Sometimes we need to go to weird and wonderful places, visit unique and fun places and enjoy unusual travel experiences, just to be doing something different. Just to enjoy life again…
THINGS TO DO:
Visit some upside-down houses – Step inside houses where the floors float above your head and the furniture clings to the ceiling.
Around the world, upside-down houses turn everyday rooms into playful photo spots, designed to mess with perspective and spark a bit of fun.
Each one offers a chance to walk on the “ceiling,” pose in impossible positions, and leave with photos that make people look twice.
…And upside-down houses are just the beginning. From unusual buildings and curious attractions to places that seem almost too strange to be real, this collection brings together some of the world’s weirdest and most wonderful places to visit.
PLACES TO STAY:
Located 6 km from Quepos and surrounded by vegetation, this is one very beautiful and unique experience.
The hotel room is actually in a 1965 Boeing 727 airplane that has been converted into a luxury hotel suite. The airplane is perched on a 50-foot pedestal overlooking the jungle and the Pacific Ocean, providing stunning views from every angle.
Inside the airplane, guests can find two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchenette, a dining room, and a terrace.
The interior has been beautifully restored, with hand-carved teak paneling and comfortable furnishings, making it a truly unique and unforgettable accommodation option. Would you like to stay here?…
You should check out our article about: The 12 Most Unique Stays & Craziest Hotels You Can Book (Unique & Unusual Places To Stay)
THINGS TO DO:
Visit the Hill of Crosses, a remarkable pilgrimage site about 12 km north of Šiauliai in northern Lithuania. The hill is covered with around 200,000 crosses, placed here by visitors over many decades.
People leave crosses here for many reasons, including prayer, faith, remembrance, personal milestones and hopes for the future. Walking among the thousands of crosses is an unusual experience, and you can also bring your own small cross to add to the collection.
This is one of those places that feels very different from an ordinary sightseeing stop — quiet, unusual and deeply personal.
THINGS TO DO:
The Bone House (Beinhaus) in Hallstatt is a fascinating and unusual attraction containing more than 600 painted human skulls. The skulls are decorated with flowers, names and dates, reflecting a local tradition of remembering the dead and making use of the limited burial space in Hallstatt’s small cemetery.
It is a quiet, rather extraordinary place that offers visitors a glimpse into a burial tradition found in this part of Austria.
Hallstatt is a renowned UNESCO World Heritage village in Austria’s Salzkammergut region, and home to this very ‘strange’ chapel… (read more about Hallstatt…)
If you’re into stuff like this, discover: The Meaning Behind The Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos)
or
Read more about the tradition of All Saints Day.
PLACES TO STAY:
Stay in a hotel where the rooms are individually themed cold rooms that include hand-carved ice furnishings by international artists.
The Ice hotel in Jukkasjärvi in northern Sweden, features rooms entirely made out of sculptured ice, but you will be sleeping snug and warm in thermal sleeping bags on beds covered in reindeer hides.
THINGS TO DO:
Vienna’s Hundertwasser buildings look as though they have stepped out of a colourful storybook, with uneven floors, bright colours, unusual windows and greenery growing across the architecture.
They are a wonderful example of how a building can be turned into a work of art rather than simply being a practical place to live.
THINGS TO DO:
Descend beneath Paris to explore a fascinating network of underground tunnels where the bones of more than six million people are kept.
The Catacombs were created in former limestone quarries, and the bones were transferred here in the late 18th and 19th centuries when Parisian cemeteries were becoming overcrowded.
It is certainly one of the most unusual places to visit in Paris — and a side of the city you won’t see above ground.
THINGS TO DO:
Meet the thousands of rats that freely roam the Karni Mata Temple in Deshnoke, Rajasthan. The rats, known as kabas, are considered sacred and are fed and cared for by devotees. According to local belief, they are reincarnations of Karni Mata’s devotees and family members.
Visitors can walk through the temple grounds alongside the rats, making this one of India’s most unusual and memorable places to visit. Spotting one of the rare white rats is considered especially auspicious.
You might be interested to read more: Exploring the Mysteries of Teotihuacán: Ancient Marvels near Mexico City
THINGS TO DO:
How about a day filled with flowers… everywhere? In Xochimilco, just south of Mexico City, you can climb aboard a brightly painted trajineras and drift through a network of canals surrounded by flowers, plants and the traditional chinampas, the remarkable raised gardens that have been cultivated here for centuries.
It is a colourful, lively experience and a completely different way to spend a day in Mexico City. Bring your camera — there is something colourful to photograph around almost every bend.
THINGS TO DO:
What would you make of a house with doors that open onto walls and staircases that lead nowhere?
In San Jose, California, the Winchester Mystery House is a sprawling mansion famous for its bizarre architectural features, including stairways that stop at ceilings, doors opening onto unexpected places and rooms with unusual layouts.
The house was built and expanded by Sarah Winchester, widow of William Wirt Winchester, heir to the Winchester firearms fortune. Today, you can tour this extraordinary house and see its many curious details for yourself.
THINGS TO DO:
What happened to these trees? Near Gryfino in northwestern Poland, the Crooked Forest is home to around 400 pine trees with dramatically curved trunks, most bending at roughly a 90-degree angle before growing upwards.
The trees were planted in the 1930s, but nobody knows for certain what caused their unusual shape. Several theories have been suggested, including human intervention, but the original explanation remains a mystery.
It makes for a wonderfully strange woodland walk — and some very unusual photographs.
THINGS TO DO:
Step inside a chapel unlike almost anywhere else. The Sedlec Ossuary in Kutná Hora is a small underground chapel decorated with the bones of an estimated 40,000 people. Human skulls and bones have been arranged into elaborate displays, including a remarkable chandelier made from almost every type of bone in the human body.
It is an extraordinary and slightly macabre place to visit, with every part of the interior telling a story about how the people of this region have remembered and honored the dead.
Looking for an excuse to dress up and have some spooky fun? Take a look at our Halloween party ideas for inspiration.
THINGS TO DO:
This may not fit the classic idea of weird and wonderful places to visit, but it is great fun and well worth experiencing:
La Tomatina is a world-famous tomato-throwing festival held annually in Buñol, a small town near Valencia, Spain. During the festival, participants gather in the streets to throw tomatoes at each other in a massive food fight. It’s a fun and festive event that attracts visitors from all over the world.
The origins of La Tomatina are not entirely clear, but it is believed to have started in the mid-1940s as a spontaneous food fight among locals. Today, the event has become a major tourist attraction, with thousands of visitors coming to Buñol each year to take part in the festivities.
La Tomatina is held on the last Wednesday of August each year. The event typically starts at around 11 am and lasts for about an hour, during which time participants throw tons of ripe tomatoes at each other.
Imagine walking into a museum where the exhibits are colourful, playful — and some of them are edible! The Museum of Ice Cream is an interactive experience filled with bright installations, themed rooms, sweet treats and plenty of unusual photo opportunities.
And yes, there is ice cream along the way — which makes this a museum visit that is likely to appeal to anyone with a sweet tooth. A museum dedicated to ice cream? Now that sounds pretty cool to me!
Can you trust your eyes? At Zagreb’s Museum of Illusions, interactive exhibits play tricks with perspective, balance, size and movement, creating some wonderfully confusing moments. You can appear to shrink or grow, see yourself multiplied in mirrors and pose for photographs that make your friends wonder what is going on.
It is a fun, hands-on stop in Zagreb, particularly if you enjoy places where you can touch, experiment and become part of the illusion rather than simply look at displays.
Turn off the lights and look up — the cave ceiling is filled with stars. Deep inside New Zealand’s Waitomo Glowworm Caves, thousands of tiny glowworms create a spectacular display of blue-green lights across the darkness. The glow comes from Arachnocampa luminosa, a species found only in New Zealand.
Visitors travel quietly through the caves by boat, looking up at this natural light display overhead. It is one of those unusual travel experiences where the simplest thing — sitting in the dark and looking up — becomes the most memorable part.
At first glance it sounds simple, but the experience is anything but. Floating quietly in a hot air balloon is something few travelers ever get to do, and it stays with you long after you land.
In Cappadocia, Turkey, fairy-chimney valleys glow at sunrise. Over Tanzania’s Serengeti, the plains stretch endlessly below, dotted with wildlife and winding rivers…
I consider this a “weird and wonderful place to visit”, because if you’re to scared to do the “weird” bungee jump (like me), you can enjoy the “wonderful” nature. It’s a beautiful spot.
Go Bungee Jump off the Bloukrans Bridge in South Africa, which is the highest commercial bungee jump in the world at 709 feet.
The Bloukrans Bridge is an arch bridge located near Nature’s Valley, Western Cape, in South Africa. Find out more…
Instagram Fun: Visit the Museum of Illusions in Cape Town, South Africa. It’s fun for the whole family.
“Museum of Illusions Cape Town is a unique and exciting museum dedicated to providing visitors with a fun, interactive and educational experience that challenges perception and inspires creativity. Our museum features a variety of exhibits that use optical illusions, visual tricks, and hands-on interactive displays to create a playful environment that engages visitors of all ages.”
yes – it’s strange but beautiful…
Positano on the Amalfi Coast of Italy, feels especially moving on All Souls’ Day. This is the time of year when locals give extra care to the cemetery, turning it into one of the most beautiful spots in town. Small lights are placed on tombstones, flowers fill every corner, and as evening falls the hillside begins to glow. From below, you see a quiet ribbon of light above the sea, calm, respectful, and surprisingly beautiful to experience as a visitor.
And about graveyards in Europe — they are nothing like the gloomy places many people imagine. In countries such as Austria and Switzerland, cemeteries are peaceful gardens filled with flowers, mountain views, and carefully kept family plots. They feel calm and respectful, often offering some of the most beautiful viewpoints in town, and they give a quiet glimpse into local life that most visitors never expect.
That’s why we often recommend you visit a cemetery in places like Austria, Switzerland, etc…
…and as a bonus:
Why should you go? These unique experiences will create lasting memories. It will satisfy your desire to learn and explore new things and for those thrill-seeking adventurers… You can challenge yourself with exciting and unconventional experiences. Connect to history and learn about past cultures and traditions in unconventional ways. And then… our favorite: Escape, get away from the mundane, and immerse yourself in the unexpected.
Travel is not always about seeing the famous sights. Sometimes the most memorable moments come from doing something wonderfully strange, staying somewhere completely different, or simply following your curiosity. So do more of what you love, seek out those weird and wonderful places, and leave a little room in your travels for the unexpected.
