been something commonly seen in the luxury market. But the Ivy Hotel in San Diego isn't letting that discourage its new style: sexy sexy sexy. Michael Kelly, one of the Ivy's co-owners, was quoted as saying "We were looking for something a little voyeuristic, a little seductive."

See-through shower overlooking the bed: voyeuristic? Check. Plunging v-necks on the hostesses and black lace on the waitresses: seductive? Check.

Not my thing, but seems like they got what they were aiming for! Rooms start at $450/night.

Can a spa treatment burn calories? spaViolet, a spa in Cardiff-by-the-Sea in San Diego offers a treatment called the Shrinking Violet. They say this UltraViolet Infrared wrap can burn up to 1200 calories in a sitting. The treatment uses infrared heat and can also improve blood circulation, boost immunity, eliminate toxins and minimize achy joints. The 50-minute treatment costs $75. The spa offers a wide variety of other treatments including scrubs, waxing, facials and microdermabrasion. They also do permanent makeup, eyelash extensions and other beauty services. They recommend their The Way You Look Tonight as a preparation for a special evening. It includes a eucalyptus steam, Violet's Essential Facial. the UltraViolet Infra-red treatment, Seaweed Wrapsody, and end with a Hairball and Vichy shower. It sells for $300 and takes around 3 hours.