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Category / Don’t Be A Tourist

Some Rambling Notes of a French Road trip

We left Paris without a plan. Daylight took us as far as Bourges, a medieval town several hours south of Paris where we stayed in a two-star chateau on the outskirts that hadn’t saved any of its old interior charm and I believed couldn’t technically call itself a chateau because it didn’t have any towers.…

The River Café Waiting at the End of a Hidden Valley

The internet can be sometimes be terribly misleading. I stumbled upon the above photograph on Pinterest, but the photograph’s location had been erroneously captioned and gone viral with its misinformation. As far back as I could go on the internet search pages, the paradisiac spot purported to be among “10 Unique things to do in Santorini”. Never one to…

Snooping Around Manhattan’s Abandoned Art Deco Bank

Wander around Lower Manhattan you’ll find perhaps the most beautiful doors in the whole city. Curved and ornately designed in silver and bronze, they are adorned with panels depicting methods of transportation from the golden age of travel: luxury steamships, fleets of sleek aircraft, hot air balloons and grand railroads. Most of the passersby that…

Wandering Through the Oldest (and Emptiest) Hospital in Paris

Notre Dame has a very unusual neighbour that no one ever visits. If you’re facing the cathedral’s famous facade, surrounded by a sea of tourists and selfie-sticks, turn to your left and spot the blue door behind the chestnut trees, marked “Entrée“. And enter you must! This blue portal opens up to the Hôtel Dieu, Paris’…

The Forgotten White City Amusement Parks

They called it the city of dreams, a series of white stucco buildings that surrounded a pool of glistening water. As the sun rose above the sky, the buildings would be illuminated in hues of peach, gold, and lavender. The real magic was at night when all the buildings would be lit up with tiny…

New York’s Forgotten Outpost of European Aristocracy

The far end of New York’s Long Island is a place filled with secrets. Set against a beautiful backdrop of rocky Atlantic coastline, charming fishing towns, lighthouses and exclusive boatclubs, are hidden places where you’re not allowed to go. There’s the decommissioned Camp Hero in Montauk, an old coastal defence station disguised as a fishing…

Hawaii’s Forbidden Island and the Real-Life Swiss Family Robinson who Controls it

Picture what Hawaii might have looked like before it was colonised; a paradise in the tropics, frozen in time and largely untouched by the trappings of the 21st Century. Welcome to controversial island of Ni‘ihau, also known as “The Forbidden Isle”, depending on who you speak to. Only, you’re not really welcome, unless you’re invited…

Discovering Ancient Roman Ruins in a German Parking Lot

One of the most visited sights in Germany is the Cologne Cathedral (der Kölner Dom) where it’s easy to spot swaths of tourists taking in its Gothic beauty. But what a lot of visitors to Cologne don’t realize is that right underneath their feet is a functional parking garage that happens to have an added…

Postcards from a Seaside Village of Upturned Boat Homes

There’s a sleepy seaside village in France with a small fishing port, a population of less than 3,000 and some very peculiar-looking houses. At a moment’s glance, they could almost appear to be an unfortunate pod of beached orcas, but look again carefully at those unusual roofs. Yes, those are boats … upside down! Local fishermen of Équihen-Plage have lived under scavenged boat hulls here…

The Ghost Town left Behind by an American Sect of Hollow Earth Believers

In the once harsh and bug-infested swamplands of southwest Florida, lies the remains of a strange 19th century settlement. Founded by a charismatic leader who led his members into the quagmire to build a “New Jerusalem” and seek immortality through celibacy, the commune revolved around the belief not that the earth was flat, but hollow…

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