Now in its 18th successful year, Life Ball has gained a reputation as Europe’s most dazzling spectacular AIDS fund-raising event, reinventing the glamorous Vienna-style ball tradition inside the historic gothic Vienna City Hall.

This year Life Ball, normally held in May, has been moved to July 17 to coincide with the 18th International AIDS Conference, also being held in Vienna. Life Ball tickets are much sought-after and every year there are 80,000+ requests worldwide but only 3,780 exclusive Life Ball ticket holders attend the event.

Steele Luxury Travel, the Life Ball exclusive North America tour operator, offers the ultimate package. Life Ball Land Packaging includes:

- Four (4) night five-star accommodations at one of Vienna’s most extravagant hotels
- Do & Co transfers to and from hotel
- Viennese coffee and pastry tasting at Demel, one of Vienna’s most classic confectionary houses
- Welcome dinner at Do &Co’s Albertina Restaurant at Albertina Museum
- Vienna City Tour
- Dinner at restaurant Motto
- Motto Bar and Vienna Nightlife Tour
- Viennese Wine Tour & Lunch
- Post Life Ball Brunch Party at Halle
- One 2010 Life Ball ticket.

With every Life Ball Package purchased, Steele Luxury Travel will match the Life Ball ticket price and donate $200 to AIDS LIFE.

Prices are $4,200 per person including business class roundtrip airfare and land package, $3,200 per person including economy class round-trip airfare and land package, and $1,950 per person for the land package only.  A single occupancy charge will apply to single travelers. Travelers also have the option to extend their stay in Europe.

On July 17, at the Life Ball 2010 Opening Ceremony, international designers Calvin Klein, Diane von Furstenberg and Kenneth Cole will present an extravagant Grand Finale Fashion Show with a series of music and dance performances by international artists in front of the picturesque Vienna City Hall.

Each year, some 40,000 Viennese, international media, and visitors from around the globe gather on the square to experience this glittering spectacle.  Past guests have included Donatella Versace, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Vivienne Westwood, Roberto Cavalli, Gianfranco Ferré, Missoni and Moschino and many other leading designers have presented their creations in previous years.

Elton John, the Scissor Sisters, Grace Jones and Kylie Minogue have all performed at this event; and Fran Drescher, Eva Longoria, Sharon Stone, Ivana Trump and other international celebrities have attended.

Life Ball attracts huge interest in the international media and is broadcast live on Austrian National TV primetime.  The Life Ball is organized by AIDS LIFE, an independent non-profit organization, created with the objective to raise money to support people in areas of the world most affected by HIV and AIDS.

This mega-event has raised funds over $16 million to date for AIDS groups in Europe, Africa and Asia.

For more information visit www.lifeball.org

The Kiss, with its gold symbols and romantic appeal is one of the best known paintings in the modern era. Gustav Klimt is best known for The Kiss, despite a career full of extraordinary works, with the others sometimes overlooked.

The glowing themes of The Kiss painting by Klimt showed lovers intertwined into one being, symbolizing the strength of this bond. Some art traditionalists rejected this for its use of eroticism, but others found it refreshing.

Gustav Klimt’s ground breaking art style courted controversy but his support from key areas of Austrian society helped him to continue his style. Key features of Klimt’s work were intensive colors, golden backgrounds & ornamental layouts.

The Museum of Applied Arts and the Belvedere are best known for housing Klimt’s art in the modern day, after much was taken by the Nazis or fell into private collections. Much has been restored to Vienna and Austria. Klimt’s The Kiss is on show around the world in reproduction form too.

The Kiss uses two lovers intertwined with bold jewelry and shapes to illustrate his symbolic intentions and this method was continued in Klimts Beethoven Frieze and Stoclet Frieze, which further established Klimt’s art.

The style of Gustav Klimt is closely tied in with Art Nouveau and Arts and crafts, with the extravagant, golden styles to convey his feelings into a decadent painting.

The Kiss has supreme popularity amongst even those who know little about art and is a rare case of a painting becoming well known with so many people across the world.

Salzburg, Austria has been described as both architecturally and scenically, one of the most beautiful cities in all of Europe. Salzburg is the place, known for its famous musical son, Mozart.

The renowned Salzburg festival began in 1877, stopped in 1910 then in 1920 the festival was reborn in to what we know today.

Many of the most famous names in music have been involved with the festival including Richard Strauss, Arturo Toscanini and even the Trapp Family Singers performed in 1937, long before they were depicted in the popular film The Sound of Music.

Originally the festival was focused around hometown favorite, Mozart. But now the festival has an incredibly broad program which is recognized as the most important festival of its type in the world.

Highlights from this year’s festival include: Beethoven Cycle with the Bremen Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, Liszt programming with the Vienna Philharmonic and Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte, amongst many others.

Dramatic presentations include Crime and Punishment by Dostoyesvsky, Lewis Carroll’s Alice presented in the Young Directors Project and the traditional annual production of Hugo von Hoffmannsthal’s Everyman.

For more on the Salzburg Festival, Click Here

Salzburg Festival
July 25 – August 30, 2009
Various Locations throughout Salzburg
Salzburg, Austria
+43.662.8045.500

The luxury Ring Hotel is located in Vienna, Austria’s prestige location with a world of culture, art and shopping at your doorstep. In the heart of Vienna, The Ring Hotel offers wonderful views of the famous Ringstrasse and Vienna State Opera.

The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel, offers guests a warm and welcoming atmosphere by blending a new and contemporary design with charming historical features. This designer boutique hotel offers the perfect balance of style along with casual ambiance.

With a unique design experience, the 68 spacious guest rooms and elegant suites are a comfortable mix of contemporary and classical furniture complemented by innovative lighting. Many of the guest rooms reveal a fabulous view of the historic Vienna ring road – Ringstrasse.

Drings is the Ring Hotel’s stylishly chic bar and serves a novel selection of exclusive vodka cocktails. The restaurant, At Eight, offers a concept of ‘aroma cuisine’ consisting of various tasting components finished with herbal oils.

The Ring Day Spa is a relaxing sanctuary, comprised of breezy colors, warm woods. Your senses will be stimulated by a multitude of textures, gentle music and therapeutic lighting.

You can choose from various treatments at the Ring Spa, which includes a fitness area and private treatment room for soothing massages. There is also a steam bath and sauna with a fantastic view overlooking Vienna.

So if you are lucky enough to visit beautiful Vienna, stay at chicest and most modern design hotel in the city – The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel.

The Ring Hotel
Kaerntner Ring 8
A-1010 Vienna, Austria
Phone: +43 1 22 1 22
Fax: +43 1 22 1 22-900

In a city as resolutely classical as Vienna, even the Bauhaus facade of the Levante Parliament hotel stands out as something stylistically extraordinary. Equally surprising is what’s inside — a contemporary take on the era’s obsession with monochrome and geometric forms that’s just as striking as the typical clean-lined design hotel, and a good deal more livable.

The 74-room Levante Parliament hotel opened several years ago in a 1908 Biedermeier building. Natural stone, dark wood, glass and chrome — with a dab of bright colors is used for the modern architecture interior.

One improvement comes in the area of materials, what seems like miles of marble, glass, and exotic woods. Accents in orange and copious black-and-white photo prints break up the Levante’s minimalism, and the rooms are filled with inviting creature comforts, from down duvets and plush towels to the sort of high-tech gadgetry that’s quickly becoming indispensable — you don’t know you need underfloor heating or speakers in the bathroom until you try going without them for a while.

There’s a restaurant named after the glass sculptor Ioan Nemtol, the creator of many of the orange glass pieces you see around the place, and there’s an arrangement with the Palais Auersperg next door for events and conference space. The Parliament building, sensibly enough, is right next door, and the historic city center is just to the east, making most everything in this compact and walkable city easily accessible.

The hotel could also serve as an art gallery. Everywhere you look, there are glass works by Romanian artist Ioan Nemtoi (he also co-designed the hotel’s Nemtoi restaurant), or photographs by Viennese photographer Curt Themessl. All of the art is for sale.

The Levante Parliament
Auerspergstrasse 9
Vienna, Austria

Salzburg Castle or better known as Festung Hohensalzburg or Hohensalzburg Fortress is the mightiest fortress of Central Europe.

This powerful castle sits in a prominent position, as Salzburg’s prime attraction and most dominant feature of the city’s skyline. The historic Salzburg Castle should not to be missed during any visit to Salzburg.

The first record of a fortification on the southern side of the Mönchsberg Mountain dates back to Roman time, but this is not certain. However, it would make sense: from the position of Hohensalzburg Castle one can see the surroundings of Salzburg and the Salzach river better than anywhere else in the entire city.

Prince Archbishop Eberhard (1060 to 1088) built the first castle on the Festungsberg in 1077. Initially, this was little more than a bailey with a wooden wall, serving mostly for the protection of Imperial troops of the Holy Roman Empire. However, during the “Investiturstreit”, a struggle for power between Pope Gregor VII. and Emperor Henry IV., Prince Archbishop Eberhard decided to stand by the Pope.

After 1933, Salzburg became one of the areas in Austria that were most fiercely targeted by Nazi underground terrorists, many of them exiled Austrians themselves, fighting for a union with Nazi Germany.

When some Nazis launched an attack in Lamprechtshausen near Salzburg, they were imprisoned in the fortress in 1934. This was the last time that Hohensalzburg Castle held prisoners. In more recent years, Hohensalzburg was renovated extensively and so looks into a shiny future.