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From a distance, this suburban Shell station looks like any other fuel stop, but the closer you get, the weirder it becomes. On the roof, there's a trident-wielding merman and a large, upside-down melting ice cream cone. The storefront underneath is a riot of color, featuring a giant nutcracker on a toy block, a massive fiberglass chicken, a spotted red mushroom, and a Zoltar fortune-telling machine. The windows are covered with psychedelic posters of space-faring cows advocating for plant-based diets. Established in 2021, Hangry Planet claims to be North America’s first fully plant-based convenience store. Inside, standard-issue Slim Jims have been ditched in favor of a carefully curated selection of plant-based, dairy-free products, from brands like Donut Farm, Go Max Go, and Oatly. For those seeking more than snacks, there's plant-based BBQ and soul food from Vegan Mob. The quirkiness extends into the "virtual reality" car wash, which uses six projectors to create a "multifaceted land of wonder". Customers can tune their radios to 90.1 FM to listen to entertaining narratives and "earth awareness" lessons as they pass through the wash tunnel. Beyond the kitsch, the mission is serious. The store funnels 11% of its profits toward animal protection, orphan care, and local schools. It all goes to show that even a gas station can be a force for a more ethical future.
Tourists who partake of the free ferry ride to Staten Island should delay getting right back on the boat to Manhattan, and instead take a short walk outside to the National Lighthouse Museum. Located just southeast of the ferry terminal, the Lighthouse Museum is rather modest in stature, occupying a small building on what was once the United States Lighthouse Service General Depot. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the depot was responsible for supplying all of the lighthouses in the US Lighthouse Service's third district, stretching from Albany to the Massachusetts border and down to Sandy Hook. As advances in technology made lighthouses largely obsolete, the depot eventually shut down by 1965. The buildings now stand empty, with the only occupant being the museum inside Building 11, the former foundry. But the museum has big plans to eventually relocate to the much larger Building 10 next door, once the necessary amount of funds is acquired. For now you can visit the museum's current location and see its Fresnel lenses, read up on the history of lighthouses, and view a large collection of miniature lighthouses from all over the world.
Completed in 1981 for the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the structure was officially known as the Forschungseinrichtung für Experimentelle Medizin. Its purpose was highly specialized: the building housed thousands of laboratory animals—mostly mice, but also rats, rabbits, and other species—used in biomedical research. The architecture is as startling as the building’s function. Designed by German architects Gerd and Magdalena Hänska, the Mäusebunker resembles a fortified concrete fortress. Narrow triangular windows jut outward like defensive slits, while massive ventilation pipes protrude from the walls. These features were not stylistic flourishes alone; they formed part of an advanced containment system designed to maintain strict hygiene and prevent contamination between research areas. Inside, the structure was engineered with the logic of a laboratory machine. Separate floors, sealed corridors, and carefully controlled airflow systems kept experiments isolated from one another. Even the exterior pipes had a purpose: they allowed air to circulate through specialized filtration systems that protected both animals and researchers. By the 2000s, shifting scientific practices and the high costs of maintaining the facility led to its closure. The building soon faced demolition. But in recent years, architects, preservationists, and Brutalism enthusiasts have rallied to save it, arguing that the Mäusebunker represents a rare and striking example of late-20th-century experimental architecture. Today the abandoned structure has become an unlikely cultural landmark. Guided tours, exhibitions, and public debates have reframed the once-feared laboratory as an architectural icon—part dystopian relic, part monument to a moment when science, design, and Cold War aesthetics collided in concrete.
A devil's face peers out from the façade of a building on Linnégatan, one of Gothenburg's historic main streets. Grimacing from the wall, an ornamental mask allegedly installed by a local developer in the late 1800s serves as a subtle moral protest against Oscar II and his rumored escapades opposite. Local legend holds that King Oscar II used an apartment on the street when in the city. The second-floor flat had no permanent tenant and was kept available for discreet meetings with mistresses, who were said to appear on the balcony from time to time. From there, the king would have seen the face staring back ominously after a night of indiscretion. What gazes across Linnégatan today is a copy of the satanic face, with a second identical mask further along the façade. The building that originally bore it was demolished in the 1980s, but the feature was reinstated.
Aptly located on Yee Kuk Street, meaning 'street of a medical institute', the two storey Sham Shui Po Public Dispensary building is one of Hong Kong's few remaining art deco-style buildings. After an influx of immigrants from mainland China settled in Sham Shui Po during the early 20th century, the district's previous clinic was deemed inadequate. Funding for a new facility was raised by a wealthy local businessman, with the dispensary building opening in 1936. It continued as Sham Shui Po's medical center until 2002, when it was converted to serve exclusively as a methadone clinic. The building still retains many of its original art deco features, such as its decorative motifs, ornamental ironwork grilles and covered walkway. Also visible on the grade 2 listed building's exterior are the verandah's bamboo-shaped ceramic balusters, and the facility's Chinese name inscribed on the parapet, giving the building a tinge of east meets west.
In the 1960s French scientists had a problem. Algeria had just won its independence and was not very interested in continuing to host France’s fledgling spaceport, leaving them without a launchpad. They needed a site without earthquakes or hurricanes, close to the equator to take advantage of the slingshot effect (using the earth’s rotation for extra energy), and close to an ocean they could launch over to minimise the chance of debris falling on population centres. They found their match in the territory of French Guiana, on the north coast of South America and only 5 degrees latitude north of the equator. On April 9, 1968, they launched their first rocket, Véronique, inaugurating a facility that would go on to launch over 300 rockets in total, including those containing research probes to various planets and the James Webb space telescope. The spaceport houses over a dozen complexes across 660 square km between the towns of Kourou and Sinnamary, French Guiana, and employs 1,400 permanent employees. It currently launches two types of rockets: the Vega-C and the Ariana 6. It’s possible to see rocket launches from Cayenne, though the best views are from one of the hills just outside of Kourou.
You may have thought the WSQK Building featured in the last season of “Stranger Things” was located somewhere in Indiana, but you’d be wrong. The real-life inspiration, called WPTF, is located in Cary, North Carolina. Cary is just one town away from the Duffer Brothers' hometown of Durham, NC. The WPTF building, built as an AM Radio transmitting station in the 1930s, is still in operation today.
Sambhar Lake spreads across the desert plains of Rajasthan like a surreal inland sea of salt. In certain seasons the shallow waters turn shades of pink, while the surrounding ground hardens into brittle crusts of crystallized salt that crack and crumble underfoot. Vast geometric salt pans stretch toward the horizon, broken only by rusting remnants of narrow-gauge rail tracks once used to haul salt across the flats. Wildlife thrives in the stark landscape—herds of nilgai wander the edges of the lake while flocks of flamingos and other desert birds gather in the shallow waters. Despite its immense scale, the place remains strangely quiet and overlooked, leaving visitors standing in a shimmering white desert that feels more like another planet than Rajasthan.
The Norristown State Hospital campus, which entered operations in 1880, feels like somewhere between a medical facility and a jail. A few buildings remain operational, yet many others stand in various states of decay. The grounds are open to the public during daylight hours. Located next to the Norristown Farm Park and connected by several paths, the State Hospital is a great place to walk or bike. Parking is available on the campus or at the adjacent park. Although the grounds are open to the public, buildings remain off-limits (unless you have business there). Since a few buildings remain operational as psychiatric institutions, please be respectful. Photography and video recording are prohibited on the campus.
Deeb Haidar may live in Brooklyn, but he spends half his time in different cities—sometimes even different countries. Since becoming a commercial flight attendant three years ago, Haidar has travelled all over the world for his job, working his way up from less-glamorous destinations to vibrant places that have each come to feel like a second home. Atlas Obscura Community Editor Holyn Thigpen spoke with Haidar about his favorite cities to travel to for work, the hole-in-the-wall spots he’s come to love, and the simple pleasures of a life spent in transit. Atlas Obscura: What made you want to become a flight attendant? Deeb Haidar: I used to travel a lot as a kid—mostly the Middle East. I was in Lebanon and Jordan and Kuwait to see family, and when I would go there, I’d be there for so long. Growing up in a Middle Eastern household in the U.S., I was never fully integrated, even though my parents wanted me to be. I was in such a bubble at home that even though I grew up in the U.S., a lot of things were super unfamiliar my whole life. AO: What kind of routes did they put you on in the beginning? And has that changed over time? Haidar: Domestic hell. In and out of Ohio—the worst stuff you can imagine. I’m still in my domestic era. I have to fight for everything internationally. AO: Is that because they’re more likely to give those flights to old-timers? Haidar: Yeah. I go to LA and San Francisco the most right now. If we’re talking about cities that I feel the most integrated in outside of New York, it’s definitely going to be San Francisco. It feels like such an old city. Even the businesses and the types of establishments they have there—old diners and eateries that are from, like, a hundred years ago—they’re all still there and all the architecture is still intact. AO: What else do you like about SF? Haidar: There is such an interesting kind of counterculture that exists in San Francisco once you get past all of these tech bro aesthetics and the tech bro lifestyle. I used to always go to Chinatown there, but there are all these Chinese spots that are not in Chinatown because of how it’s become [gentrified]; they’re in this neighborhood called Inner Richmond. That’s where the legit old school places are. A lot of the Chinese community in San Francisco moved to Inner Richmond from Chinatown. And the intention there is not to attract tourists, which I like. AO: How did you find out that this is the “real” Chinatown? Was it just through you exploring while you were there on work? Haidar: I just talked to people, mostly taxi drivers. Taxi drivers are like my lords. They really, really, really do help out. There are some weird ones for sure, so you have to know which ones are actually going to have good recommendations. I always wait to see if they have a family before I start talking to them. AO: Do you have a routine as far as what you do when you’re there, or do you like to switch it up every time? Haidar: I’ll get in from my flight, I’ll shower and I’ll change. I’ll put my earrings on. Go to the Mission or to Outer Richmond. I’ve been going to Outer Richmond a lot more often recently, just because I feel like it’s a bit more calm. But the Mission is beautiful because there’s such a vibrant and ever-present Latin diaspora there. Amazing restaurants and all these different cafeterias. You can go around just speaking Spanish. AO: I love this approach you have, where you’re just immersing yourself in different neighborhoods. Haidar: I think there’s this “cruise ship mentality” or “Disney park mentality” that’s baked so deep within us now that we just can’t find the magic in places. We’ll go somewhere, like Paris, and be like, “Ugh, I don't like Paris. The people are so mean” and this, that, and the other. And if you press people when they say stuff like that, they’ll just say “Oh, well, I wanted to order this and [the Parisians] just kind of scoffed at me.” But with those people, it’s always the same thing: They don’t speak French. It’s always that they're not speaking French. And I get it: Obviously not everybody speaks French, but it’s nice to at least try. When I’m in Paris, I don't even try to—like, English never even enters my head. It’s weird because, with Gen Z, we like to claim that we’re the most culturally literate generation and we’re the most forward thinking and all these things, but I’ve seen it a million times where a Gen Z person will go into a cafe and they’ll start speaking English. As a flight attendant, I see it too. Because when we go to Spain, when we go to Italy—I’ll speak Spanish first; I’ll speak Italian. I see how passengers react to me, and from that alone I can tell how they are when they’re in these countries they’re flying to. I’ll ask someone if they want something to drink in a language, and they’ll respond in super overly articulated English. It is a kind of aggressive thing to do, even though I’m sure they don’t realize it. AO: You told me before we started that Paris is one of your favorite cities. What are your favorite spots there? Haidar: My number one favorite is probably this dingy little tobacco shop that has all these slot machines and a coffee bar. I went in there because I needed to use the bathroom. I got a cup of coffee because I thought I had to buy something. (I didn’t. They literally wanted nothing to do with me.) But it was the best coffee I ever had in my entire life. It was run by this old Asian lady and her daughter. It’s funny, too, because I know people have this expectation of Paris—that there’s a certain type of person and a certain type of establishment. But there are all these different ethnic groups. These are people who immigrated from all over, but they’ve been in Paris longer than we’ve been alive. They’re more Parisian than anyone with a French degree will ever be. Through blood, sweat, and tears, they’ve become Parisian. AO: So best coffee you’ve ever had and you can use the bathroom for free if need be? Haidar: If need be. I don’t have the name of it because it’s a very generic place. It’s a random place on a corner. I got a shot of espresso that literally tasted like white chocolate, and it was milky and thick and rich. It was the most incredible coffee of my life. There’s also a boulangerie called La Griotte, and it’s in the 17th [arrondissement]. You go there and everything is plastic and gray and it’s lit horribly. And the pastries there? I’m sure they’re not the best in Paris by a long shot, but you go in there and you feel so welcome. You see commuters come in with their dogs, and you see how that one spot, based on geography alone, has become a fixture in these people’s lives, and it’s embedded so intimately in their lives. And they’re also so kind to you if you try and speak French, even if you sound like an idiot. AO: This is really warming me up to the Parisians. I think I’m going to have to give them another shot. Haidar: Oh, definitely. I think everyone needs to give them a shot. It’s become such a thing in America to hate on them. And I’m not saying everyone in Paris is an angel, but I think people who go there just like to believe they’ve had the same experience as others and they convince themselves of that. AO: What are your other go-to Paris spots? Haidar: There’s Chez l’copain, which is in the 18th, and it’s a little wine bar. It’s really trendy, cute, super dimly lit with red lights, and everyone’s young and outside smoking a cigarette. Les Vinaigriers is a restaurant that’s in the 10th. It’s a French restaurant. There’s only like four or five things on the menu, and they do it really well and everything is mixed. There are some experimental menu items that have shoyu and stuff in them, which is really cool. So there is a little bit of a mixed flavor there going on. And it’s a really, really cute street corner next to another cafe I haven’t been to yet called Le Flash, which is based off of arcade games. And there’s Le Garçon, which is a cafe, and I’d put that on my list just because of my experience with coming in and saying that I’m bad at French. AO: They were helpful? Haidar: It wasn’t that they were guiding you through it; they were just listening to you. They stopped and they listened to you. And everyone in there is French, and there are all these construction workers who are all commuting. Especially if you go in the morning, which I do. And they just sit there and listen to you struggle, but they’re not making fun of you. I really think French people love Americans. I know it sounds crazy—this is my hot take. They love American stuff. They love burgers. They love McDonald’s. McDonald’s is such a big thing! French people foam at the mouth for McDonald’s. If you go to France and you get a McDonald’s, honestly, you are kind of doing some form of cultural immersion in a way. McDonald’s and Burger King. Those are the two franchises that have been reclaimed by the French. AO: Are there special French McDonald’s items that you’ve tried? Haidar: They have the sauce chinoise, which is the Chinese sauce. AO: Are there any places that you think are overrated in Paris? Haidar: Oh, yeah. Champs-Élysées, for sure. The whole street. AO: What about it? It’s just a tourist trap? Haidar: It’s a tourist trap, and it’s all retail. A lot of European cities have this, and even American cities have it, where it’s the perceived center of a city, but now it has all been replaced by retail. It’s like a non-place. It’s a Zara. It’s a Salomon pop-up. It’s a Louis Vuitton. It’s a Hermes. It’s all these places. And then you’ll see a bistro here and there, and the prices are marked up by thousands. That’s an exaggeration, but still. Attractions have become the same everywhere you go. The same stores, the same things are there, and you don’t feel like you’ve gone anywhere. And I know some people look for familiarity, and they look for safety, and they look for something that they’re comfortable with. And it’s there for them. But obviously, you’re probably going to come back feeling like you haven’t done anything or you haven’t gotten anywhere. Also, it is kind of overstimulating and really depressing. AO: You mentioned the 10th arrondissement is an area where a lot of your favorite places are. Are there other areas in Paris where you just really like the vibe? Haidar: Yeah, the 9th. It’s a more chill part of the town. It’s very residential. There are families about, and what’s great is that it’s not for anybody, you know? That’s why I also like that really ugly gray place—because it’s not trying to be anything trendy. It’s not for you. It’s not for anybody. It’s not for people who visit Paris. And Paris shouldn’t—any city shouldn’t—no one should expect a show to be put on for them like they’re going to Epcot. No one should be expecting to enter a theme park. The 9th isn’t dolled up for anyone because it’s a city. It’s a real place. People live there. AO: I know you're very much an explore-by-the-seat-of-your-pants person, but is there any spot that you really want to hit next time you're there? Haidar: There are two places. There’s Le Flash. And then there’s this one cafe that I saw...I took a picture of the street next to it. It doesn’t have a name on the wall, but there are no lights. It’s all natural lighting. And it’s really small, and the seats are cushioned outside. It looks so old, but everyone there is so young. And they look like they know that they’re going to a simpler time. I don’t know...there’s so much I really can’t articulate about some places. AO: So between San Francisco and Paris, is San Francisco still your favorite city? Haidar: I mean, just because of how much I’ve travelled there, I’ve made friends. There are people that I go see now. AO: Just locals you’ve happened to meet? Haidar: Like, literally, I was in a tiny coffee shop called Grand Coffee and I met one guy named Angel, and he became one of my best friends. We get ice cream together and stuff. There’s a place actually called Garden Creamery and they do all their ice cream flavors from scratch and we get ice cream after he’s done at work. I haven’t paid for a coffee for as long as I can remember when I go in there. It’s the size of half of a bedroom—a tiny coffee shop with four little stools, and it’s a bar, basically. And [Angel] gives me the aux; I don’t pay for coffee, and I bring him ginger beers from the corner store down the street. AO: I always love those connections I make when I’m traveling that I’m actually able to maintain. That’s so special. Haidar: It is special because you do feel like you’re creating something. When you travel enough, you feel like you don’t really belong anywhere. And sometimes you have those moments where you’re like, “Wait, maybe I do. Maybe there are people that…” Because I feel like home as a concept is never a place. It’s always people.
On a typical city street, lined with dark stone and brick buildings springs this reddish-orange sculpture made of cast iron and plate steel by artist Mary Seyfarth. Based on Magritte’s famous painting, it is one of 4 such sculptures around Chicago, however the other 3 are massive and placed in large open areas. But this one is small, only about 2 feet long (no pun intended) tucked between a church and its garden walk. It's a foot, but it leaves a boot print in the dirt? Lots of questions with no answer arise. Why is it placed where it is? Why is it the size it is? Perhaps one can see a connection to Magritte’s painting... but not really. It definitely pops out of nowhere, especially on a cloudy day.
The Wellington Environmental Preserve sits on the western edge of the ever-developing city. It’s home to a wind phone installation that was created by a local mother to help her process her grief and give others the opportunity to do the same. Wind phones are physical phones that aren’t connected to any service. They’re a tool for symbolically “calling” those we’re no longer able to speak to, especially loved ones who have passed away. The Wellington wind phone is located around the halfway mark of the footpath in the environmental preserve. It’s a serene spot to “call” lost loved ones and reflect. People have also filled notebooks in the phone’s cabinet with letters to their loved ones.
Along the rocky coastline of Mossel Bay, a series of caves at Pinnacle Point has reshaped how scientists understand the origins of modern humans. Discovered during an environmental impact survey in the early 2000s, the caves revealed evidence that Homo sapiens lived here between roughly 150,000 and 200,000 years ago. The finds suggest that part of the small ancestral population from which all living humans descend occupied this stretch of coast, leaving behind traces of early tool use, and coastal foraging. Today, this research continues as part of an international project led by Professor Curtis Marean, involving dozens of scientists from around the world. The discoveries are made accessible through the Human Origins Experience, which offers guided visits to the caves and contextual presentations by real researchers. A unique experience, as not many such locations allow tourists to visit archeological locations of such great importance. However, as the visits partially fund the research, tourists are welcomed.
If you love movies and strange shared experiences, Hyperreal Film Club in Austin is one of the city’s most surprising finds. This nonprofit started out in 2016 as a roving series of pop-up screenings in gallery basements and other unexpected corners of Austin with the simple goal of creating social movie nights around offbeat films and local shorts. Over the years, founders David McMichael, Jenni Kaye, and Tanner Hadfield made something more than just a screening series. They built a community of movie nerds who show up to watch films together, dress up for themed nights, and stick around to talk afterward. In 2024, the club opened a permanent home at 301 Chicon Street in East Austin. Here the vibe is less like a formal theater and more like a clubhouse for cinephiles. Movies run several nights a week and often pair a feature with a short by a local filmmaker. The space was intentionally transformed from a bare warehouse into a cozy screening room that welcomes everyone from first-timer movie lovers to directors trying out new work.
If you find yourself wandering South Congress and hear laughter, toasted shots and unguarded renditions of “Sweet Caroline,” you might be near Ego’s, a dive bar and karaoke institution that has welcomed locals, visitors and even Texas politicians to the mic since 1979. Tucked under a building behind a gas station, Ego’s feels like an old secret that every Austinite wants to share and one that newcomers delight in discovering. The low lighting, affordable drinks and nonstop karaoke make Ego’s the place to let loose, celebrate birthdays or just belt out tunes beside a crowd that knows the words by heart. For years Ego’s stood as one of South Congress Avenue’s most recognizable nightlife hangouts, known for relaxed drinking and the high-energy atmosphere that only a good karaoke night can deliver. You could walk in as a stranger and leave with a story about the time you sang Journey at 2 a.m. or felt part of a group cheering someone’s first time on stage. In 2024 the bar faced a moment that felt like the end of an era. Plumbing issues and looming demolition tied to a major redevelopment project left patrons unsure how long Ego’s would stay open. At one point the bar announced its likely closing, but after repairs and approvals it managed to stay open at 510 South Congress Avenue while discussions continue about its future within the changing neighborhood. Plans for a massive mixed-use development at the address include reopening Ego’s within the new space so the karaoke tradition might continue even as the skyline around it shifts.
This is a very interesting park in the middle of the suburbs dedicated to veterans. On display are various military vehicles including an F-14 Tomcat, a Willys jeep, a tank, a military boat, and an A-4 Skyhawk. You may find other strange things while walking through the park including an old mill, an anchor firmly in the ground, a firehouse museum, and the sign of an old rollercoaster well known to locals called the 'Zephyr.' Numerous statues, signs, and, flags are scattered throughout the park as well.
A Gothic Queen Anne mansion where Gilded Age grandeur, ghost stories, and modern luxury share the same staircase. Built in 1888 by businessman James H. Hornibrook, this towering Victorian mansion rises above Little Rock’s historic Quapaw Quarter like something from a storybook. With its steep gables, ornate woodwork, and dramatic turret, the house is widely considered one of the finest examples of Gothic Queen Anne architecture in Arkansas. The mansion was designed during the height of the Gilded Age, when wealthy families competed to build homes that reflected both prosperity and taste. Hornibrook spared little expense. The house featured elaborate carved wood interiors, stained glass, and rooms designed to impress visitors arriving by carriage along the tree lined streets of what was then Little Rock’s most fashionable neighborhood. Over the decades the property lived many lives. It served as a private residence for prominent families before eventually being transformed into a bed and breakfast in the 1990s. Today the mansion operates as a boutique historic hotel, welcoming travelers who want more than a generic room. They want to stay inside a piece of Arkansas history. Visitors wandering the halls will find period details everywhere. Towering ceilings, antique furnishings, carved banisters, and fireplaces that once warmed the city’s social elite. Each guest suite occupies a different corner of the mansion or carriage house, many named for figures connected to the property’s history. But history is not the only reason people talk about the house. The Empress has developed a reputation for the unexplained. Staff and guests have reported strange sounds, flickering lights, and the sense that the mansion’s original residents may not have entirely moved on. Whether someone believes the stories or not, the atmosphere of the house, especially at night, makes it easy to imagine a few lingering spirits still keeping watch over the grand old rooms. Today the Empress remains both a preserved landmark and a living hotel. Guests can spend the night in a Gilded Age mansion, stroll through the surrounding historic district, or simply sit on the porch and watch the neighborhood where Little Rock’s nineteenth century elite once built their homes. History loves company.
The Baroque cemetery in Střílky stands as a unique masterpiece of Central European sepulchral architecture. Its distinction lies in its elevated terraced design, employing fortification principles to create a "theater of memory" (theatrum memoriae). Established in the mid-18th century by Antonín Amandus of Petřvald, the site features high-quality sculptures by Gottfried Fritsch, a pupil of G. R. Donner. The complex is famous for its "torso" nature; the grand vision remained unfinished after the founder’s death, creating the evocative aura of an incomplete Baroque dream. Its intricate iconographic program—featuring angels with the Arma Christi, personifications of virtues and vices, and memento mori motifs—served as a visual guide to "ars moriendi," the art of dying. More than a simple graveyard, it is a profound meditation on "vanitas," the transience of human life. Following rehabilitation by Professor Miloš Stehlík in the 1960s, the cemetery remains a vital testament to Baroque piety and artistic genius, its symbolism successfully bridging the gap of centuries.
Luffar-Lasse (literally “Tramp Lasse”), a ginger cat in Trollhättan, regularly wanders nearly 1.2 miles (about 2 km) from his suburban home to the parking lot of a shopping area on the outskirts of the city. There, he approaches shoppers, accepts pets, and often hitchhikes rides back with strangers. This unusually social routine first made him a local celebrity. One sign of this is a nearby traffic circle with a mosaic sculpture of Luffar-Lasse by local artist Ellen Ljungqvist, installed in 2024. While commonly known as the Luffar-Lasse roundabout, the traffic circle's official name translates to “Barn Roundabout”. It features a small red wooden barn topped by the cat in thousands of colorful tiles. Measuring roughly 4 feet 3 inches (about 130 cm) from nose to tail, it depicts him surveying the roads. Luffar-Lasse’s traffic-prone wanderings prompted his owner to create a Facebook group to track the cat’s movements. As the group expanded, a member set up a donation box in Luffar-Lasse’s name for Musikhjälpen, an annual televised Swedish charity fundraiser. It raised the most money of all, roughly $ 180,000, bringing him national attention and, in turn, a slow-TV weekend on Swedish television, with two 7-hour live segments. Most public animal statues honor those long gone. Luffar-Lasse, now 15, is still alive, passing the mosaic on his way between home and the nearby shopping area several times a week. Monument and cat exist in parallel: one fixed, the other unpredictable.
I had not planned to stop in Pringle, South Dakota. We were driving west through the Black Hills to take a day trip to Wyoming when … I spotted it — a large sculpture made entirely of bicycles, welded together on the roadside outside of town, going nowhere and completely magnificent. We pulled over. My kids ran through its arches and tunnels. We took pictures. We left 10 minutes later having seen something none of us expected. That stop set the tone for the next two days. Just off I-90 near Sundance, Wyoming, I pulled off at a spot I'd found in the Atlas Obscura database: the Quaal Windsock — a 1950s Beechcraft Twin Bonanza airplane, 45-foot wingspan, mounted on a 70-foot pole above the highway. Mick and Jean Quaal loved the old plane but couldn't justify the $200,000 it would have cost to restore it to flying condition. So instead, they put it back in the sky another way. It pivots with the wind. The propellers still spin. We stood there and watched it turn for a while, and then we got back in the car. We had come to this corner of Wyoming for Devils Tower, the strange flat-topped rock column that erupts from the plains northeast of Hulett like something from another planet — which, if you grew up watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it essentially is. In Lakota tradition it's called Bear Lodge, and the grooves running down its sides are the claw marks of a great bear who chased children to the top while the rock rose to protect them. Prayer flags tied by Native visitors flutter at its base. Rock climbers (I'm one of them) move slowly up its columnar basalt faces far above. It is one of the more genuinely strange and beautiful places in America, and it deserves every word that has been written about it. But this essay is not about Devils Tower. Hulett is a small, old-timey Wyoming town about 20 minutes from the Tower. We were driving through it, windows down, when I saw the sign: Deer Creek Taxidermy. I said what I always say in these moments: Can we stop? We stopped. Atlas Obscura has hundreds of taxidermy places in its database. Our community has written about anthropomorphic Victorian taxidermy — dead kittens at tea parties, dead hamsters playing cricket — and about taxidermy loan libraries where you can check out a full-grown tom turkey the way you'd check out a book. We have taught bird taxidermy and mammal taxidermy online to thousands of students. One of our most dedicated community members — a woman named Caroline Mazel-Carlton who has visited more than 1,000 Atlas Obscura locations — told me she has loved taxidermy since she was 2 years old, and that her friends have, on multiple="multiple" occasions, had to extract her from taxidermy backrooms while on trips. I had always found this odd. I had not yet understood it. Bobbi Butler was behind the counter at Deer Creek when we walked in, keeping an eye on her granddaughter at the same time. She gave us the tour without hesitation. The walls were covered: deer, elk, bears, steers, animals arranged in postures of frozen alertness. Some looked calm. Some looked intense, even furious. My 8-year-old, a vegetarian, moved quietly from mount to mount, studying each one. Then Bobbi said: "So the guys are out back, and they're actually, I don't know if you'd like to see, but they are skinning a mountain lion." Of course, I said yes. Outside, a mountain lion lay on its back, legs suspended in the air. Blood across the chest, deep red at the neck. Two men worked efficiently and without ceremony. My son looked at it and said, "That's disgusting." One of the men looked up. "Good, we needed more help. If everybody holds a leg we have enough people." Bobbi explained: the animal had been harvested by a hunter who'd brought it to Deer Creek to be mounted. "When it comes back from the tannery," she said, "then we do all the artistic stuff." One of the men popped out a claw — enormous, curved — and held it toward us. "You want to see the dangerous stuff? Look at this." My son, the vegetarian, looked at the claw. He did not look away. Back inside, Bobbi walked us through the full process. Animals come in wet and go straight into the freezer. When it's time to work, they thaw the skin and glue it over a high-density foam form sculpted by specialists to the exact shape of the animal. "We order the foam," she said, "then we take the skin out of the freezer and thaw it out, put glue all over the form, stretch the skin over it, sew it up down the back, put glass eyes in, and tuck the nostrils and eyelashes in." She showed us mounts mid-process, pins still holding the skin in place while it dried. I asked whether the eyelashes were preserved from the actual animal. Yes, she said. My son asked if they'd done a cow. They were working on one. A monkey? Yes. A whale? No. He thought about this. "I think it would be cool to do a rat." I had come to Wyoming for Devil's Tower. I left thinking about what Bobbi Butler's work actually is — not preservation of death, exactly, but an argument that something was worth remembering and looking at in new form. The foam form. The glass eyes. The real eyelashes tucked carefully into place. Someone decided this animal's specific likeness, its particular claw, deserved to last. The Quaals' windsock had been put in the sky because they loved a plane too much to let it rust on the ground. The bicycle sculpture in Pringle was welded to the roadside for no navigational reason whatsoever. Bobbi's mountain lion will hang on someone's wall for decades. Maybe the purpose is the same in all three cases. Someone saw something worth presenting in a new way. Someone said: Look at this, and look what I did with it. Caroline would have stayed for hours. I think I'm starting to understand why. — Louise Ps - I hope you are enjoying my quest to complete my 50 states. Email me anytime with your own questing stories or travel suggestions at ceo@atlasobscura.com.
In the shadow of Petit Piton on the road to the famed Sugar Beach, is a short path through the rainforest to a small waterfall. Rather than the usual stream making its way to the sea, the base of this waterfall has been converted into a spa. Three man-made pools collect the water before it continues its journey. What makes this water here special is that it has journeyed from further inland, where it was heated by the geothermal action of the dormant volcano. Visitors can stand under the falls and soak in the warm water for as long as they like for a small fee. The water in the falls is warmest (similar to a warm shower), with the pools further from the falls significantly cooler.
Nestled in the dappled woods of the McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, near giant weathered curling antlers, stands the stoic, philosophical, and reflective Chrome Gnome. After years of standing beside the Peninsula Link Freeway, startling birds and distracting drivers, Frankie was moved first to the corner of Hastings and McMahon Roads in Frankston, before settling into his new (and hopefully forever) home at the McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery. An average-sized human will come up to his boot (and be happy for it), and only able to appreciate his delicious girth from a distance. Pensive and strong, this gargantuan guardian symbolizes strength and tenacity during uncertain times, while maintaining a sense of humor.
Alexander Hamilton was a founding father and an immigrant. His birthplace is located here at Nevis. You can see his statue and a replica of his childhood home on the actual site he lived. The Museum of Nevis History is located in the home now. Hamilton's roots in Nevis was evident in his leadership style, as he opposed slavery.
Built between 1936 and 1940, the Hiwassee Dam was originally built to harness the Hiwassee River and provide power for the Tennessee River Valley. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the TVA Act in 1933 and one of its purposes was for national defense. The Hiwassee Dam was chosen as a site for torpedo testing because of its remote mountainous location and because at places it reached 250 feet deep. In 1956 a reverse-drive generator turbine, the first of its kind in the nation, was so important to the nation that in 1981 it was made a National Historical Mechanical Engineering Landmark.
Joan Weed found this shortcake recipe on the back of a magazine and decided to make it her own. While the original recipe was for a traditional layer cake, Weed decided to take a more biscuit-based approach (with delicious results). Ingredients: 3 cups sifted flour 4-1/2 tsp baking powder 1tsp salt 1/3 cup sugar 3/4 cup shortening (butter) 2 eggs 2/3 cup milk (about) 2 tbsp melted butter 2 qts strawberries 1 cup heavy cream Directions: Sift dry ingredients, then cut in shortening. Add eggs and enough milk to moisten dry ingredients. Drop 1/4 cups of dough on greased baking sheet 2” apart till dough is used up. Bake at 425 for 20 mins or until nicely browned on top. Clean, slice and sweeten berries while biscuits bake. After cooling some, split or crumble biscuits. Spoon berries over top. Top with whipped cream. The biscuits freeze well and also make for a great treat on their own!
The Urartian (Biaynian) tomb of Yerevan is located at 34 Arshakunyats Avenue, within the premises of the former “Autoaggregate” factory, now part of the “Yerevan Mall” shopping center. Its discovery dates back to 1984 during construction activities. The excavation and study of this site were conducted by the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, led by archaeologist Leonid Biyagov and architect Armine Kanetsyan. To preserve this historical monument, a restoration project was initiated in 1984 under the supervision of architect Vladimir Chagharyan, followed by meticulous construction efforts. Remarkably, the mausoleum has been well-preserved, maintaining its original condition. It spans an area of 12 square meters and is an underground rectangular structure oriented in a north-south direction. The tomb's floor is adorned with finely crafted black, red, and dark brown tuff slabs, beneath covered with crypts. The walls, constructed of hewn tuff, stand five rows tall. The ceiling consists of tuff rocks with substantial coverage. Inside the tomb, niches are carved into the walls, containing cremated urns filled with crushed human, animal, and avian bones, alongside a large urn adorned with bull- headed figurines, a jar, a lamp, bowls, and other artifacts. Among the findings are bronze snakehead bracelets, pottery fragments, parts of horse bridles, rivets, an iron sword, a knife, daggers, agate beads, a satyr seal depicting a griffin and a crescent moon, and a bronze chalice embellished with a ram's head, as well as three bronze belts, among other items. The discovered artifacts possess significant historical, cultural, and artistic value, representing one of the most opulent burials identified so far from the Kingdom of Van. The collection indicates that the mausoleum likely belonged to the Urartian elite. Adjacent to the tomb, an Early Bronze Age stone box burial was also discovered. Pottery from the early 1st millennium BC was found in the surrounding area. These materials are currently housed in the Erebuni Museum in Yerevan. Presently, the preservation of the mausoleum is overseen by the management of “Yerevan Mall.” By the way, the interior design of the mall is decorated with Urartian cuneiform engravings and showcases statuettes from the Urartian period.
In the heart of Castilla-La Mancha, Talavera de la Reina makes a compelling case for a detour. Known for its brilliant blue-and-white ceramics and its easygoing riverfront along the Tagus, the city blends small-town charm with layers of deep history. Wander its tiled plazas, linger over local cuisine, and you'll quickly sense that Talavera rewards travelers who look closely-especially those willing to peer at its walls. A short stroll brings you to the Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Prado (“Basilica of Our Lady of the Meadow”), an ancestral sanctuary whose eastern façade doubles as an open-air archaeological gallery. Embedded directly into the stone are medieval slabs and far older Roman altars and funerary inscriptions, each labeled with its original findspot somewhere in town. It's the kind of detail you might miss-unless you know to look up. One small plaque mentions the "mares infernales," likely a slip for "manes," the benevolent spirits of the Roman dead. Another altar, though classified as Roman, resembles an Iberian Late Bronze Age stela, hinting at even deeper roots beneath the city's streets. Over centuries, the basilica has absorbed donations of art and artifacts: the tombstone of Liborio, heraldic shields, Latin epigraphy, and a 15th-century Virgin and Child. In Talavera, history isn't confined to museums-it's mortared into the walls.
The National Park Service Southwest Regional Office Building, (now known as Region III Headquarters Building), provides support services for Park Service properties throughout the intermountain region of the American Southwest. The office is located, on the south side of Old Santa Fe Trail at its junction with Camino del Montel Sol, and just north of Santa Fe's major museum district. The building, built in the 1930s by crews of the Civilian Conservation Corps with funding from the Works Progress Administration is a traditional adobe building. Designed in 1937 by Park Service architect Cecil Doty, it is a great example of Spanish Pueblo Revival architecture and was itself designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987. The building, measures out at 24,000 square feet (2,200 m2) making it the largest known adobe office building in existence. It is designed to emulate a traditional mission compound, with a central patio, walls built out of adobe and finished in cement stucco, and flagstone floors in the main lobby space. Walking into the building gives one the impression of being transported to a converted Spanish mission building, despite the fact that it’s a modern reproduction. Inside the main area are cabinets with museum-like displays of local artifacts as well as paintings and plaques denoting key individuals in the area’s history. The central patio includes a circular fountain surrounded by area-appropriate architectural elements and plantings that combine to give the courtyard a historic feeling. Walking around, one can almost expect to see brown-cloaked monks walking the grounds tending to their business. The Santa Fe skies combine with the open space to give the entire courtyard a timeless, yet period specific feeling that is hard to describe or emulate.
Built in 1747 by the Dutch East India Company, the Drostdy Museum began as the residence and administrative center of the district’s Landdrost (or country sheriff). The complex quickly expanded to include a gaol, offices, a mill, and various outbuildings, forming the core of colonial authority in the region. Johannes Theophilus Rhenius, the first Landdrost, governed with the assistance of burger heemraden, clerks, a gaoler, and enslaved labor, reflecting the layered power structure of the early Cape. British colonial reforms abolished the Landdrost system in the 19th century, and from 1827 the Drostdy housed a civil commissioner and resident magistrate instead. The property was sold and subdivided in 1846, later passing into private hands before being purchased by the Union of South Africa in 1939. Today, the former seat of colonial administration survives as a museum, its buildings preserving the architectural and bureaucratic imprint of nearly two centuries of shifting rule.
In a city known for glitz and grand entrances, Downtown Container Park feels like the charming, creative friend who knows all the best local spots. Built from stacked shipping containers, this open-air gem is filled with independently owned boutiques, cozy cafés, and small eateries. A whimsical, fire-breathing praying mantis welcomes visitors at the gate (because a little drama is always fun), but inside, the vibe is warm and community-focused. String lights glow overhead, kids play in the treehouse, and local makers and chefs bring serious personality to every corner. It’s colorful, supportive of small business, and refreshingly authentic—a lovely reminder that some of the best Las Vegas experiences are the ones built with creativity and community at their core.
Philopappou Hill takes its name from Prince Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos. Philopappos came to Greece in the 1st century A.D.E. from the Kingdom of Commagene after it was assimilated into the Roman Empire. Philopappos was extremely wealthy and was known for his philanthropy, funding many projects in the city. When Philopappos died in 116 AD his sister built his tomb as a monument directly southwest of the Acropolis atop what was then known as the Hill of the Muses. The Philopappos' monument was a magnificent, two-story structure, built with solid Pentelic and Hymettian marble. The monument remained intact until at 15th century, when portions were stripped by the occupying Ottomans for various uses. The remains of the monument sat on Philopappos Hill in that condition for the next 500+ years. In 1951 the Greek government developed a plan to beautify and make the area south of the Acropolis more accessible to the citizens of Athens. The project included pedestrian paths that led to the summit of Philopappos Hill. Local architect Dimitris Pikionis was selected to oversee the project. Pikionis was born in Piraeus, Greece in 1887. He was interested in building design as a youth and eventually enrolled at the National Technical University of Athens to study civil engineering. He graduated in 1908 and left Greece to continue his studies in France and Germany. He returned to Greece in 1912 and began focusing his studies on modern Greek architecture. In 1921 he accepted a position as a lecturer at the National Technical University of Athens and in 1925 accepted a position as a full professor. He worked on various projects throughout the city while teaching, and in 1951 he was selected by the Greek government to lead the efforts to implement the project. The project began in 1954. Pikionis collaborated with his colleagues, students and local stonemasons and together they developed a plan that was mostly reliant upon impromptu on-site decisions. The approach did not involve detailed written plans, nor was there a need for approval from the Greek government. At the time Philopappou Hill was a mostly barren, rocky hill with narrow dirt paths leading to the summit. Pikionis’ vision for the hill was to reforest it with a large number of pine and olive trees, insert steps, pave the paths, and install numerous seating areas with views of the nearby Acropolis. A collage of ancient ruins, cut marble, salvaged stone pieces from demolished neoclassical buildings, and ceramic shards found in the area were then gathered and organized. The students and workers then shaped the objects with chisels and carefully cemented them in a collage into the numerous paths leading to rest areas and the summit. The merging of all these objects created what many considered an amazing piece of art. The project was completed with little fanfare in February 1958 and included the pedestrian walkway leading to the Propylaea and the area surrounding the Church of Agios Dimitrios Loumbardiaris. Despite the low-key approach, this project was recognized as part of the Acropolis of Athens when it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1987. This project is considered by many to be one of the most significant landscape architecture works in the 20th-century.
“All that we have learned has been, as we Cubans say, ‘a golpe.’” Amanda Melendez is explaining the success of her food truck in Kissimmee, Florida, and it’s quickly becoming clear that her popularity did not come by accident: It was forged out of fire. “A golpe” literally means “by blows,” and when Melendez says she learned that way, she means that she did so through struggle or sheer force of will. It would be easy to forget this while salivating over a plate of her cerdo asado, or roast pork, the meat falling apart under a gleaming sheet of crispy skin. Served over Cuban rice and beans with pickled onions, fried sweet plantains, and yuca, the knock-out dish makes customers feel at home. So too does warm, graceful service from Melendez and Claudia Mena, her partner in life and in business. But behind Chef Amanda’s brilliant cooking and impeccable service are two women who have worked tirelessly to build their business from the ground up. Beginnings Melendez was born and raised in Matanzas, Cuba in a family that cherished mealtime. “Food, for us, was more than food,” she recalls. “It was the moment where we would sit together, where we would share our culture.” Melendez’s grandmother Mirta would prepare delicious meals for her entire extended family: comfort dishes like carne frita, or fried meat, and macaroni with pork fill Melendez’s memories of childhood. “We don’t have that much abundance in Cuba,” Melendez says, “and my grandmother would resolve to feed us with whatever she could get her hands on.” In this way, young Amanda was raised in a culture of culinary innovation. “In Cuba, if something doesn’t exist, Cubans will invent it to feed their families,” Melendez says. At age 18, Melendez left the island nation for Miami, where she joined her father, who was already living there at the time. At first, Amanda wasn’t particularly interested in cooking. As a child, she left the cooking to her grandmother. In Miami, fate brought her just outside of the kitchen, as a server and a manager. “I worked, like we all do in this country, in gastronomy,” Melendez says. Her first job was in a Salvadorean restaurant, and her second was at a Cuban one. The experiences exposed her to cuisines from across Latin America—even her own. “I ate foods that people here say are Cuban dishes—that you don’t actually eat in Cuba,” she said, because of a lack of access to ingredients. She points out that ropa vieja, a slow-cooked, shredded beef dish that is famous in the United States, is rare in Cuba, because the slaughter and sale of beef is heavily regulated on the island. With time in the United States, Melendez would not only taste, but also innovate on Cuban dishes that were difficult to obtain back home. At her food truck, she plates a mini-serving of ropa vieja on crispy tostones (fried green plantains) for a small, punchy bite of Cuba. A chef is born Though Amanda’s transition to life in Miami was marked by abundance, she became a cook during a time of desperation: the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. With nothing to do, she began to cook in her Miami home, her grandmother guiding her through Cuban classics. “Little by little,” she remembers, “my love for cooking emerged.” Claudia, who met Amanda while they were both waiting tables, could tell that she was tapping into a passion. “She pushed me to study it” seriously, Amanda says, and she did, enrolling in night classes at the María Moreno Culinary Institute in Miami. By night, she learned the fundamentals of French cooking, and by day she continued working at a Cuban restaurant in Miami. But that hustle was not paying off; the pandemic killed much of the business at her day job, so she needed to look for other opportunities. Again, her loved ones saw her talent, and encouraged her to nurture it. “My brother-in-law told me, ‘You cook well, why don’t you start a meal prep business?’” Amanda took to preparing lunches in her home kitchen that Claudia would deliver to clients around Miami. Over the course of several years, her business grew from 7 clients to 80, and she had to start cooking in a ghost kitchen to handle the volume. While at school she worked a punishing schedule: she would wake up at 3 A.M., cook until around 7, take a nap, then buy groceries for the next day before heading to classes from 7 P.M. to 11 P.M. at night. While Amanda was at school, the couple heard about an opportunity to buy a food truck, and they jumped on it. At first, they used the truck as a ghost kitchen. In 2024, Amanda graduated from Maria Moreno with a degree in culinary arts. She and Claudia continued with their catering business in Miami, but they dreamed of leaving the city so they could show Amanda’s cooking—Cuban food with global influences—to a non-Cuban public. Amanda’s father lives in Orlando, and on a trip to visit him, Amanda and Claudia were impressed by the area’s vibrant food truck scene. They wanted to become a part of it. They applied to join five or six food truck parks before getting a call from Food Trucks Heaven. The manager offered them a spot, but there was a catch: “You have to come before the end of the week because I only have one spot available,” Amanda recalls her telling Claudia over the phone. “We left for Orlando early the next morning.” A place in Food Trucks Heaven The first month in Kissimmee was “horrible,” Amanda remembers. One of the toughest parts of leaving was separating from her 90-year-old grandmother, whom she had lived with since arriving in the United States. On top of that, she left behind many other family members in the Miami area to move to a city where she knew no one besides her father. “Nobody knew who we were, and my food truck is named Chef Amanda,” says Melendez. “Who is Amanda? No one knows. It didn’t say ‘Cuban’ anywhere. It was horrible, horrible.” Amanda worked the kitchen of the pink food truck, and Claudia attended to customers. Melendez burnt herself cooking on her first day. There were days where Amanda and Claudia did not sell a single thing. “It was like when someone is just exhausting themselves, sacrificing so much, but with nothing to show for it,” Amanda remembers. “We realized the only way people would buy from us was if they learned about our food first.” Claudia and Amanda started to give away samples of cerdo asado, their show-stopper. Tourists started sharing images of the delicious, seven-hour slow-cooked pork on social media. Influencers stopped by. “We’ve grown little by little this way,” Amanda says. Seven months later, they sell so much that they’re having trouble keeping up with demand. Claudia says that Amanda’s biggest challenge is that she has trouble delegating her work to other people, but it’s time for her to hire a worker to help out. They’ve grown on the strength of Claudia’s hospitality and business acumen — Amanda calls her the “mastermind” of the operation — and Amanda’s innovative, soulful cooking. When the pair was still in Miami, Amanda’s professor, Yoher Vielma, helped them create a menu for their nascent food truck based in Cuban cooking, but with modern, global twists. “We make use of the original recipes with new techniques to create a fusion menu,” says Melendez. “Because society advances.” Take, for example, Amanda’s croquetas, a classic breaded fritter that on the island would be made with a doughy center. Amanda, taking notes from Spanish croquettes, makes hers with bechamel, so the crispy exterior gives way to a melt-in-your mouth interior. Or her arroz frito, a fried rice dish brought to Cuba by Chinese immigrants in the 1800s. She loaded hers with Cuban stir-fry ingredients—pork, pineapple, sweet plantains—but came up with her own sauce incorporating Japanese rather than Chinese ingredients. Her arroz con pollo arancini are particularly revelatory. The base of the dish is a yellow rice-and-chicken dish that Amanda says Cuban cooks use to transform a small amount of poultry into a large, filling meal. And in Melendez’s hands, the dish transforms once more. “It ends up with a texture like a risotto,” she says. She adds cheese while it’s hot, breads it, and fries it to make it crispy on the outside, and moist and flavorful on the inside. She cuts the richness of the fried rice balls with two salsas: one made of cream cheese and lemon; and another with Japanese mayonnaise, lemon, and aji amarillo, a Peruvian orange pepper. Customers have also been clamoring for her tarta vasca, a crustless Basque cheesecake, which she Cubanizes with a guava marmalade. The same marmalade is served with her queso frito, fried cubes of muenster cheese that are breaded and fried until tender on the inside but crunchy outside. “The cheese is spectacular,” she says. “People order a ton of it in the food truck.” Many Cubans are “incredulous” when they see the menu. “They ask me, ‘This is Cuban?’” Amanda says. “We tell them, ‘Try it. If you don’t like it, I won’t charge you.’ “And what always happens? They’re surprised. They’re always surprised, because when they try it they realize that it is Cuban food.” The menu is filled with her delicious takes on Cuban classics, like pan con lechón, a roast pork sandwich, a Cuban sandwich, and the inimitable ropa vieja. Customers can wash it all down with pineapple, mango, guava, or mamey (a custardy, aromatic tropical fruit) juice. In fact, while certain visitors need convincing, some Cuban-American influencers have been sharing videos of themselves eating at her food truck, calling it the best Cuban food truck in Orlando and saying that it transports them right back to Cuba. And though Amanda loves winning over her compatriots, she is just as pleased when an American who isn’t as familiar with Latin American food tries her cooking. “They come to us and say, ‘This is the best Cuban sandwich I’ve ever eaten.’ That fills us up, really. It gives me more happiness, I promise you, than money could.” From Kissimmee to the world Now that she’s developed a following in Kissimmee, Melendez says that she’s just getting started as a restaurateur. Next, she hopes to open another food truck in the Orlando metro area, and at some point, a brick-and-mortar. She and Claudia are also eying cities north of Florida where they can introduce her takes on Cuban cuisine to Americans who might be unfamiliar with it. Getting there won’t be easy, but she and Claudia are more than up to the challenge. “You’ll fall, you’ll hit a thousand obstacles, Amanda says. “But you can’t give up.” She encourages people who are hesitant to follow their dreams to take a leap. “Anything you want in this world you can achieve, but you have to believe in yourself unconditionally,” she said. Though Amanda’s dreams are grand, they are simple at their core: She likes feeding people. “It makes me happy when someone smiles when they eat something I made.” she says. “I want everyone to experience that.”
Oka Point began as a coconut plantation in the early 1900s before becoming the site of Guam’s first civilian hospital in the 1950s, built to treat tuberculosis and later expanded into a general medical facility. For decades, it served as the island’s primary center of care, training nurses and treating generations of families. After Typhoon Pamela heavily damaged the complex in 1976 and services moved elsewhere, the structures were eventually demolished, leaving behind little more than fragments and memory. Today, the windswept coastline holds only faint physical traces of a place that once carried the weight of Guam’s public health history.
Perched on a building corner overlooking a plaza in Hamburg, a small stone boy – part of the Hummel Fountain ensemble – projects from the façade. He cheekily presents his backside toward the city’s most famous local character, Johann Wilhelm Bentz, portrayed in a larger-than-life sandstone statue atop the fountain below. Behind him, a few grinning children complete the scene. Bentz was a short-tempered 1800s water bearer who hauled fresh water through the overcrowded, impoverished streets of Hamburg before indoor plumbing. Locals knew him as “Hummel.” He was often taunted by neighborhood children, who reportedly chose their moment well, jeering while he trudged along with a heavy water yoke across his shoulders, unable to give chase. Some accounts add that they punctuated their taunts by baring their backsides. Bentz responded with “Mors, Mors!”, a Low German retort roughly equivalent to “kiss my ass.” The fountain and its companion figures were created in 1938 by the sculptor Richard Kuöhl, during the Nazi era. Because of that timing, some modern commentators have suggested that the boy’s gesture reads differently in that political context, even as a subtle act of defiance. There is, however, no documented evidence that the motif was conceived as protest; the tale of children taunting Hummel long predates the regime.
While not well known in most places, Filipp Franz von Siebold is a famous name in the Netherlands and perhaps surprisingly in Japan as a well respected 19th-century doctor and botanist. The German scientist came to Japan in 1823 where he worked in Dejima Island and later in a medical school in the Nagasaki countryside. During his time there he discovered and catalogued many new plant species, and found ways to transport them to the Dutch Indies, and even the Netherlands where some of them still grow today in the Horris Botanicus. In 1829 Siebold was arrested for smuggling maps and placed under house arrest for about a year before he was banished and sent back to the Netherlands with an an enormous amount of plants, books, local items, and maps. Once back in the Netherlands he set up a large curiosity cabinet and began teaching Japanese language, culture, and medicine at the university. This building has largely remained preserved to this day, with the original artifacts and books still on display. The upper floor of the building became an exhibition space for rotating Japan related exhibitions.
This mediaeval stone monument marks an old Roman route across the beautiful moors high in the Peak District. The views from this area across to Bamford Edge, Ladybower Reservoir and Win Hill are stunning. In a time when all you meet are livestock and other walkers, it is hard to imagine this as an important Roman road. The monument was built (or possibly restored) in 1737 and this date can clearly be seen carved into the stone, as well as the names of four local towns, showing its use as a way marker.
Beneath the elegant calm of the museum lies something far older and far less orderly: the archaeological remains of an 11th-century church that refuses to fully disappear. The crypt is not polished or prettified. Instead, it reveals raw foundations, fractured columns, and worn stone outlines that trace the ghostly footprint of the original structure. This underground space once belonged to the Church of Saint-Étienne, one of the earliest religious centers in Dijon. Time, revolutions, and urban reinvention dismantled the church above, but its bones endured. Rough stone arches curve overhead like ribs. The air is cool and still, carrying the quiet dignity of something that has outlived its purpose yet refuses to vanish. Informational panels help decode the fragments, but the true magic lies in the unfinished feeling. Nothing here tries to impress. It simply persists. The result is a rare encounter with a building in reverse, not restored to glory, but preserved mid-disappearance. It’s less a monument than a memory made visible.
An entire army has been standing at attention beneath the soil outside Xi’an for more than two millennia—quiet, disciplined, and astonishingly detailed. Discovered by accident in 1974 by farmers digging a well, the Terracotta Army is part of the vast burial complex of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China. What began as a routine dig revealed ranks upon ranks of life-sized clay soldiers arranged in precise military formation. Infantry. Archers. Cavalry. Generals. Even horses and chariots. An empire’s defense strategy, recreated underground. The scale alone is staggering: thousands of figures, each with distinct facial features, hairstyles, armor, and posture. No identical molds stamped out on an assembly line—these soldiers were individualized, down to the curl of a mustache or the tilt of a topknot. Originally painted in bright pigments, they once stood in full color before centuries underground muted them into their now-iconic earthen tones. The pits themselves feel less like museum galleries and more like an archaeological theater mid-performance. Some soldiers stand fully restored. Others remain fragmented, mid-excavation, as if the army is still slowly rising from the ground. It’s a rare place where visitors witness history not as a finished exhibit, but as an ongoing reveal. The army was designed to guard an emperor in the afterlife, yet it ended up guarding something else entirely: one of the most jaw-dropping archaeological discoveries of the modern era. It is difficult not to feel small standing before thousands of silent faces, all waiting for a command that will never come.
Valencia was never known for its walls. Unlike Ávila or even Albarracín, these walls don’t enclose the city, nor announce themselves in any showy form. Most of what once protected the city is hidden underground, crumbling between buildings, or so iconic that it's rarely seen as one piece of a much larger fortification system (including one of its most famous postcards, the Torres de Serranos). In fact, Valencia has had not one, but three walls, built across three vastly different eras. The first belonged to Roman Valentia, founded in 138 BCE by consul Brutus (grandfather of the Brutus). The city grew along the Via Augusta (now Calle San Vicente Mártir), the ancient highway of the Iberian Peninsula, connecting it to the core of the Roman Empire. The city and its walls were destroyed in 75 B.C. by the troops of Pompey the Great (whose head would be gifted to Julius Caesar by Cleopatra years later). That original enclosure disappeared, with few records of its fate, but Valentia Edetanorum’s history survives in the Almoina Archaeological Museum, where sections of Roman streets, baths, and fortifications remain beneath glass walkways. Following the collapse of Roman authority and a Visigothic period, Islamic Balansiya expanded beyond its earlier limits in the 11th century, surrounding itself with a new defensive wall and seven gates. James I of Aragon would later conquer Valencia in 1238 (a victory that, according to legend, earned the city its bat emblem), ending the Islamic period. By the 14th century, Valencia had outgrown these limits too. Under the Crown of Aragon, a third, Medieval Wall (also called the Christian Wall) arose with what remained of its predecessor, and three times larger. And perhaps it’s no coincidence that one of Valencia’s most curious expressions, “estar a la luna de Valencia”, also references its walled past. In medieval times, the city’s 12 gates were shut at ten each night, so latecomers were left outside to sleep beneath the open sky, quite literally “by Valencia’s moon.” In the 19th century, its demolition was decreed. The first strike of the pickaxe fell on February 20, 1865. Over time, the walls were dismantled piece by piece, absorbed into new buildings, or reduced to rubble. Valencia may now be better known for beaches and Agua de Valencia, but beneath the surface is a city that spent nearly two millennia building ways to keep the world out—even if sometimes it left a few stragglers in.
Benjamin Franklin, a Founding Father of the United States who helped draft and sign the Declaration of Independence and served as the first United States Postmaster General, is honored with two tributes on the campus of Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana. The first is a large statue of Franklin located at the corner of Branigin Boulevard and Monroe Street at the northwest entrance to the campus. The statue, sculpted from marble in 1874 by James Mahoney, stands 12 feet tall. It was originally placed in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, on the Franklin Insurance Company building. When the building was razed in 1929, the statue was given to the International Typographical Union. In 1963, the union donated the statue to Franklin College. For many years, students were allowed to paint and decorate the statue to support sports teams and other causes, but this practice ended in 2014. Founded in 1834, Franklin College has a beautiful, quiet campus. If you wish to stroll around, stop and relax at the second Franklin tribute: a bench depicting Franklin reading the U.S. Constitution. The bench is located outside the Napolitan Student Center and the B.F. Hamilton Library in Dame Mall. The mall was named after John Dame, the first graduate of Franklin College. Visitor parking is available along Park Avenue behind the library. So stop at Franklin College for two Franklins for the price of one. An excellent twofer!
Banyan trees precariously grasping onto whatever surfaces they can with their splayed roots, are a relatively common sight around Hong Kong. Nowhere are these trees more impressive or numerous than on Forbes Street in Kennedy Town. Originally built to reinforce the hillside from landslides, the 200 meter long wall that runs the length of Forbes Street is home to 26 individual Chinese Banyan trees. Clinging dramatically to the brickwork, sections of the wall are completely covered from top to bottom with banyan roots, making the tree wall one of the area's most recognizable landmarks. The community's love for the Forbes Street Banyan trees was made evident in 2005, during the planning and construction of the Kennedy Town MTR subway station. Originally intended to be located under Forbes Street Playground, public concerns about the potentially negative effects of the construction work on the banyans, led to the MTR corporation moving the station to a different site nearby. With the station relocated, the Forbes Street Tree Wall continues to thrive, providing shade for pedestrians beneath its leafy canopy, and offering Kennedy Town residents a rare bit of greenery in a district dominated by residential high rise buildings.
On a quiet block in Dolton, IL, this modest brick house holds an unlikely place in church history. Long before white cassocks, papal ceremonies, and the crowds of St. Peter’s Square, Robert Prevost (now Pope Leo XIV) spent his early years here in a south suburban neighborhood outside Chicago. At a glance, it looks like any other house on the street, the kind of place you might pass without noticing. But in 2025, that changed almost overnight, when the election of the first U.S.-born pope turned this ordinary home into an unexpected point of pilgrimage. After years in private hands, the property was later purchased by the Village of Dolton, where its future now sits at the intersection of local history, global religion, and neighborhood pride.
Did you know that the word “gullible” does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary? Well, if you believed that, you might just be fooled by the inscription on this plaque which was allegedly erected by the Glasgow Information and Kultural Identity Taskforce, or GlaIKIT for short. Glaikit is a Scottish word meaning foolish or thoughtless, so maybe you can judge the truthfulness of the inscription for yourself. It reads as follows: In 1863, Robert Barr, the son of a Falkirk cork-maker, was brewing tea on this spot when he accidently knocked over his kettle. To his surprise, the hot water dissolved some of the rocky outcrop on which he sat, turning it into a bright orange, effervescent liquid. Out of curiosity, but with much trepidation, Barr tasted the resulting concoction and was surprised to find it had a unique, slightly metallic, and not entirely unpleasant flavour. Realising the opportunity, Barr borrowed enough money to purchase the land around the outcrop. He then set to work mining what he called his guid ore' which he turned into a health tonic he named Iron Brew and advertised as being made in Scotland from guid ore'. It was an instant hit, and within a matter of months it had made him a millionaire many times over. By 1890, Barr had extracted all of the guid ore' he could and despite an exhaustive search, he couldn't locate another source. By then he'd stock-piled enough to ensure the continuous production of his Iron Brew (which was rebranded as Irn-Bru in the 1940s) until 2037, but after that date, the company he founded will no longer be able to produce any more. In 1892, Barr sold the mine to the Caledonian Railway Company, who used it as the basis of a new railway line connecting the west of Glasgow to the city centre via this tunnel. However, the steam from the engines mixed with the last traces of guid ore in the rock, creating a distinctive flavor which made it unpopular with the more refined residents of Glasgow's fashionable west end and it closed soon after. The plaque was installed by the Glasgow Information and Kultural Identity Taskforce, which shares what might be called fanciful tales of Glaswegian history.
House of the Lion Cultural Atelier is a folk art environment and living sculpture park in northeast Brazil, where a self-taught Brazilian artist is building monumental symbolic lions and immersive cultural installations. The site blends popular art, personal mythology, and handcrafted architecture, transforming a personal atelier into a visionary cultural landmark open to visitors and guided tours. Visitors encounter dozens of large-scale sculptures and an ongoing project to create one of the largest lion sculptures ever built, turning the space into a rare fusion of art, devotion, and imagination.
The Atlas Obscura map led me to two places in the same corner of northeast Oklahoma on the same afternoon. I didn't plan it as a journey from joy to grief. But that's what it became. The first stop was Commerce, Oklahoma, population around 2,400, a town so modest you could drive through it in under two minutes and think nothing of it. I pulled up to 319 South Quincy Street with my eleven-year-old son, and we got out of the car into the bright afternoon and stood there in front of a small white house, taking it all in. This is where Mickey Mantle grew up. The Commerce Comet. One of the greatest baseball players who ever lived. I told my son the story the way it deserves to be told: like a fairy tale. Mickey's father, Mutt, was so certain of his son's destiny that he named him after a Hall of Fame catcher before he was even born. When Mickey was a boy, Mutt would come home from work every afternoon at four o'clock, and the baseball lessons would begin. Mutt pitched right-handed. Mickey's grandfather pitched left-handed. They engineered a switch-hitter on purpose, right there in that yard. Below the windows was a single. Above them, a double. The roof, a triple. Clear the house entirely and you had a home run. Mickey once said he was "the only kid in town that didn't get in trouble for breaking a window." My son and I walked around the yard. We peered into the old tin shed that served as Mickey's backstop. We stood where Mickey stood, and I tried to explain what it meant, that from this unremarkable house on this unremarkable street, in a small town most people have never heard of, something extraordinary grew. That greatness doesn't wait for the right zip code or the right circumstances. That you can come from anywhere, from very little, and still become something magnificent. A Yankees center fielder even. He nodded. We skipped around the yard a little, goofing off in the way that eleven-year-olds do when something connects with them but they don't quite have the words for it yet. We got back in the car. I told him our next stop was just up the road. I knew it wouldn't be a happy place. Atlas Obscura’s entry about the town of Picher had made that clear. We drove north on the small Highway 69, past flat green fields and bare trees, and then the landscape began to change. Gray mountains appeared, massive, looming, wrong. These were the chat piles: seventy million tons of toxic mining waste, the crushed and poisoned remnants of a century of lead and zinc extraction. As we rolled slowly into Picher, I was livestreaming on Instagram. Almost immediately, a viewer from Oklahoma appeared in the comments, urgent, almost scolding: Why are you going there? There are so many nicer places to visit. I kept driving deeper into the toxic town. The houses came into view. Deserted. Every one of them. "KEEP OUT" spray-painted across doors and windows, faded but legible. Yards still faintly shaped by the people who had tended them, a walkway here, a porch railing there, the ghost of a garden. This didn't feel like some picturesque old mining ghost town from the 1880s, the kind you visit out west with a gift shop nearby. Picher had been a living community until very recently. In 1983, the EPA designated it part of the Tar Creek Superfund Site, one of the most toxic places in America, it turned out, surpassing even the Love Canal. By the mid-1990s, studies found that 34% of the children in Picher had dangerous levels of lead in their blood, a contamination that could cause lifelong neurological damage. An Army Corps of Engineers study in 2006 found that 86% of the town's buildings were badly undermined by mine shafts and at risk of sudden collapse. Then, in May 2008, an EF4 tornado tore through what remained, killing six people and destroying 150 homes. The government stopped offering to help people rebuild and started offering to pay them to leave. By June 2009, the last residents had accepted buyouts. On September 1, 2009, Picher was officially dissolved as a municipality. Sixteen years ago. That's what I kept thinking. Sixteen years ago, people lived here. Children played in these yards. A high school class graduated — eleven seniors, the last class in Picher-Cardin High School's history — and then the doors closed forever. "Can we go faster?" my son asked. "Can we leave?" We stayed in the car. I didn't roll down the windows, having read on Atlas Obscura that the wind could carry harzardous material. I told my son what I tell myself about travel: that it's not just about the beautiful places and the perfect photos. It's about seeing many angles on the world, including what's hard and strange and broken. And that we owed it to the people who lived here not to look away. He nodded again. Less convinced this time. Picher stayed with us for days afterward. We kept talking about "that toxic town." And, honestly, I couldn't decide what to share about it with Atlas Obscura's community. Should I even write about it? Then, I sat down to write about Mickey's house in Commerce. I was writing the story about the balls thrown over the house with his father, and I looked up more about Mutt. Wow. Mutt died in 1952, at forty years old, when Mickey was twenty. The cause was Hodgkin's disease. Mutt's father Charlie, the same man who had pitched left-handed to Mickey in that yard every afternoon, had also worked in the mines of northeast Oklahoma and also died of Hodgkin's disease before he was fifty. Mickey spent his whole life assuming it was family fate — that the Mantle men simply didn't make it past forty. He didn't know, until much later, that inhaling lead and zinc dust in the mines can lead to Hodgkin's disease. Mutt had worked specifically at the Eagle-Picher Company, the mining operation whose waste became the toxic mountains I had driven through that same afternoon, a few miles up the same road. And here is what stopped me cold when I worked out the timeline. The Eagle-Picher mines didn't close until 1967, fifteen years after Mutt was already dead. The EPA didn't declare the area a Superfund site until 1983, thirty-one years after Mutt died. And the last residents weren't cleared out until 2009, fifty-seven years after Mutt's death. The mine that in all likelihood killed him, just kept going. More workers. More families. More dust. And the town built on top of all that poison wasn't fully evacuated until more than half a century after Mutt Mantle was buried. When all that happened, people weren’t talking about Mutt Mantle or the connection the mine had to the famous Yankee’s baseball star. Today, most people who make the pilgrimage to Mickey Mantle's boyhood home in Commerce never drive the few minutes north to Picher. Why would they? Mickey's house draws baseball fans and history lovers who want to stand where a legend stood. They skip around the yard, peer into the old tin shed, feel the warmth of the American dream — and then they get back in the car and drive away, the story intact, the fairy tale complete. But the full story isn't in Commerce. It's also in the journey to Picher. Until you've sat in that toxic town and felt the eerie silence of those deserted streets, you haven't really understood what it meant for Mutt Mantle to come home from work every afternoon at four o'clock. "That's so sad," my son said, when I told him that Mickey’s father worked there. "Are you okay that I took you to Picher?" I asked him. He thought about it for a moment. Then he nodded, slowly, solemnly, a little wiser. Wonder, I've come to believe, isn't only the beautiful and the marvelous. Sometimes it's the terrible thing you finally understand. Sometimes it's the two places on the map that turn out to be, quietly, the same story.
Like its larger and more famous namesake, Central Park in Mishawaka, Indiana, has a greenspace, walking path, nearby river, cold and snowy winters, and a statue dedicated to the renowned explorer Cristoforo Colombo. The Maria SS. DiLoreto Italian Mutual Benefit Society donated the statue to the City of Mishawaka in 1992, on the 500th anniversary of Colombo’s arrival in The Bahamas on October 12, 1492. Central Park in New York City has a Columbus statue commemorating the 400th anniversary of his arrival in 1892. More commonly known as Christopher Columbus, the statue and its accompanying information identify him as Cristoforo Colombo, which is the modern Italian version of his name. Columbus believed he had sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean and had arrived in Asia. It is believed he landed on present-day San Salvador Island in The Bahamas. The island was known to the Indigenous people as Guanahani. Columbus called the Indigenous people “Indians.” When he died in 1506, he still believed he had found a western route to Asia. Central Park features fishing, pickleball courts, a playground and splash pad, and picnic tables.
Annie Springthorpe was born on the 26th of January 1867, married on the 26th of January 1887 and then died on the 26th of January 1897. So records the monumental Springthorpe memorial at Kew Cemetery, erected by Annie's grieving husband following her death ten years into their short-lived marriage. Dr. John Springthorpe was professionally accomplished and utterly devoted to his young wife before her passing. The couple lived on the so-called 'Paris End' of Collins Street, a fashionable area still in the 19th Century. When the birth of their fourth child took Annie away from him, the doctor was so wracked with grief that he sent the children to live with relatives. He poured his feelings into writing and created a precursor to this memorial in the home they had lived in together. He filled it with paintings and mementos of their love, even going so far as to leave the blood on the bedsheet, where she had lost too much of it. The Springthorpe Memorial was the apotheosis of this impulse, and took ten years to complete. It is a sprawling and hauntingly beautiful grave that reflects the immense love that inspired it. Annie is rendered in marble lying on a sarcophagus with disconsolate angels weeping over her body. Her birth, marriage and death are all recorded (the date just happens to be Invasion Day aka Australia Day) as well as passages from the Romantic poets testifying to how much she was loved. The monument has a miniature wall ringing it with quaint gates, reflecting the Gothic / Greek Revival style. Most dramatically, there is a canopy of stained glass that on sunny days casts the entire thing in blood red light.
A few weeks ago, I announced my quest: Visit all 50 states before America’s 250th birthday on July 4th. I had 11 remaining—Arkansas, Kansas, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Indiana, Nebraska, Iowa, Idaho, Washington, and Alaska—and I asked if you had suggestions. What arrived was not a trickle. It was a flood. Hundreds of emails, from readers in Fairbanks and Visby, Sweden; from retired wildlife biologists and Jesuit priests and 87-year-olds and environmental science teachers in Phoenix. You have collectively produced what might be the most detailed, lovingly opinionated, off-the-beaten-path guide to these 11 states I have ever encountered. I want to share what you said. And then I want to ask you something. What You Told Me The single most-recommended destination in my entire inbox was Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. A world-class art museum in the Ozarks, built by the Walton family—and apparently, it is exactly as extraordinary as its reputation. Consider that recommendation well and truly made. It also has a special exhibit showing for the 250th. South Dakota produced the most passionate emails. The Badlands—“badass, take water”—came up from many readers. Mt. Rushmore came up almost as much, though almost always with a counterpoint: Crazy Horse, which multiple readers called more meaningful; or Custer State Park, where one reader used to pay her kids for animal sightings to keep their eyes off their screens. One reader admitted he was dead set against visiting Rushmore—saying “a bunch of stone heads defacing a beautiful mountain, who cares?”—and then was completely won over after hiking the trail up close. Washington produced more recommendations than any other state. The ferry system. The Olympic Peninsula. The Hoh Rain Forest. Mt. Rainier. Mt. St. Helens. The Underground Seattle tour. The LIGO gravitational wave observatory on the Hanford nuclear site, which has monthly public tours and which I am not missing. Eastern Washington’s Yakima Valley, where one reader described apple orchards on volcanic soil and hop fields carrying “the foreshadowing fragrance of future IPAs.” And the Moccasin Bar in Hayward, Wisconsin—cash only, taxidermy animals staged in dioramas playing poker and boxing, a world-record musky on the wall. No website. For Nebraska: Several of you mentioned Carhenge. Several more mentioned the sandhill crane migration along the Platte River in March—which, as I write this, is happening right now. A Jesuit priest from Omaha described driving up through the Sandhills toward the Badlands as “a different kind of stunning beauty you won’t see anywhere else.” I believe him. Iowa kept surprising me. Mason City came up from numerous readers independently: It has the last surviving Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel, the hometown of Meredith Willson (who wrote The Music Man), and puppets from The Sound of Music on display at the local art museum. I did not know any of this. The future birthplace of Captain Kirk is also in Iowa, in the town of Riverside, which I find deeply wonderful. Idaho, I am told, contains incredible nature. A retired wildlife biologist sent me a list of fifteen places that don’t appear in any guidebook, including rivers that vanish underground and a fault scarp still visible from the 1983 earthquake. Craters of the Moon came up four times. The town of Arco—the first city in the world powered by atomic energy—sits right next door. For Alaska, the advice was nearly unanimous: Go. Just go. One reader who has lived there 45 years wrote: “We love Atlas Obscura, but you don’t need smoke and mirrors in Alaska.” I believe him, too. What I Notice Across All of It Reading through hundreds of recommendations, a few themes emerge that say something about how this community thinks about travel. Almost everyone pushes past the obvious. The marquee attraction gets mentioned, and then immediately qualified or redirected. Go to Rushmore, but Crazy Horse. Visit Seattle, but cross the Cascades. The instinct to find the less-trodden version runs deep in this inbox. It is, I think, the Atlas Obscura instinct made explicit. Indigenous history comes up again and again, and always with moral weight. The flooding of Ojibwe land to create the Chippewa Flowage in Wisconsin. The Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma. The First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City. Multiple readers specifically suggested skipping the Mt. Rushmore tourist shops and buying from Native artisans instead. This isn’t incidental. It feels like something this community carries collectively. Food is always specific, never generic. Nobody says “eat at a good restaurant.” They say: Get a Maid-Rite in Iowa, a loose-meat sandwich served since 1926. Eat cheese curds in Wisconsin—“the squeakier, the fresher.” Get pie at Norske Nook. Have a coney dog at Coney Island on 104 E 3rd St in Grand Island, Nebraska, run by the original owner’s son, interior unchanged. These aren’t Yelp recommendations. They’re heirlooms. And this surprised me: Frank Lloyd Wright is a secret connective thread through the whole trip. His last surviving hotel is in Mason City, Iowa. His Allen House is in Wichita, Kansas. His Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, has hotel rooms and a bar. His Taliesin is in Spring Green, Wisconsin. I could build an entire itinerary around one architect across four states. I might. Where I’m Still Looking for More I want to be honest: Kansas and Indiana got thinner treatment in the inbox than the other nine states. Kansas carries a reputation—“it’s flat,” multiple readers noted, often before and sometimes after their recommendations—that seems to suppress enthusiasm even among people who clearly love it. I know Monument Rocks exists. I know Lawrence has some of the richest Civil War history in America. But I want more. What are you not telling me about Kansas? Here is a video of one interesting little place I visited there so far. Indiana also feels like it has secrets I haven’t unlocked. The dunes, the caves, the West Baden Springs Hotel with its extraordinary domed atrium—those came up. But I suspect there’s an Indiana that doesn’t get written about, and I want to know what it is. So here is my ask: What did I miss? What did your fellow readers get wrong, or underrate, or skip entirely on the above states? Are there places on this list you’d push back on? And what would you add? Why I Trust You Studies consistently find that friends and community members—people who share your values, your curiosity, your sense of what a good trip means—are the most reliable predictors of whether you’ll love a place. One analysis of millions of travel check-ins found that the people in your community shape your destination choices more powerfully than any algorithm. The intangibility of travel makes us especially dependent on the testimony of someone who has actually been there—not descriptions, but the lived experience of a person saying: Go, it surprised me, do not miss it. The Atlas Obscura community self-selects for a particular kind of curiosity. You are not here for the obvious. You are not here for the sanitized version. The recommendations you sent are, almost without exception, from people who went somewhere, were surprised by it, and wanted to hand that surprise to someone else. That is an act of generosity. That is also, I think, why it feels so trustworthy—because it comes from the same place that wonder does. I am going to all 11 states. I have four months. And I am taking your list with me. Tell me what I missed. I’m at ceo@atlasobscura.com. — Louise
On an unassuming stretch of Main Street in the small town of Elizabeth sits a doorway into cycling’s wonderfully peculiar past. Behind it waits a collection of vintage bicycles so varied and charming that it’s hard not to grin as you walk in the door. Paul’s Vintage Bicycle Museum isn’t slick or high-tech and that’s precisely the point. Instead, it feels like stepping into a lovingly curated garage where every bike has a personality. Sturdy cruisers from the mid-20th century look ready to coast straight into a black-and-white photograph. Odd frame designs and forgotten brands reveal just how experimental bicycle makers once were. The real magic, however, isn’t just in the metal and rubber it’s in the stories. Owner Paul offers informal tours and enthusiastically shares the history and quirks of any bicycle that catches a visitor’s eye. Ask about a strange looking frame or an antique brake system and prepare for an impromptu lesson in ingenuity. The experience feels less like wandering through a museum and more like discovering a treasure trove guided by its devoted caretaker. Admission is free, though donations are requested to help keep the collection rolling. The setting is humble, the atmosphere welcoming, and the surprises plentiful. For anyone who appreciates mechanical oddities, nostalgic craftsmanship, or simply the joy of discovering something unexpected in a small Midwestern town, this museum delivers in spades and spokes.
The Turkish term Gececondu literally translates to "placed overnight." It refers to informal settlements, shantytowns, or slums that emerge without official blessing—typically on the outskirts of major cities and often constructed from waste and makeshift materials. One might expect this in the Middle East, Africa, South America, or developing nations, but is such a thing possible in organized, straight-laced Germany—specifically in Berlin? It is. However, the unique feature of the Berlin Gececondu is that it owes its existence to the division of the city and the Berlin Wall. In 1963, Osman Kalin was part of the first wave of so-called "guest workers" who came to Germany following the German-Turkish recruitment agreement. In 1980, he moved to Berlin with his wife and six children, first to Spandau and later to Kreuzberg. Located directly against the Wall was a 350-square-meter triangular wasteland; the plot technically belonged to East Berlin but was located on the West Berlin side of the border. Starting in 1983, having retired by then, he began clearing the site of rubbish to cultivate vegetables. In the shadow of the Wall, he built a hut out of wardrobe doors, bed frames, and hand-mixed concrete. Initially, East German border guards watched him with deep suspicion, fearing the construction of an escape tunnel. When two VoPo's, policemen from the GDR came to stop him, he was stubbornly pretending not to understand their language and that the land was his property for a long time. After the fall of the Wall, the Gececondu—or "guerrilla garden," as it is also known—managed to survive for several reasons. On one hand, political leaders appreciated the cultural and folkloric anomaly as a tourist attraction and a symbol of a multicultural, open Berlin; on the other hand, a cash-strapped Berlin lacked the funds to fully restore the Engelbecken (a former canal basin) that once occupied the site. Thus, Osman was able to grow kale, tomatoes, cherries, and cabbage here until his death in 2018. Today, his son Mehmet and another Turkish family tend to the plot. In writings about the family, one perceives a certain "Anatolian craftiness" and an Eastern interpretation of rules: sympathetic politicians are met with warmth, while inquisitive journalists are often charged a €50 "expense fee" for interviews. Mehmet plans to turn the place into a museum in honor of his father. He charges tourists E5 for visits and has even put up a fake street sign: Osman Kalin Plath 0,1. The future of the Gececondu is unclear, yet it remains a Berlin curiosity and holds a permanent place in the city's Turkish diaspora.
Cocaine once reigned. But coffee is the king again in Colombia. And as many international tourists are making their way back to the more remote parts of this majestic South American country, the image of Juan Valdez, the “face” of the Colombia coffee grower, is who they want you to remember. Not Pablo Escobar, the face of a Narco industry which fueled a different kind of agriculture which tore this country apart for decades. In fact, coffee tourism has become THE THING to do in Colombia now. Why? Well, it’s safe to go to the interior of Colombia where small family farms are located but were once riddled with fighting fractions on the left, the military and those just trying to protect their land from narco-trade. In towns in and around Chinchina, Colombia many small family farms which struggled to survive over the last 30 years are seeing a resurgence of business by opening up their “Fincas,” or plantations/farms to tourists with a full-blown lesson of the production of coffee, a tasting, followed by the visitor getting to pick coffee beans just like the workers on the property. Your beans go into the Colombian “Collectivo,” for coffee production and some farms will even give you a certificate from the Colombian government showing your contribution to the coffee industry. So proud are the Colombians of this economic stimilant to the region, that in the center of the coffee region they have erected what was at one time the world’s largest coffee mug. It is located at the Parque Principal in Chinchina. The cup was unveiled for a Guinness Book of Records stunt in June 2019 to fill it with it with the largest cup of coffee in history. They were successful with 22,739.14 litres (5,001.91 UK gal; 6,007.04 US gal). Since it took fifty people and more than a month to construct the project, the cup remains in the plaza for all to behold. (In 2022, a larger cup was unveiled in Leon, Mexico.) Colombians will admit they are not the largest coffee producers in the world. And their coffee isn’t the strongest. They don’t fetch the highest price on the market for their coffee either. But now that the aggressive years of left- and right-wing fighting seems to be behind them, Colombians may be the proudest of their coffee production. And they have one of the largest coffee cups in the world to prove it now.
The Mola Museum is a must-visit while exploring Panama City. Tucked along a quiet side street in the historic Casco Viejo neighborhood, this intimate museum celebrates the extraordinary textile artistry of the Guna (Kuna) people. Through thoughtfully curated exhibits, visitors gain insight into both the history of the Guna community in Panama and the intricate craft of their traditional textiles, known as molas. The experience begins with a life-size video installation of a woman dressed in traditional Guna attire, offering a vivid introduction to the culture behind the art. From there, a series of rooms display stunning examples of molas, each accompanied by explanations of their symbolism and meaning. Inspired largely by the natural world around them, Guna artisans create vibrant, layered designs using a meticulous reverse-appliqué technique. Each piece, often composed of two intricately cut and stitched layers, can take anywhere from three days to a week to complete, with many designs telling rich visual stories. The museum’s collection focuses primarily on works created before 1975, preserving an important chapter of Guna artistic heritage. In addition to the textiles, visitors will also find thoughtfully placed photography that adds further cultural context to this remarkable tradition.
I kissed a frog in Sparta, Wisconsin. Voluntarily. Enthusiastically. The frog in question is one of hundreds of giant fiberglass molds scattered across a football-field-sized lot behind a nondescript sheet-metal building off County Highway Q. This is the home of FAST — Fiberglass Animals, Shapes, and Trademarks — a company that has been building giant roadside statues, mascots, and water park attractions since the early 1970s. It was incorporated under its current name in 1983 by a man named Jerome Vettrus. FAST has worn the mantle of American titan-builder for over 50 years. Among their greatest hits: a 200-foot-long sea monster at House on the Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and a 145-foot-long muskie in Hayward. After each job, they keep the mold. All of them. For decades. And that's how a quiet field in rural Wisconsin became one of the most unexpectedly wonderful places I've ever wandered. There are giant skulls and colossal dogs, oversized Santa Clauses and titanic mice. The fiberglass has weathered over time, giving the molds an almost ancient, stone-like quality, as though the yard is the remnant of some surreal lost civilization. Walking through it is eerie and beautiful at the same time. Some molds are rotted out, covered in weeds or standing water. Others are in relatively pristine condition and could practically be reused tomorrow. That's actually the point. The molds are kept for future reuse, since they'd be expensive to recreate. So this isn't just a graveyard. It's also a library. A catalog. An archive of American roadside whimsy sitting in the tall Wisconsin grass. I found the frog slide mold and, yes, I kissed it (still looking for my prince). FAST has been making frog slides for over 35 years. You've almost certainly seen one at a water park somewhere without knowing it. I slid down a few of the slides too, because how could you not. Then I stood there imagining all the places these forms have traveled, whether they were painted bright yellow or fire-engine red, whether they were installed at some mini golf course in Arizona or a splash pad in Ohio. I imagined the faces of the delighted kids who have no idea their beloved frog came from a field in Wisconsin. The current owner took over around 2020, and if you visit during business hours, he might just show you around. The whole thing is free. Open 24 hours. No facilities. Pure wonder. It got me thinking about waste and beauty. There's something philosophically satisfying about a place where industrial byproduct becomes accidental art installation. FAST's mold graveyard isn't the only example. Ghanaian artist El Anatsui famously creates vast, shimmering tapestries from discarded bottle caps. Artists on Mount Everest have turned abandoned oxygen cylinders and helicopter wreckage into sculpture. The stuff we discard has a strange afterlife when someone thinks to look at it differently. That's the gift of Atlas Obscura exploring: we keep pointing you toward the places where someone already did the looking for you.
Somewhere in Kansas, a well-traveled man asked me if I was driving long distances to hit the state's biggest attractions. I paused. That wasn't really how I was thinking about this trip at all. As I settled into driving south to north through the plains states, I discovered something. Wonder doesn't actually require huge detours when you travel with the Atlas Obscura app. Wherever I was headed, there was something unexpected and interesting practically underfoot. So I showed him. I pulled up the app right there. “Look. Fifty feet from where we're standing, there's an all-electric house.” And just a few minutes away, a horse graveyard. I had already failed to stop at Mister Ed's grave in Oklahoma, sorry Mister Ed, so I wasn't going to miss this one. The Lawrin gravesite sits at the end of a quiet residential cul-de-sac in Prairie Village, a tidy suburb of Kansas City. It's tucked behind a black wrought-iron fence on a small, well-tended rectangle of green. You would never know to turn into this neighborhood, wind down its meandering streets, and pull up to this spot without Atlas Obscura. But here's what's interesting about Lawrin. He was the only Kansas-bred horse ever to win the Kentucky Derby. In 1938, Lawrin crossed the finish line with jockey Eddie Arcaro in the saddle and a four-leaf clover tucked under it for luck. The entire 200-acre Woolford Farms where he was born and trained is now Prairie Village. All that's left of it is this small, immaculate patch of grass at the end of a cul-de-sac. While I was there, I met a man in his 90s who lives in the house across the street from the grave. He told me his favorite story about that 1938 Derby finish. In the final stretch, he said, Lawrin and his jockey glanced back. The second-place rider was closing fast. They nearly lost. But then they refocused and surged ahead. “Never look back,” he told me. “When you turn around like that, the horse thinks it's coming to the end. He starts to slow down. Just keep going.” Then he shared a bit of horse burial trivia. Racehorses are usually buried with only their head and heart because their bodies are simply too large. Head and heart. I turned that over as I walked back to my car. It turns out the full tradition actually includes the hooves too. Intelligence, spirit, and speed, all interred together. And if there was one thing Lawrin had in abundance, it was speed. Two minutes and four and four-fifths seconds worth of it, to be exact. That's what wandering with Atlas Obscura does for you. You stumble onto wonder in places you never would have found on your own. If you have suggestions for places I should see in the states I still have left, email me at CEO@atlasobscura.com. My map so far:
I have to be honest with you: I thought I was the one going on an adventure. But then your emails started arriving, and I realized the adventure had already been happening — in living rooms and minivans and camper vans and cruise ships and, apparently, at least one sinking expedition vessel in the Drake Passage — long before I packed a single bag. Since I shared my quest to visit all 50 states before America's 250th birthday, which will be on July 4th this year, I've heard from hundreds of you, and I am genuinely moved. You are state-counters and road-trippers, expats writing from Sweden, Jesuit priests from Omaha, proud Fairbanksans, 87-year-olds still dreaming about five northwest states, and three-generation families who've made the full 50 a kind of inheritance. You are, in other words, exactly who I always believed our Atlas Obscura community to be: people who think that showing up somewhere — really showing up, eyes open, taking the back roads — matters. Some of you have systems. Anthony Castora and his wife draw a state quarter from a hat every New Year's Eve, right before the Times Square ball drops. They've been doing it for 16 years, and every January, his students and coworkers wait breathlessly to find out where the Castoras are headed next. I love this so much I want to steal it. And then there's David Raum, who told me he wasn't even that excited about visiting Hawaii — until the expedition ship he'd booked to Antarctica hit an iceberg and sank. Everyone survived, the airline vouchers needed using, and Hawaii became his 50th state entirely by accident. He's 81 now, just back from two months in Mexico, and still going. I want to be David Raum when I grow up. My trip continues, and after walking parts of The Trail of Tears, I wrote a guide about that, in case you, too, want to walk it. After an incredible time in Arkansas, next up, I will be sharing experiences from Oklahoma, Kansas, and then Wisconsin. The travels are so much better with your tips. You've sent me covered bridges and crater fields, a gravity-wave observatory on a nuclear site in Washington, a funicular railway in Dubuque, a barn shaped like a teapot, and — more than once, from more than one of you — the sandhill cranes along the Platte River in Nebraska in March, which I'm now convinced I cannot miss. (Will the cranes still be there in early April?) Keep the tips coming. I'm taking notes on every single one. And if you are on a quest to finish your 50 states -- or have already finished them -- tell me about that! And fill in your map! We are opening our platform and our podcast to feature stories of 50 state quests, and would love to hear yours. I'm at ceo@atlasobscura.com
There is a place in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, at the quiet corner of Black Nursery Road and East Heritage Parkway, where the ground remembers. Stand there long enough and you begin to feel the weight of it — not the weight of a battlefield monument or a presidential memorial, but something older and more enduring. This was a road where thousands of people were forced to walk because the United States government, under President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830, had decided their homelands belonged to someone else. The Trail of Tears National Historic Trail spans more than 5,000 miles across nine states, but you cannot walk it end to end. Much of the route passes through private land, along modern roads, or across waterways, leaving only scattered segments accessible to visitors on foot. What remains open, though, rewards the effort — and northwest Arkansas has some of the most evocative stretches anywhere along the trail. It's worth knowing what you're standing on here. Prairie Grove sits on the Cherokee Benge Route, one of several overland paths traveled by the tribe in the brutal winter of 1838–1839. But Arkansas was not only Cherokee territory during the removal years. All five of the forcibly displaced nations,the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole, traveled through this state on their way to Indian Territory. The routes overlapped, diverged, and converged again across the Arkansas landscape. When you stand at any point along this trail, you are standing on ground that absorbed the suffering of all of them. The Benge Route passed through Fayetteville and Washington counties before traversing Prairie Grove on its way toward Evansville and the Oklahoma border. Thirteen Cherokee detachments passed through this region. Some arrived near Prairie Grove on Christmas Day, 1838, with snow on the ground. The trail entrance you can walk today follows the same corridor. The history you know (and some you don’t) The story most Americans learn goes something like this: five sovereign nations were forcibly expelled from their ancestral homelands in the American Southeast and marched westward to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. Thousands died from exposure, disease, and starvation along the way. In the Cherokee language, the journey is called Nunna daul Tsuny, "the trail where they cried." What the standard telling leaves out is equally important, and considerably harder to sit with. The more prosperous members of all five nations had, in the decades before removal, adopted many of the economic practices of the white planter class surrounding them, including the enslavement of Black people. When the forced marches began, those enslaved people were marched west too, not as survivors of a tragedy, but as property dragged along by it. Thousands of enslaved Black people, owned by members of all five tribes, were forced to make the journey. They cooked, nursed the sick, and labored throughout. They had no say in any of it. The story resists easy moral framing. Leaders across the five nations fought their removal with extraordinary legal and political skill, and many of those same leaders enslaved people. This chapter of American history sits at the painful intersection of two of the nation's deepest injustices, entangled and unresolved. The tears on this trail were not shed by one people. They belonged to everyone forced to walk it. How you can walk it The Prairie Grove entrance off Black Nursery and East Heritage Parkway offers a quiet, accessible entry point into this history, one that most visitors to northwest Arkansas never find. The surrounding landscape looks deceptively ordinary: Ozark woods, a gravel path, the sounds of a region that has moved on. But the Heritage Trail Partners of Northwest Arkansas have done careful work marking and interpreting these routes, and informational signage helps orient visitors to what they're standing on. Markers call out the path the Cherokee took through these dense woods, the same section passed by the groups that stayed in Cane Hill and those traveling north from Dardanelle. From Prairie Grove, you can follow the Benge Route west toward Evansville and the Oklahoma state line. Other access points worth seeking out across the trail's nine-state span include Mantle Rock in Kentucky, a sandstone shelter bluff where Cherokee were forced to wait, sometimes for days in brutal cold, before being allowed to cross the Ohio River. The hike there is short and level, about 0.4 miles from the parking area, with signage explaining the site's role in the removal. Fort Smith National Historic Site in western Arkansas marks the point where the Arkansas and Poteau rivers converge, the final crossing into Indian Territory. Where to learn more The Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, North Carolina tells this story from the perspective of those who survived and those who hid in the Smoky Mountains to avoid removal. It is essential. The Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Oklahoma sits near Tahlequah, the endpoint of the trail and the current capital of the Cherokee Nation. It holds archives, oral histories, and a reconstructed 17th-century village that puts the removal into the longer sweep of Cherokee civilization. The National Park Service maintains the trail's official site at nps.gov/trte, with maps, driving routes, and accessible segment information. The Arkansas Heritage Trails system at arkansasheritagetrails.com offers a detailed guide to the state's routes specifically. For those who want to explore northwest Arkansas's stretch of the trail in depth, heritagetrailpartners.com is the local resource, maintained by the organization that has done the most to interpret and preserve this corridor.
For AnneMette Bontaites, running the New York City Marathon was supposed to be a one-time experience. A personal challenge, a bucket-list item, and then back to normal life But somewhere between the starting line and the finish, plans changed. The decision to run that first marathon was almost a whim. Bontaites, a Denmark native who now lives in Boston, had run two half marathons and joked to her best friend, “Well, two halves make a whole. I've done a marathon.’” The friend, also a runner, begged to differ on that distance math and made her an offer: She’d fly to New York from the pair’s home city of Copenhagen and they’d run Bontaites’s first marathon together. By mile 18, the friends had made a pact to run the Copenhagen marathon together, too. Soon the races began to stack up: After Copenhagen came Paris, the Marine Corps Marathon, and eventually the prestigious Abbott World Marathon Majors series, which includes seven races in Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, New York, Sydney and Tokyo. "Before you actually run one, I think in the back of your mind, most people [think], 'There is no way I could ever run a marathon.' And then when you do, it's this really incredible fulfilling feeling of, 'Wow, I really did this.'" And the discipline and mental grit required to train and run those races also reshaped how Bontaites approaches challenges far beyond the course. “It helps when you actually break down the 26.2 miles into five-mile increments because then it becomes less daunting mentally,” she says. “Itake that to work with me.” The lesson, she discovered, wasn’t just about running—it was about reframing overwhelming goals into manageable steps. Bontaites completed the Abbott series in August 2025 when she ran the Sydney Marathon and considered retiring, but then Athens – birthplace of the marathon – came calling. That race was in November. “I thought, ‘Let's end where it all began,’” she said. Follow AnneMette's travels through the Atlas here. Do you have a trip that changed you? Fill out our form with your name, email, a brief description of the moment that shifted something for you, and a few photos. We may feature your story in future content — and you may even be invited to be interviewed for the series. And read more from our “The Trip that Changed Me” series here. Loading…
The best road trip moments are the unplanned ones — when something catches your eye and you just pull over. That's what happened in Gravette, Arkansas, a town of a few thousand that calls itself "Hometown America" on its water tower. I spotted a U.S. Air Force jet mounted in a town park and did a U-turn. What I found was a whole compressed world: a memorial to Captain Field Kindley, the third-ranking American ace of World War I, who grew up on those very streets and died in a plane crash in 1920 at just 24 — after surviving the war. Nearby, a pentagon-shaped stone dedicated by Boy Scout Troop 117 read "May They Never Be Forgotten." And right next to it all: a time capsule sealed in 1993, not to be opened until 2043. Two minutes off the highway, and suddenly I was standing at the intersection of heroism, grief, and a small town's stubborn faith that someone in the future will care what they left behind. That's the thing about pulling over: wonder isn't waiting at the destination. It's hiding in plain sight along the way. How far are you on your 50-state quest? And any recommendations for where I should go next? Send me your thoughts! I can't wait to hear from you.
This article comes from Atlas Obscura’s Places newsletter. Subscribe or manage your subscription here. Every March 10, the internet fills with red caps and pixelated plumbers. When written as MAR10, the date happens to resemble the name “Mario,” which is reason enough for fans—and Nintendo itself—to celebrate the world’s most famous video game plumber. This year the festivities are a little bigger: Super Mario Bros., the platformer that helped define modern gaming, is marking forty years since its international debut. In the Swedish town of Kungsbacka, Mario already has a permanent post. A life-size version of the character stands outside an office building—red cap, blue overalls, unmistakable mustache. But this Mario isn’t smashing bricks or leaping over Goombas. He’s greeting visitors outside the headquarters of Bergsala, the company that helped bring Nintendo games to Scandinavia in the early days of the NES. Elsewhere in the Atlas, video game icons appear in surprising places. In New Hampshire, the towering Donkey Kong Mural celebrates the arcade classic. Paris hides colorful alien mosaics in the form of Paris Space Invaders. In Seattle, Pac-Man Park recreates the maze from the famous arcade game. And beneath the New Mexico desert sits the Alamogordo Landfill, where thousands of unsold Atari cartridges were once secretly dumped. 7 Places to Fall in Love With Nintendo Nintendo began in Kyoto in 1889 as a maker of playing cards. More than a century later, it’s responsible for some of the most recognizable game characters on Earth. Along the way, the company has left behind a surprising trail of places tied to its history—from old buildings to landmarks connected to gaming culture. SEE THE FULL LIST My New Favorites in the Atlas This is the final resting place of Italo Calivino, one of Italy’s most influential and imaginative writers. An explosion at what is now the Barutana Memorial Area marked a turning point in the Croatian War of Independence. Along the bright and whimsical Paul Carr Jogging Trail you can jog (or stroll) down an esplanade of fluctuating sculpture works. Did You Know? The video game “Black Myth: Wukong” may feel like modern fantasy, but its roots are centuries old. The game draws from “Journey to the West,” a 16th-century Chinese novel about the mischievous Monkey King, Sun Wukong. The magical trickster can shape-shift, ride clouds, and wield a staff that changes size at will. The Video Game ‘Black Myth: Wukong’ Has Ancient Roots
This article comes from Atlas Obscura’s Places newsletter. Subscribe or manage your subscription here. The enterprising 19th-century journalist Nellie Bly didn’t just write stories—she stepped into danger to force readers to see things that they might prefer to ignore. Bly went undercover in the 1880s to expose the asylum system, in which women (with or without mental illness) were often abused or neglected. More than a century later, Bly’s work was honored with a monument near the site of the asylum she investigated, on New York’s Roosevelt Island. “The Girl Puzzle,” named after one of the journalist’s early works, includes five monumental faces of women, one of them Bly’s, along with four spheres of mirror-polished steel. It’s a reminder on this International Women’s Day that progress has often depended on women who refused to accept the unacceptable. In Manchester, England, a sculpture of the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst is frozen mid-speech, rallying an invisible crowd toward votes and visibility. The Musée de La Femme in Marrakesh spotlights Moroccan women’s creative and civic power. In Senegal, the Henriette Bathily Women’s Museum stands as a tribute to women’s cultural contributions. And La Casa Azul in Mexico City preserves Frida Kahlo’s intensely personal world. 21 Places That Celebrate Female Artists Female visual artists have long had to struggle, not just to have their work widely seen, but to create at all. But women have made art as long as there’s been art. Many persevered, both through the strength of their work and the force of will, and in celebration of Women’s History Month, we want to highlight some of our favorite places where you can see these contributions in person. SEE THE FULL LIST My New Favorites in the Atlas The Music Box Theatre in Chicago is a historic 1929 cinema showing independent and classic films in an atmospheric setting. A plane wing with the Mechanics’ Creed written on it is a roadside art installation and monument on a remote stretch of highway in Iceland. An unexpected mix of medieval buildings and modern art enlivens this street in Morlaix, France. Did You Know? Visitors were drawn to mental institutions out of curiosity and compassion, but they weren’t seeing the full picture—until Nellie Bly revealed it. The Undercover Woman Who Changed Asylum Tourism Forever
This article comes from Atlas Obscura’s Places newsletter. Subscribe or manage your subscription here. In Shiodome, Tokyo, a hulking, storybook contraption clings to the side of the Nittele Tower at Nippon Television’s headquarters: the Giant Ghibli Clock. Designed by legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki, it’s less a timepiece than a mini mechanical theater—gears, doors, figures, and little surprises that feel like they’ve wandered out of a fantastical workshop and onto a city skyscraper. No need to buy a ticket: commuters can just look up and catch a burst of whimsy in the middle of a very modern district. According to legend, the creator of this 14th-century astronomical clock in Prague was blinded to prevent him from making another. A nearly identical, and equally apocryphal, tale is told of another gorgeous clock in Poland. The sides of the Zimmer Tower in Belgium show the four stages of life, each featuring a different person or character. And in Paris, a unique mechanized clock displays a man fighting off a dragon, crab, and rooster. 19 Amazing Clock Towers Before we were able to tell time by glancing at our wrists, reaching into our pockets, or calling out to Siri, the local clock tower was how many people marked their days. Because they were highly visible civic resources, many clock towers saw a remarkable level of craftsmanship and attention to detail. SEE THE FULL LIST My New Favorites in the Atlas Carved scenes of sex work and unglamorous labor complicate a heroic statue in Hamburg dedicated to the writer Hans Albers. An unusual cast-iron bridge in Nantwich, England carries a historic canal across a busy main road. This family-run collection in Cambodia known as the Vimean Sokha Museum holds tons of antique electronics, cameras, and motorbikes. Did You Know? Centuries ago, astronomical clocks were the ultimate statement in horological prowess. During the heyday of grand astronomical clocks, between the 14th and 16th centuries in Europe, these massive constructions were often decorated as ornate pieces of art featuring multiple faces, moving figures, carved ornamentation, and intricately displayed figures. The Most Beautiful Way to Track Time
I have been traveling my entire life. As a journalist, I've reported from places most people never see, like small towns in Malaysia and factory complexes in Tijuana. As a traveler, I've chased the unusual, the overlooked, the wonderful, and the natural around the world. I run marathons and rock climb, so discomfort in the name of discovery is basically my love language. And yet, until this past December, I had never once asked myself a simple question: how many of the fifty United States have I actually been to? The answer came courtesy of Atlas Obscura, the travel and culture company I lead as CEO. We launched a new feature — a 50-state map where users can log the states they've visited. I sat down one evening, started clicking, and felt something unexpected: genuine suspense. When I finished, the number staring back at me was 39. Thirty-nine states. Not bad. But also: eleven gaps. Eleven places I had somehow — through decades of movement and curiosity — never set foot in. And then I did the math: America's 250th birthday is July 4, 2026. That gave me a deadline. Suddenly, 39 felt less like an accomplishment and less like a finish line ... and more like a starting gun. I wasn't alone in this feeling. Atlas Obscura recently partnered with YouGov to survey roughly 1,285 American adults about their travel habits and relationship to the fifty states. About 29 percent of Americans say visiting all fifty states is a lifetime goal. But only 4% have made it to 40 or more. I am going to be in rare company — and yet, paradoxically, that made the remaining eleven feel more urgent, not less. The survey also found that 53% of Americans have visited 10 or more states, which means nearly half the country hasn't even crossed that threshold. We are, it turns out, a nation of people who haven't fully seen our own nation. The more I work at a travel company whose entire purpose is to show people the wonders hiding in plain sight, the more it seems to me that we should all lean more into exploration afar but also exploration at home. Here is where the intellectual stakes come from for me. I majored in American Studies in college — specifically the counter-cultural strain of American History, the version that asks hard questions about who gets remembered and who gets erased, whose stories get told and whose don't. I became a journalist because I believe, at a cellular level, that there is no substitute for going somewhere in person. You cannot understand a place from a dateline. You cannot understand Americans — their humor, their grief, their contradictions, their resilience — without standing in their actual geography. John Steinbeck wrote in Travels with Charley that he had discovered he did not know his own country. He was in his late fifties when he made that admission and set out to fix it. I find myself in a similar reckoning. I lead an American content company, a travel content company, one whose editorial mission is built on the idea that every place holds something astonishing. It would be a strange thing to have gaps in my own map. So is this a patriotic exercise? That's a more complicated question than it sounds. The 250th anniversary — the Semiquincentennial, if you want to be formal about it — has become contested territory. For some, it's a moment of pride; for others, a prompt to ask harder questions about what exactly we're celebrating. But I’m taking a third path that cuts through this kind of false binary we find ourselves in: I am choosing to see more of the country, so that I can know our country and our people better. And here is where Atlas Obscura shapes the mission entirely. I am not going to close out my eleven states by hitting the most obvious landmarks. That's not how I travel, and it's not what Atlas Obscura is about. Our research with YouGov found that 34% of Americans who travel to new states are most drawn to scenery and nature, and, while they're there, 68% say exploring local food is a top priority. The AO traveler hits the trails, eats the food, and goes further — past the familiar, toward the genuinely strange and wonderful. So when I get to Bentonville, Arkansas, I'm definitely going to Crystal Bridges (though that museum — a world-class art institution dropped improbably into the Ozarks — is itself a kind of miracle), but I’m also going to The Bachman-Wilson House — a Frank Lloyd Wright home that was literally picked up and moved from New Jersey to the Crystal Bridges campus to save it from flooding. In Kansas, I’m going to Wamego, and, not only will I visit the Wizard of Oz Museum, I will also go to see the decommissioned nuclear missile silo that was the nexus of a drug operation that, by DEA estimates, accounted for 90% of America's LSD supply in the late 1990s. As someone who studied the American counter-culture in college, I feel almost obligated. And in Bloomington, Indiana, I want to visit the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center, founded by the Dalai Lama's brother, sitting quietly in the middle of the Indiana limestone belt — the kind of juxtaposition that makes you love this country's capacity for surprise. Oh and I am definitely going to get myself to Carhenge, in Alliance, Nebraska — a full-scale replica of Stonehenge built from vintage American automobiles, painted gray, standing in the high plains. It is absurd. It is magnificent. It is exactly the kind of thing that makes me proud to work at Atlas Obscura. Alexis de Tocqueville came to America in 1831 and spent nine months traversing it before writing one of the most perceptive analyses of American democracy ever produced. He understood that you had to move through a place to understand it. I have four months left and eleven states. The deadline is July 4th. The quest is on. I invite any suggestions in the states I have ahead of me: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Idaho, Washington, Alaska. Email me at ceo@atlasobscura.com
Though Cincinnati is best known for breweries, another effervescent beverage has a long history in the Queen City: the nectar soda. Home to the oldest pharmacy college in the U.S. west of the Alleghenies, the Eclectic Medical Institute (1845-1952), and Lloyd Brothers Pharmacists, Cincinnati was long on the forefront of the pharmaceutical industry. The city had a number of apothecaries with soda fountains, as well as confectioners serving countless carbonated concoctions—some claiming to cure a variety of ailments, and others simply providing customers with something sweet and refreshing to drink. Enter the nectar soda. The flavor is a combination of vanilla and bitter almond, and the drink is pastel pink in color—a nod to the hue of almond flowers, according to Dann Woellert, a Cincinnati food historian, etymologist, and the author of Cincinnati Candy: A Sweet History. Nicknamed the “drink of the gods,” the bitter almond flavor of nectar soda balances out what would otherwise be overly sweet vanilla, creating an addictive taste that grows on you with each sip. Nectar sodas have been served in Cincinnati since at least the late 1870s, though, like many iconic foods and beverages, its precise origins are murky. The only other U.S. city to embrace nectar sodas was New Orleans, but unlike Cincinnati, the tradition fizzled out in the Big Easy in the mid-20th century. Plus, Woellert says that the Queen City popularized them first. “They were served in Cincinnati nearly a decade before New Orleans,” he says. While the Cincinnati nectar soda has multiple origin stories, each crediting a different pharmacist or confectioner, Woellert has concluded that John Mullane created the flavor after traveling to Quebec City to learn the art of confectionery from a prominent Canadian candymaker. He began serving nectar sodas in his confectionery shop in downtown Cincinnati in the late 1870s. So, why did the nectar soda end up in Cincinnati and New Orleans, of all places? Wollert suspects that the bitter almond and vanilla flavor was used by the French Acadians who settled in both Quebec City and New Orleans. Though nectar sodas aren’t as common as they were in the early 20th century, when they could be found at countless confectioneries and pharmacy soda fountains across Cincinnati, they’re still served at establishments throughout the city and the surrounding area. Nectar sodas have been on the menu at ice cream and chocolate shop Aglamesis Brothers since it opened in Cincinnati in 1908, if not shortly thereafter. That’s according to company president and CEO Randy Young, who is also a third-generation family member. It’s unclear when nectar sodas were added to the menu at Graeter’s, a Cincinnati ice cream and chocolate shop that opened in 1870 and now has locations throughout the city and the Midwest, but Chip Graeter, chief of retail operations and a fourth-generation family member, says that they were especially popular throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. In a January 28, 1947 article in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Tom Moore, the head of the soda department at Dow Drug Store—which operated 32 soda fountains throughout the metropolitan area at that time—said that “nectar is one of the most popular flavors in all of their stores, and has been for many years.” Five years prior, Dow ran an ad in the same newspaper which read: “Be glad you live in Cincinnati, the only place in the country where you can enjoy a Dow double-dip nectar soda.” Originally, nectar syrup was made by combining half-and-half or milk with water, bitter almond extract, vanilla extract and red food coloring. While Aglamesis eventually switched to a dairy-free shelf-stable syrup, Graeter's recipe has never changed—it still contains milk and needs to be refrigerated. Both Aglamesis and Graeter’s make nectar soda by mixing nectar syrup with a dollop of whipped cream, adding a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream, then topping it off with some soda water and more whipped cream. Though Young says that nectar sodas are most popular with older adults, they’re also a hit with members of younger generations who try them. “People who grew up with them still love them today,” Graeter says. “We still make them in all of our stores, but they're not nearly as popular today as they once were, simply because milkshakes and smoothies have taken over.” According to Young, there is a commercially available descendant of the nectar soda. “Commercial soda companies like Barqs and others came out with their version of cream soda—a bright pink soda—which got its flavoring from nectar soda,” he explains.
Indigenous Brazilians have fermented alcoholic beverages from the cassava root for thousands of years. These beer-like beverages go by names like cauim, caxiri, and tarubá. Fermentation is an important step in cassava processing—the raw root has chemicals that can turn into cyanide in the human body. Native peoples found that a bit of human saliva and some naturally occurring yeast could eliminate these toxins and improve the nutritious value of the tuber. When the technology of distillation arrived to the Munim River region (now in Maranhão), locals who already drank lightly alcoholic cassava beverages began to distill them. Tiquira was born. The name tiquira is likely derived from the Tupi word tykyre meaning "to drip." But it is a curiosity that the spirit has flourished in only one Brazilian state, Maranhão. Margot Stinglwagner, founder of Guaaja Tiquira, the first modern brand to produce the spirit starting in 2016, says “It’s a spirit that is also unknown in Brazil. A few people have heard about tiquira—but usually only people who have gone to Maranhão once.” Accordingly, the state moved to declare the spirit as a piece of Cultural and Intangible Heritage in September 2023. Part of the reason that tiquira has remained so isolated is that cachaça, Brazil’s rum, is far easier to produce. Because the rum comes from sugarcane, the sugar for fermentation is already there. “With cassava, you don’t have sugar,” Stinglwagner explains. “You must first transform the carbohydrates into sugar and then you can ferment and distill it.” To achieve this end, Guaaja Tiquira uses food enzymes instead of the traditional human saliva. Guaaja also differs from other distillers because they use full cassava roots where most tiquira moonshiners rely on processed farinha de mandioca, or cassava flour. “The majority of people produce it illegally,” laughs Stinglwagner. “The state does nothing about it.” Outside of the urban center, tiquira is invariably a homemade product. Generally, tiquira makers don’t separate the "heads" (the first drops of liquor from a distillation, which contain harsher alcohols including toxic methanol and other pungent and volatile flavor compounds) from the "tails" (the final liquid produced from distillation, which has a low alcohol content and can have unwelcome bitter flavors), meaning the spirit is stronger and may contain more toxins and impurities. Some even macerate marijuana into the combined spirit to produce the doubly-illicit tiquiconha. Maranhenses believe that you cannot get wet or bathe after drinking tiquira, lest you become faint or dizzy. Zelinda Machado de Castro e Lima, one of the great chroniclers of folk culture in Maranhão, has recorded other traditions surrounding the drink. Firstly, it is typical to pierce a cashew with a toothpick and soak it in a glass of tiquira for several hours. It is then sucked as a sort of boozy lollipop. She also writes about the belief that those drinking coffee should avoid tiquira, while locals say that fishermen on the coast used the liquor to sanitize wounds incurred on the job. Finally, there is the curious question of the color of tiquira. In the tourist markets of São Luís, the spirit is always blushing a translucent violet. “They say that the color of tiquira is from tangerine leaves, but we tried to do it and the color from the leaves is not stable,” says Stinglwagner. “It is also not a strong color. The norms and laws for tiquira prohibit the addition of the leaves.” The violet color may be artificial (perhaps from food dyes), but some tiquiras do have a citrusy flavor. Tiquira today is still largely relegated to the world of moonshining, but with the government’s recognition of the spirit and new legitimate ventures like that of Guaaja Tiquira, Brazil could be seeing more of the cassava liquor outside of its home in Maranhão. “All the people say to me, ‘What is this new spirit?,’” says Stinglwagner. “I say, ‘It’s not a new spirit, it’s the oldest spirit from Brazil.’” Know Before You Go Tiquira is widely available in the downtown markets of São Luís, Maranhão. Both the local Mercado Central and touristic Mercado das Tulhas have many vendors selling tiquira. The commercial brand, Guaaja Tiquira, is also available in São Luís at Empório Fribal, in addition to Copacabana Palace and Fairmont Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, and Mocotó Bar e Restaurante in São Paulo.
The origins of Germany’s Maultaschen are deliciously devious. Legend has it that, in the late Middle Ages, a lay brother named Jakob invented the stuffed pasta dumplings at the Maulbronn Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site founded in 1147 by Cistercian monks in southwest Germany. One direct translation of Maultaschen is “mouth pockets,” though “Maul” could just as easily refer to Maulbronn. Maultaschen are usually square dumplings (though sometimes they're rolled) and can be fried in a pan or served in broth. Commonly described as Germany’s version of Italian ravioli, they allegedly emerged as a way to use up an unexpected bounty of meat that Brother Jakob stumbled upon in the forest outside the monastery walls. The twist? Although they abhorred waste, these monks weren’t allowed to eat the meat of four-legged animals, especially during the Catholic fasting period of Lent in the spring. So Brother Jakob minced the meat with herbs and onions and wrapped everything inside pasta dough, hiding the forbidden flesh from the eyes of his fellow monks—and even from the eyes of God. In Swabia, the region encompassing much of Baden-Württemberg and part of Bavaria where Maultaschen originated, one of the colloquial names for the food references this deception directly: Herrgottsbescheißerle means “little God-cheaters.” Everyone in Swabia has their version of the legend with more or less embellishment. Ludwig Nestler holds a master’s degree in heritage conservation and works for the State Palaces and Gardens of Baden-Württemberg, a government organization that oversees monuments like Maulbronn Monastery. His version of the tale includes a sack of stolen meat dropped in the woods by a fleeing thief, which inspires Brother Jakob’s trickery in the kitchen. But he acknowledges that there’s no undisputed “historically correct version” of how Maultaschen came to be. Similarly, everyone in Swabia has their own Maultaschen recipe, with unique ingredients for the minced filling, called Brät. “Traditionally the Brät is made from pork mixed with herbs, onions, and occasionally bread crumbs for texture and stability,” says Nestler. Swabia, however, “was a rather poor region with limited amounts of meat due to rather unfertile land, so being adaptive and innovative has always been a part of the people’s nature.” As Maultaschen became popular, fish and seasonal vegetables like spinach, carrots, beets, and mushrooms became common inclusions. Today, the European Union ties Maultaschen to Swabia with a Protected Geographical Indication, which lists required ingredients the authentic product should feature, but even the necessary inclusions are pretty loose, such as “pork and/or beef and/or veal” for meat Brät and “typical regional vegetables” for meat-free Brät. It speaks to the way the dumplings developed as subsistence food, used to stretch leftovers and reduce food waste. Today, Germans throughout the country enjoy Maultaschen in dozens of flavors in all seasons thanks to grocery stores that stock packaged varieties made by companies like Ditzingen-based Bürger, whose mascot, Erwin, is a Maultasche (the singular form of the plural Maultaschen). But the dumplings remain most popular in southern Germany. Maulbronn Monastery offers a special tour that pairs Maultaschen with wine from the monastery’s vineyards. And many locals, including Nestler’s family, still make them from scratch on special occasions—even during Lent, when meat might otherwise be off the menu. There’s no telling if it’s a fraud good enough to fool God, but it’s worth a shot.