Cities do the weirdest things to lure tourists to their doorstep. While tourism can certainly be a nice source of income for any city, the attractions used to lure people from all around the world can be a bit … odd.
Let’s take a look at some of the most unusual tourist attractions existing in the world right now.
Gnomesville, Ferguson Valley
It’s as the name suggests and exactly as the name suggests. In Ferguson Valley, which is in western Australia, the town has created an entire village of garden gnomes. They have over 3000 gnomes to date and I’m pretty sure that this is not where you want to be when the shrooms hit.
Mano Del Desierto, Chile
My Spanish isn’t very good but I was thinking this was either a hand made of desserts or a hand in the desert. Turns out it was the latter. I must admit I’m a bit disappointed now. I mean, it’s a cool-looking huge hand in the desert, but it’s not a huge hand-shaped cake, so what’s the use?
Pool Of The 21st Century Museum Of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
That’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it? This Japanese museum has a pool that, well, isn’t a real pool. It’s just a surface of water that you can look through, but you can also walk underneath. Needless to say, this can lead to some unique optical illusions where it looks as if the people underneath are standing in the pool.
Muralla Roja, Spain
This entire housing block is shaped with loads of straight edges and pretty much every wall is painted in the same red, pink or blue color. It makes the entire block look like a LEGO construction. I rate this as pretty cool.
Gotokuji Temple, Tokyo
It’s a temple filled with beckoning cats. Utterly filled as in brimful with cats. According to a legend, this is the Buddhist temple where the beckoning cat was first used as a good luck charm. According to tourists today, it’s “aww look at all the cute kitties!”
Hobbiton, New Zealand
Well if you’re gonna have the set of the Shire from The Lord of the Rings put in your country, might as well exploit it for tourism. What else is there to do?
The Cube Houses, Rotterdam
This touristic spot in the Netherlands is essentially a place where the houses look down on you like a disappointed parent. The general idea of these houses was to optimize the space required to live by housing everyone inside a cube on top of a pylon. Let’s say the project wasn’t a huge success because someone forgot that there’s no bigger space killer than angled walls.
