By Laura Tait
If things like historical ruins, botanical gardens and landmark buildings all sound a bit run of the mill to you, then here are a few tourist attractions you don’t see every day, from dead celebrity cockroaches to an island of creepy dolls...
The Paper House
Rockport, Massachusetts
The most promising future for old newspapers is a brief stint as chip wrapper, but mechanical engineer Elis F. Stenman (who incidentally designed the machines that make paper clips) began building his Rockport summer home from them as a hobby in 1922. He used it for the main framework of the house – just layer upon layer of paper, glue and varnish - and then when that was done he decided to use it to make all the furniture too, from the seating to the piano to the clock. Around 100,000 newspapers were used in the making of this tourist attraction.
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Cockroaches Hall of Fame
Plano, Texas, USA
We’d have loved to have been there the first time pest control specialist Michael Bohdan’s voiced his idea to impersonate famous characters in through the medium of deceased cockroaches. Bizarrely, it’s taken off though and Ross Peroach, David Letteroach and Marlin Monroach are amongst the stars you can see at Cockroaches Hall of Fame. If dead cockroaches aren’t your bag, then he has live Madagascar hissing roaches as well. Just fight any instincts you have to kill them with a shoe.
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[See also: World's weirdest restaurants]
Ice Aquarium,
Kesennuma, Japan
As in most aquariums, hundreds of different species of marine life – including octopuses, crabs, salmon and saury – are displayed in water. But unlike most aquariums, the water is frozen. And the fish are dead. Be sure to take one of the heavy coats available at the entrance - the room temperature is kept at -20 degrees Celsius, and if perusing motionless sea creatures makes you feel rather peckish then you can nip next door to the Sashimi restaurant after.
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Museum of Bad Art
Boston, USA
Every artist would love their work to make it into a gallery, but we’re assuming a gallery with the slogan ‘art too bad to be ignored’ wasn’t the dream. Still, it’s a laugh for tourists, with around 50-70 pieces of the 600-piece collection shown at a one time - including the likes of Sad Baby by Anonymous, which was purchased at a Boston thrift store. As in regular galleries, a descriptive narrative accompanies each work of art. More fun than a gallery of ‘good’ art in many people’s opinion.
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The Island of the Dolls
Mexico City
Hundreds of creepy, mutilated dolls cover an island deep in the swampy canals near Mexico City - their severed limbs and blank eyes adorning trees and fences. During the day it’s a bit eerie. At night it’s the kind of stuff nightmares are made of. Especially when you know the reason they’re there is because over half a century ago the island’s only inhabitant, Don Julian Santana, found the body of a drowned child and consequently started leaving the dolls there to appease her tortured soul. Weirdly, he ended up drowning there too...
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Karner Bone House
Hallstatt, Austria
Not many tourist attractions are born as a solution to a lack of cemetery space and an urgent need to recycle graves, but this is: lying somewhat out of sync amongst the Sound of Music-esque scenery of this world heritage site on the shores of Lake Hallstatt, is a showcase of 600 human skulls – the latest of which is from a local woman who died in 1983. They’re not entirely aesthetically unpleasing though – they’re painted in decorations such as flowers, leaves and serpents.
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