Capital Gate Tower is Four Times as Crooked as the Leaning Tower of Pisa

If you thought the Leaning Tower of Pisa was messed up, get a load of the Capital Gate tower currently being constructed in Abu Dhabi. Actually, saying it is "messed up" is incorrect given that the 18 degree westward incline was completely intentional. In fact, the project's architects have submitted a joint application to the Guinness Book of Records to recognize the tower as the 'most inclined in the world.' In order to support the awkward angle of the 35-story structure, the design called for a foundation of extremely dense reinforced steel mesh and 490 piles sunk nearly 100 feet into the ground. We can only wonder how many slaves will die or get injured building that.

A Visit to Zermatt, Switzerland

St Moritz may have the glamour, Verbier may have the cool, Wengen may have the pistes, but Zermatt beats them all – Zermatt has the Matterhorn. No other natural or human structure in the whole country is so immediately recognizable; indeed, in most people's minds the Matterhorn stands for Switzerland.

Emerging from Zermatt station is an experience in itself: this one little village – which has managed, much to its credit, to cling onto its old brown chalets and atmospheric twisting alleys – welcomes everybody, regardless of financial status, and the station square is where all worlds collide. Backpackers and hikers rub shoulders with high-society glitterati amid a fluster of tour groups, electric taxis and horse-drawn carriages. Everyone has come to see the mountain. Zermatt has no off-season – it's busy year-round – yet the crowds never seem to matter. You may have to shoulder your way down the main street, but the terrain all around is expansive enough that with a little effort you could vanish into the wilderness, leaving everyone else behind.

The small area around Zermatt features 36 mountains over 4000m, a statistic as enticing to summer hikers as to winter skiers. The skiing boom of the 1960s saw the hamlet double in size, but today it's still acceptably small and low-key, rooted to the valley floor in a natural bowl open to the south. The Gornergrat railway lifts you up to a spectacular vantage point overlooking the Monte Rosa massif, with its summit the Dufourspitze (4634m) – the highest point in Switzerland. The skiing is superb, but in many ways the hiking is better, with some of the most scenic mountain walks in the whole country within easy reach of the village.

Canada's Finest Four-Season Resort,Whistler

WHISTLER, 56km beyond Squamish and 125km from Vancouver, is Canada's finest four-season resort, and frequently ranks among most people's world top-five winter ski resorts. Skiing and snowboarding are clearly the main activities, but all manner of other winter sports are possible and in summer the lifts keep running to provide supreme highline hiking and other outdoor activities (not to mention North America's finest summer skiing). It is a busy place, be warned – over two million lift tickets are sold here every winter, more than at any other North American resort. Fortunately it also has one of the continent's largest ski areas, so the crowds are spread thinly over the resort's 200-plus trails and twelve alpine bowls.

The resort consists of two adjacent but separate mountains – Whistler (2182m) and Blackcomb (2284m) – each with their own extensive lift and chair systems (but a joint ticket scheme). The mountains can be accessed from a total of five bases, including lift systems to both mountains from the resort's heart, the purpose-built and largely pedestrianized Whistler Village, the tight-clustered focus of many hotels, shops, restaurants and après-ski activity. The gondola (cable-car) for Whistler Mountain also leaves from the Village. Around this core are two other "village" complexes, Upper Village, about a kilometre to the northeast and the newer Village North about 700m to the north. Around 6km to the south of Whistler Village is Whistler Creekside, which has typically been a cheaper alternative but is now undergoing a fifty-million dollar redevelopment that will see its accommodation and local services duplicating those of its famous neighbour.

A Visit To Vail ,CO

Compared to most other Colorado ski towns, Vail is a new creation: only a handful of farmers lived here before the resort opened in 1952. Built as a relatively unimaginative collection of Tyrolean-style chalets and concrete-block condos, at least the town is a compact and pedestrian-friendly place, albeit pockmarked by pricey fashion boutiques and often painfully pretentious restaurants. Vail Resorts, which operates the ski area at Vail, also owns an even more exclusive gated resort, Beaver Creek, eleven miles further west on I-70. Lift tickets between the two are interchangeable, which – given the exceptional quality of the snow, and the sheer size and variety of terrain available – produces a formidable winter sport destination.