日常英語 下榻海底

Here's a hotel worth writing home about: a company in Poland plans to build tourist accommodation under the sea. The structure can be towed to a suitable location and placed on supports on the sea bed.

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The 'Water Discus' will be made up of an underwater disc containing 22 bedrooms with sea views, connected by lift and stairs to a disc above the surface containing other hotel facilities.

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Robert Bursiewicz, a project manager at Deep Ocean Technology, says: "Nowadays it's possible to build submarines which go deeper than 500m below the sea surface, so building an underwater hotel is not a problem."

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In fact, they don't plan to have the hotel very deep. Water acts like a filter for sunlight, and below 15m most colours, apart from blue, are washed out. And we all want to see colourful marine life, don't we?

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But this isn't the first hotel to offer underwater views from the bedrooms. The two-bedroom Jules' Undersea Lodge, off the coast of Florida, has been taking in guests 10m beneath the surface since 1986.

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The company that operates the hotel also runs a course on scuba diving for beginners to help get guests down and into the hotel. It is accessible only through an opening at the bottom.

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And you'll find all the usual amenities in the room, according to Teresa McKinna, Jules's chief financial officer. It has a television, air conditioning and wi-fi. But for the staff, simple things like cleaning and changing bed linen can be challenging, since the lodge is submerged in sea water.

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"It actually takes quite a lot of work to get anything down there," she says. "We have to put everything in waterproof boxes and attach weights to them to counter their buoyancy."

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The hotel has suitably sized waterproof boxes so that pizzas can be delivered by divers to guests who order them for their evening meal.

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And after a meal, if you can't sleep because of the excitement of the experience, you don't have to count sheep. You'll fall asleep quicker if you count fish.