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Category / Off-Beat & Little Known

Hiding a 10,000 Year Clock inside a Mountain

It ticks once a year, the century hand advances once every 100 years, the cuckoo comes out on the millennium, and it will keep time for the next 10,000 years. In the belly of a Texas mountain, picture a huge clock, hundreds of feet tall, and as you read this, it’s quietly ticking away against…

One Very Surreal Day with Salvador Dalì

Even today, in this era of “nothing shocks us anymore”, Dalì still manages to get an eyebrow raise out of me. The man is endlessly fascinating and just when I think I’ve seen all his work, up pops another thing I never knew he did. Just this morning, I found a clip of a dream…

Don’t be a Tourist in Brittany – NEW eBook

Pack cozy sweaters, a waterproof jacket or barbour, some wellies and a sailor’s cap. Indulge in the simple pleasures of a fisherman’s weekend off. Eat plenty of fresh seafood and buttery crêpes. Immerse yourself in the proud and unchanged culture of the Bretons. Bounce between centuries wandering their medieval stone villages and bygone Art Deco…

A Guide to Beirut’s Small Shops & Hidden Gems

It seems as if all we’ve seen of beautiful Beirut lately are images of devastation. Not so long ago, it wasn’t hard to convince people to take a glamorous vacation in Lebanon. It was a playground for movie stars like Brigitte Bardot, Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole. The Beirut harbour was host to the Queen…

Liberating Paris with Mixed Reality

Vive la resistance! Join me 600m below Paris to liberate the city in a special new “Don’t be a Tourist” episode with Microsoft. Discover a WWII bunker deserted for decades and relive the liberation of Paris with HoloLens mixed reality technology through the eyes of French resistance fighters in the underworld.

Paradise Lost at the Moonhole Mansion: An Abandoned Crusoe Dream

At night, the rising moon peers through the natural volcanic arch, revealing the silhouettes of windows and doorways alluding to a crumbling fortress, guarding a paradise lost. It shares its walls with the rocks, built haphazardly into the Caribbean cliff on the western tail of the island of Bequia, but the rooms are empty, the whole structure eerily lifeless. Like the centrepiece of…

Here’s a Catalog of Secret Paris Filming Locations used by French Industry Scouts

I have a friend who works in the industry, who sent me a link to a website thanks to her very astute intuition telling her that it might interest me. MiRES is a Paris-based agency dedicated to finding the most beautiful, unique and unusual shooting locations in and outside of the French capital. A best-kept secret of the film, fashion…

Nearly 50 Years On, a Forbidden Seaside Ghost Town is about to Re-Open

Imagine a millionaire’s resort; one to rival St. Tropez, Italy’s Portofino, or Miami’s South Beach – abandoned overnight. Imagine the luxury hotels suddenly emptied of their guests and left to slowly decay, the boutiques, bars and nightclubs reclaimed by nature, sunbathers replaced by sea turtles nesting on the deserted beaches and the once vibrant holiday…

The Bay of Abandoned Hotels

As summer winds down and holidaymakers swap the beach for their real lives, hotels will inevitably begin to empty of their guests and resorts will slowly become ghost towns until the next season. But very few resorts will get as ghostly as the Kupari luxury resort in Croatia, which hasn’t seen any paying guests since…

How Black Cowboys Built the American West: A Living History

You may hear it, before you see it. The gentle trotting of hooves backdropped by the sounds of New York City’s JFK Expressway. Even locals do a double take when they cross paths with a member of the Federation of Black Cowboys. When they ride, they tell the true story of the Wild, Wild West:…

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