Vacation Inside the Belly of California’s Whale House

There’s a sleeping giant in the trees of Santa Barbara, California. Some call it “the Whale House”; others the “the Snail House” thanks to its hypnotic curves, which camouflage so well into the trees that they’re easily missed. The mansion is like a portal into a 1970s SoCal fairytale for locals, and the occasional tourist, of…

Hanging with Hemingway at the World’s Oldest Restaurant

During the final moments of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, the reader is invited to pull up a chair beside ‘ole Hem at the Sobrino de Botín in Madrid, an eatery that’s not only famous for its suckling pig and free-flowing rioja alta, but because after 300 years it holds the Guinness World Book of Records’ title as the…

Living the High Life at the Mushroom House

Peering out of the tree-tops in Pittsford, New York is a collection of pods whose aesthetic falls somewhere between Alice in Wonderland and War of the Worlds (if the aliens were hippies, that is). Locals have crowned it “the Mushroom House,” and for a price you can put down roots there yourself… Built in 1969, it was…

Forget the Met Ball, Discover New York’s Secret Fashion Paradise

Nestled into a hilltop of northern Manhattan hides a veritable medieval oasis, older than the United States itself. A labyrinth of ancient French archways, turrets, and Gothic chapels that travelled across the Atlantic to find a new home here, it is known simply as “the Cloisters” to locals. The cavernous site could pass as a…

You’re Invited to the Executioner Island Slumber Party

Look carefully at the heart of the Long Island Sound in the night, and you’ll see it: a flashing white light, piercing the fog every ten seconds or so to steer boats away from the deadly shores of Execution Rocks. These are the icy waters where the British drowned their prisoners during the revolutionary war,…

Inside New York’s Greatest, Liveable Cabinet of Curiosities

Paige Stevenson doesn’t quite live in the same world as the rest of us. “People talk a lot about what it means to make art,” she says on the foggy Sunday morning when we visit her home, while biscuits warm in the oven, “I just think, why not live it? People get so caught up…

Brooklyn’s Best Kept Secret: A Wes Anderson Versailles

You know that great aunt who arrives early, and overdressed, to parties? The one who smells like powdered Shalimar, and guards every single family secret under layers of costume jewellery with her life? That’s Grand Prospect Hall personified. The four-story banquet hall is the last outpost of Victorian grandeur in New York, and for nearly…

A Rock Band’s Vintage Closet on the Run

Starling and Rein Irving are on the run. In a good way, mind you, and in extremely stylish fashion. You see, the 20-year-old-ish sisters have been making pilgrimages across the United States, with a collection of vintage treasures in tow. Their vessel? A 1959 green Chevrolet Viking bus they found abandoned in a field. Their…

Inside the Drawing Board of the Soviet Subway

It doesn’t get much better than this, especially for a morning commute: space-age chandeliers, marble statues, ‘golden’ ornaments, and a floor so clean you lick your lunch clean off it. Well, it’s all a part of the Moscow Metro, which has been shuttling Russians to-and-fro in opulent style since 1935. The stops were designed to…

The Vault

Your Dream Fairytale Library is Hiding in Midtown Manhattan

A miniature palace of rare books is hiding in one of the busiest parts of Manhattan. All you have to do to enter is walk past the foyer of 225 Madison Ave and push a button deep in the back right corner. A door will swing open into a space that feels like it rolled right out…

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