World Travel Guide Online

Once you’ve seen one walking trail you’ve seen ‘em all? Not in these eight cases, where you’ll tramp on unusual surfaces and wander through some curious lands.

1. Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia

Once a battle site in the Croatian War of Independence, Plitvice Lakes National Park is an enchanting forestland sprinkled with cascading waterfalls and a placid string of 16 luminescent lakes. (It’s dissolved limestone that helped create this UNESCO World Heritage site over some 10,000 years.)

A network of trails, mostly on wooden boardwalks, traverses the tumbling waters. Spending five hours walking the “H” itinerary — one of several that the tourist office at the Ulaz 2 entrance suggests — captures all of the park’s key features.

The Upper Lakes, including the highest, Jezero Kozjak, are nestled in woods dense with beech and fir, while the Lower Lakes sit within a limestone canyon hollowed by caves that you can explore. The waterfall that perhaps attracts the most attention in the Lower Lakes region is the thundering Veliki Slap where the water tumbles some 230 feet.

2. Cappadocia, Turkey

You don’t have to close your eyes and daydream to be transported to a fantastical land. Just hike the myriad paths that weave through the valleys slicing through the Cappadocia region and you’ll feel like you just dropped into a Salvador Dali painting.

Standing sentinel all about are curious monoliths — appropriatly termed “fairy chimneys.” Many are undeniably sexually charged — phallus-shaped, to be exact. Centuries of erosive forces have also sculpted the soft volcanically-derived tufa into more PG-rated shapes, including mushrooms and cones seemingly wearing top hats.

Penetrating these spectacular columns are hand-carved portals into cave churches, houses, pigeon coops — the droppings were prized as a fertilizer — and even bee hives. Some of the richest array of fairy chimneys in this land that’s deemed a UNESCO World Heritage site can be found in the Love and Honey valleys. Mehmet Gungor is a one-man operation guiding authentic hikes in this region.

3. Great Wall, China

China’s Great Wall no longer stretches along its 4,200-mile-length that dated to the Ming Dynasty — some 30% has almost vanished. But the remaining sections — some within day trip access of Beijing — present walkers with varying states of preservation, from the overdeveloped Badaling portion with its museum, shops, and bathrooms to those wilder, dilapidated portions with no facilities.

One of the more authentic paths atop this serpentine wall wanders from Jinshanling to Simatai, a five-hour hike along mostly derelict ribbons encrusted with storied watchtowers and crenellated ramparts. Meandering over undulating peaks, the route often requires scrambling, sometimes on all fours, up and down tall decrepit stone steps and around gaping holes. But the sweeping vistas of the mostly forested hills, lush valleys and snake-like wall make the effort worth every step.

William Lindesay, an ardent Wall activist in terms of its preservation, organizes day and multi-day hikes on the crumbled sections.

4. Madeira, Portugal

Set some 600 miles from Lisbon, the leafy island of Madeira has a reputation among acrophobes as having some of the most vertiginous trails around.

This rugged isle is networked with some 1,000 miles of irrigation channels (or levadas) that are bordered by a narrow level-walking path. These aqueducts have been hewn into cliffs and solid rock producing claustrophobic tunnels and paths clinging at times to the edge of sheer chasms.

However, there are also plenty of more gentle levadas, including those coursing through Madeira’s native laurisilva forest. Even families can walk Levada dos Balcoes that starts in the mountain hamlet of Ribeiro Frio and terminates at a dizzying overlook of jagged high peaks and deep verdant valleys. Another levada starting from the same hamlet takes slightly more adventurous walkers to Portello, a four-hour trek past heather, lily of the valley trees and wild orchids. Madeira Explorers leads myriad levada walks.

5. Negev, Israel

In the Negev, a vast triangular-shaped swath of land where Abraham and other Old Testament notables once wandered, a network of walking wadis or dry streambeds veins this arid scape. After a rain, desert flowers bloom in these beds, but this innocent landscape can turn deadly in an instant should there be a flash flood.

Many wadis are aptly named: Along Wadi of the Tree, the broad canopy of a lone acacia provides welcome shade. The radiant shades of sandstone are conveyed by the name Wadi of the Gevanim or Shades of Color. The eponymous spring along the Ardon Wadi — another wadi laden with views of brilliant-hued sandstone walls — is an oasis for ibex and other animals.

One of the most interesting findings: the stone ruins of a caravansary or ancient motel of sorts for traders and their camels along the old Nabatean-run Spice Route. Adam Sela arranges hikes for all skill levels in the Negev.

6. Westmann Islands, Iceland

Heimaey, the only inhabited isle among Iceland’s Westmann Islands, shows off its volcanic origins wherever possible.

A four-mile path threads atop the towering cliffs on the island’s west side, starting at the 18-hole golf course where the lava fields are out of bounds. Flanked by the crashing sea and a conglomerate of black lava and verdant farmland, the trail provides plenty of close-ups of puffins, the island’s signature birds, as well as guillemot, oystercatchers and others.

The trail wanders near some curious features, including wooden racks hung with dried fish heads, and a 1940s ship’s motor beached on a stretch of black sand that also harbors plant fossils. Once the trail climbs to the island’s southern tip, you’ll be standing near an old weather station that’s recorded winds as high as 110 knots. Ruth Barbara Zohlen takes hikers along this and other trails on Heimaey.

7. Pico Island, Azores, Portugal

In the Azores archipelago, Pico Island’s most famous commodity is wine. But the island’s vineyards are hardly ordinary. On this volcanic isle, a maze of black lava stone walls shields the grapes from salt and wine.

The five-mile Vinhas da Criacao Velha trail slices through this landscape where waves tumble against coastal jagged rocks and natural pools, while small sandy beaches break up the desolate volcanic scape. The grapes responsible for Pico’s notable aperitif wine, Verdelho, grow along the latter part of the trail providing views of a seemingly endless expanse of vineyards that are a patchwork of lava stone walls. This landscape, where the grapes are cultivated on mineral-rich volcanic soil, is so unique, it’s designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Also visible along the path are the rocky profiles of the Islets of Madalena, stately old manor houses, and curious tracks, evidence of where wagons once transported grapes and wine barrels. Organized hikes can be arranged through Turispico.

8. Dubrovnik, Croatia

The defining feature of the medieval city of Dubrovnik is its defensive walls. And walking atop these slightly more than one-mile battlements that surround the city provides a commanding perspective of the city’s key historic details.

Beginning your walk when the wall first opens may help you avoid the prerequisite crowds. But come armed with the audio guide that can be rented at the beginning near the Pile Gate. (It provides a wealth of historical and architectural details).

With some sections not even two-feet wide and others towering some 80 feet high, the wall walk may cause some acrophobes to break out in a sweat.The series of towers, bastions and fortresses are surely an impressive testament as to why the ramparts were never breached. Protecting the southeast side of the old port, crenellated Fort St. John was considered the most powerful fortification. (This is where the city’s residents sought shelter during the Croatian War of Independence.)

In the search for more unusual, out-of this-world travelling experiences, travellers are being lured to the ends of the earth to find the most eccentric, wacky and exciting activities, sights and venues. So if you’re fond of a tipple or two, you might want to try one of these bars. Their locations and gimmicks are sometimes enough to pique your interest, but add alcohol to the mix and you’re in for quite a fun time. Here are 13 of the world’s most strange, exciting and different watering holes that will leave you thirsty for more.

1. Clinic – Singapore

Many people don’t like visiting hospitals so this bar might be a little questionable in taste for some. Clinic is a hospital themed bar located within the shopping and entertainment district, Clarke Quay.

It’s not surprising that the architect of the bar was wacky artist Damien Hirst, famous for such works as the cow in formaldehyde. The pill shaped rooms are all interlinked and are designed to give a drug ‘trip’ effect. Guests can drink from test tubes and IV bags, sit in wheelchairs instead of sitting on bar stools, lie on hospital beds with white curtains, and boogie on the capsule-shaped dance floor in the nightclub, Morphine.

The restaurant is designed like an operating room where guests can dine sitting in gold wheelchairs and eating from kidney shaped steel trays. Yum, I just hope the food doesn’t taste like hospital food…

2. Absolut Icebar – Sweden

The very first bar to be made entirely of ice can be found in the small town of Jukkasjarvi in Sweden. Although novelty ice bars seem to be popping up everywhere these days, even in the baking hot Niger desert, the Absolut Icebar, within the Ice Hotel, is the original ice bar.

Guests don thermal capes and huddle together in freezing cold conditions surrounded by carefully-crafted ice sculptures. The Absolut vodka cocktails are served in ice glasses, just make sure you don’t get your lips stuck to them!

The ice is sourced from the Torne River in the village of Jukkasjarvi and the frosty bar is only open during the winter from December to April.

3. Red Sea Star Underwater Restaurant, Bar and Observatory – Israel

The world’s first underwater bar, the Red Sea Star, is submerged six meters below the Red Sea in Eilat. Each table has Plexiglass windows – two either side and one above – so that diners can admire the fish, coral, and other sea life from their dinner table. The décor is even marine-inspired with jellyfish stools, urchin cushions, and anemone lighting fixtures.

Before the Red Sea Star was built in 1998, the area on which it stands was a damaged seabed, but four years before it opened the Red Sea Star team started growing a coral nursery surrounding the reef to save and preserve what used to be an active and colourful coral reef.

4. Bojangles – Australia

In the town of Alice Springs in the red centre of Australia, backpackers and travellers on their way to visit Uluru will almost certainly end up at this curious bar.

Walk through the closely guarded saloon doors and you’ll be amazed at what you see – boots hanging from the ceilings, snakes in tanks, and a coffin with a suit of armour inside which says ‘How Much To Touch Ned’s Nuts?’ Pull out some peanuts and throw the shells on the floor, because at Bo’s anything goes.

Sounds like a quirky bar already, but wait – it gets better. If you go to the bathroom you might get a little surprise, for when you come to wash your hands, each tap turns on the water in a different sink!

5. DM Bar – Estonia

If you’re a huge fan and you just can’t get enough of Depeche Mode, this bar in the capital city of Estonia, Tallinn, is entirely devoted to the band.

It doesn’t seem the most obvious choice of band to dedicate a bar to, but the synth-poppers from Basildon in the UK are extremely popular anywhere east of Berlin. The bar’s walls are filled with Depeche Mode memorabilia and guess what’s on the playlist for the night? You guessed it, Depeche Mode songs.

Members of the band Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher have actually partied the night away in the bar which is sure to be one of the strangest hat tips to the band.

6. Hobbit House – Philippines

Hobbit House in the Philippines is based on the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy, “Lord of The Rings,” and all the staff in the bar are friendly and charming dwarfs. The dark, smoke-filled bar offers around 100 different kinds of beer and is a great live music venue.

Opened 35 years ago, The Hobbit House has been around in Manila so long, it is a famous institution. The Iowa-born owner, Jim Turner, is an ex-Peace Corps volunteer who has rescued these dwarfs from the slums and streets of Manila and given them an honest place to work. He has given them new cultural identities and they are no longer shunned or avoided; they are respectable business people.

The bartenders are merry characters and entertainers who are up for a laugh and will happily pose with tourists for photos. The Hobbit House features possibly the world’s smallest Elvis impersonator, hobbit jugglers, comics, dancers, flame-eaters, and singers.

7. Baobab Bar – South Africa

Drinking a beer inside a tree? You wouldn’t think anyone would even fit, but you will inside this 6,000 year old Baobab tree.

The hollow 72-foot high tree offers a cool interior to step into from the heat outside and now has a bar, dart board and benches.

It was created in a Baobab tree in Sunland Farm in Limpopo to keep the thirsty locals happy and now thousands of tourists travel from miles around to have a pint in this interesting establishment.

The trunk has a 155-foot circumference and is wide enough to fit 40 people inside it. It even has its own cellar with natural ventilation to keep the beer cool!

The pub is owned by the van Heerdens, who decided to open a pub when they discovered a natural hollow in the tree in the 1980s. While clearing out the hollow centre of the tree trunk, the van Heerdens found historical evidence of Bushmen who may have once lived in the tree.

8. Das Klo Bar – Germany

One of the most bizarre drinking experiences ever, Klo Bar in Berlin is reputed to attract more tourists than Charlottenburg Castle and the Museum Island. Klo 1 and 2 no longer exist, but Klo 3, which started life on Christmas Day 1971, still does. Part flea market, part zoo, and part theme park, Das Klo (German for “the toilet”) is meant to evoke the inside of a toilet, but it ends up giving visitors the feel of stepping onto an Indiana Jones movie set.

Prepare to be shocked – expect red wine in blood transfusion packs, electric shocks from tables, rotating bar stools, a hammer that comes down unexpectedly, and a bird spider, boa constrictor and iguana. It’s an attack on the senses – upon entering Klo you’ll be sprinkled by water, spooked by skeletons and a gust of air might blow ladies’ skirts up. Lightning flashes across the rooms and there is a false ceiling of paper mâché rocks that fall in a giant avalanche every 10 minutes. A kilted figure in the ladies loo is booby-trapped so that whenever a lady lifts the kilt to see if he is going commando, a siren goes off in the bar.

Seating is a choice of coffins or toilet seats, the beer is served in new urine specimen bottles, and the food is sausages with sauerkraut fetchingly presented in huge enamel potties. Supposedly most of the owner’s ideas came to him sitting on the loo.

9. Skeleton Bar – Switzerland

This odd museum-bar was designed by Swiss man Hans Rudi Giger who worked as a designer on the Oscar-winning Alien movies. Giger designed the title character, the human-eating Alien monster, and won an Oscar for best special effects in 1980.

The bar in Gruyere, Switzerland, will remind you of the alien – or perhaps sitting inside a monster’s stomach, with its spinal chord-like skeleton decoration.

The creepy, horror movie-inspired bar is decorated with skeleton bones throughout, from the walls and chairs to the flower vases.

10. Floyd’s Pelican Bar – Jamaica

Floyds has to be the coolest bar in the Caribbean. Looking out from the shore at the dot on the horizon, your first reaction might be “is that really a bar?”

Perched on stilts on a sandbar, Floyds is made completely of driftwood and palm leaves. Bring a sharp object and you can carve your name in the floor. It looks like it might fall over, but it’s surprisingly sturdy.

Floyds sits about a mile off the south coast of Jamaica in Parottee Bay and local fisherman will take you out there. There’s nothing like a cold beer in the middle of the ocean, doing a bit of snorkelling and enjoying a fresh lobster meal prepared by Floyd himself. You might spot some pelicans and a few sting rays too.

11. Alux Restaurant & Lounge – Mexico

Alux, in Playa Del Carmen, is one of only two restaurants in the world inside a cavern.

The whole Yucatan peninsula in Mexico is riddled with an interconnected system of caverns and subterranean rivers and after years of planning and restoration, Alux restaurant and lounge was opened for the public to enjoy this natural environment with a drink in hand.

The Flintstones-like cavern has numerous chambers where you can lounge, drink, dine, and dance amongst the stalagmites and stalactites, which are lit up in shades of violet, blue and pink. Small, magical beings called ‘Aluxes’ are said to occupy these caverns, so look out for one as you dance the night away! It’s a drinking spot you mustn’t miss if you’re staying in Playa Del Carmen.

12. William Thornton Floating Bar & Restaurant – British Virgin Islands

The William Thornton is a steel 100-foot schooner with a restaurant and bar on board, moored at The Bight off Norman Island.

The Willy T, as it is affectionately known, began life in the 80s as a wooden Baltic vessel. But after the boat sprung a leak and sank at its anchorage, the owners, Annie and Mick Gardner, replaced it with the larger steel boat everyone knows today.

The William Thornton who the floating bar is named after was born in the British Virgin Islands and is the man behind the design of the United States Capitol building.

13. The Rock Bar – Bali

Perched 14 meters above the Indian Ocean, this open-top bar is literally served straight up on the rocks.

It’s a perfect place to sit and watch the sunset, sip cocktails and admire the view of the perfect Bali waves splashing against the rocks below. What makes it even more novel is the outdoor elevator which takes you down the cliff to the bar. Beware though, it only holds four so you might end up taking the stairs!

Live musicians play on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays so you can sit back and enjoy some tunes with a view. Located within the Ayana Resort & Spa in Jimbaran Bay, The Rock Bar will certainly leave a lasting impression and is Bali’s most chic sunset and after-dark destination.