Tourism

Awful Tourists Turned Away Nesting Sea Turtles in Costa Rica

Hundreds of thousands of olive ridley sea turtles came ashore on Ostional Beach to lay their eggs, but thousands of tourists were already there, doing nearly everything you’re not supposed to do around a threatened species attempting to reproduce. Photos show the tourists crowding the shoreline so the turtles would have to crawl through the…

Giant Godzilla Head Warmly Welcomes You To Tokyo!

This week we learned that Godzilla is Japan’s new tourism ambassador. Now we have a visual! Here’s the G-man being unveiled (OK, head only … 171 feet tall, though) Thursday outside of Toho, the studio that made the original 1954 film. AP Photo by Shizuo Kambayashi

Season’s Greetings From Turkey’s Love Valley

Behold, Turkey’s Love Valley. It’s happy to see you, too! In the inimitable words of the Daily Mail: Visitors are flocking to a Turkish tourist attraction which has been dubbed ‘Love Valley’. The famous region of Cappadocia has seen an influx of tourists travelling by hot air balloon to check out the phallic-shaped pillars, which…

You Can Visit Panem Now, Because Hunger Games Tourism Exists

Where popular movies are filmed, fans who want to experience the locations for themselves will follow. Would-be Katniss Everdeens are flocking to Atlanta, to take tours of the filming spots for all of the Hunger Games sequels. Atlanta Movie Tours, a company which also offers Walking Dead and Gone With the Wind-themed tours, as well…

New NYC Tourism Ads Target Locals Too Lazy to Leave the Neighborhood

New York sometimes feels like an archipelago of multiple cities—cities which, unless you have a damn good reason like work or your friend’s band, you rarely visit. So for its latest ad campaign, NYC isn’t going after out-of-staters. It’s going after the lazy ass locals who never visit any neighborhoods but their own. The campaign…

Fatbergs, Naked Tourists, Bedbugs: What’s Ruining Our Cities This Week

Summer’s almost over but that doesn’t mean we can’t have one last warm-weather, city-ruining hurrah. Let’s check out some exhibitionist visitors to Barcelona, unwelcome new passengers on the NYC subway, and an airplane-sized mass of congealed fat moving under London. What’s Ruining Our Cities? These guys are. Fatbergs are ruining London Radioactive pizza-eating reptiles are…

In this week’s Landscape Reads, we learn all about Yellowstone’s “Zone of Death,” the bitter rivalry of pallet companies (yes, pallet companies), the ultimate cause behind Alaska’s Funny River fire, and more. How to Get Away With Murder in Yellowstone There is a 50 square mile “Zone of Death” in Yellowstone because, you see, funny…

Ice Cream, Mayors, and Criminals: What’s Ruining Our Cities This Week

A mayor who ruined lives in his quest to dox a Twitter account parodying him. Why Asian tourists are being robbed in Paris. And the super-disturbing history of the ice cream song you’ll hear on every street this summer. What’s Ruining Our Cities? Indeed. Ice cream trucks are ruining summer Ah, the sounds of summer.…

Satellite Image Interpretation of Chernobyl

Daydreaming about traipsing around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone made me wonder just how idyllic this accidental-wildlife refuge really is. Local camera-trap photography is downright sexy with wolves, lynx, eagle, and deer, but the satellite images paint a duller picture. Wildlife is thriving without pesky humans in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Photography credit: Dr. Sergei Gaschak…

Vacationing in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

Chernobyl is a radioactive wasteland, fallout from a horrific meltdown. Except after decades of abandonment, it’s not so much a wasteland as an unintentional wildlife refuge. Check out these futuristic designs to transform the disaster zone into a prime tourist destination. Although it sounds utterly bonkers to go sightseeing next to a nuclear meltdown, most…

7 Surreal, Towering Ice Castles That You Can Actually Visit

Are you sick and tired of skiing and ice skating? Why not take a trip to see one of America’s mind-bendingly amazing ice castles. It’s like a walking through a frosty landscape dreamt up by Richard Serra but built by nature. Tickets are now available! Ice Castle founder Brent Christensen built his first ice castle…

20 Awesome Stickers From When Your Suitcase Told Stories

There was a time when well-traveled luggage looked like the suitcase above: covered with travel stickers, trophies of every adventurous explorer. My father, who spent his youth traveling across Europe in the 60s and 70s kept his weary suitcase for a long time; as a child, I admired all those well-aged little pictures of remote…

Tour the Canals of Venice with Google Street View

Taking a vacation to Venice can be a real pain in the ass. Tourists flock to the watery city like like fire ants on a fallen sandwich. Every restaurant is overpriced. The place floods all the time. But you can now avoid all those annoyances thanks to Google Street View. Everybody’s favorite (sometimes creepy) world-mapping…

Visit The Forbidden Moonshine Caverns of the Appalachians

A series of caverns in the Smokey Mountains provided a perfect lair for bootleggers looking to make some illicit liquor during Prohibition. The government eventually cracked down on these subterranean “moonshiners,” but you can still visit their secret underground distilleries today. You have to admire the bravery of the moonshiners taking over these maze-like caverns,…

The Greatest Science Fiction-Themed Bars and Restaurants on Earth

You may never get to drink at the Cantina — but you can still visit some real-life watering holes that celebrate your favorite stories. We’ve already shown you science-fictional bars we’d like to visit and people whose homes are based on spaceships, but here are real joints that boast a TARDIS, AT-ATs or the Martian…

Photos imagine atomic bomb tests as a modern tourist attraction

What if iPhones and Facebook already existed by the dawn of the Atomic Age? Would your news feed be clogged with photos of vacationing friends staring out at not-too-distant mushroom clouds? That’s the alternate history imagined by Clay Lipsky’s Atomic Overlook photos. Lipsky explains that his photos offer a view of a population desensitized to…

Polish Architects Build Stereotype-Reinforcing Upside-Down House

With a last name like Liszewski, I’ve heard every single Polish joke and stereotype there is. But I’m going to assume that Polish architects Irek Glowacki and Marek Rozanski have just spawned at least one more with this unique tourist attraction they built in Austria. Have you heard the one about the Polish architects who…

Olympic-Sized Pool Boat Is an Instant Tourist Attraction—Just Add Water

The city of Antwerp is currently in the process of converting an old ferry boat into its newest tourist attraction—an almost 400-foot long swimming pool that will double as a skating rink in the cold winter months. It’s an idea that’s so simply genius we think every city should build one. The Badboot, which roughly…

Take a science fiction road trip for a weird and wonderful summer

We’ve already told you all about the movies you can look forward to this summer, the TV shows you can watch, and the books and comics you can read. But what if, when summer strikes, you’re itching to hit to road? We have roadside attractions, unusual museums, and significant spots from science and science fiction…

Wild Vegas parties celebrated atomic bomb tests of the 1950s

Crooners, bright lights, the ringing of slot machines, and…atomic bombs? This strange combination became a reality in Las Vegas during the 1950s. Scheduled nuclear detonations at the Nevada Proving Ground gave plenty of opportunities to party and raise a glass to a mushroom cloud. How did this bizarre slice of history come together in the…