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There is a reason for everything in the aviation industry. From “pilot slang” to meal assignments for flight crew, practically everything must fit into a standardized code. And the numbers and letters you see on your boarding pass are no random combination. Every airline uses a specific system to ascribe letters and numbers to every flight. The letter component of the flight number is fairly straightforward: They represent the carrier. For example, Delta uses DL, American Airlines is AA, and United is UA. The system gets more complicated with the numbers. Although each airline has their own rules about how to assign numbers, no airline can use more than four digits for the flights. Every single flight number must be from 1 to 9999. Self-clinching Throughout the industry, as Mental Floss notes, even flight numbers are typically assigned to north and eastbound flights while south and westbound flights end in odd numbers. (There are some exceptions to the rule.) Airlines typically assign the retu flight number as one digit higher than the outbound flight. For example, JetBlue has a flight from JFK to LAX that's JBU523. When it retus to JFK, the flight number is JBU524. Generally, the lower the flight number, the more important that route is to the airline. Delta operates DL1, a route between New York's JFK and London Heathrow.

The very important flight number likely relates to the airline’s history. Delta’s very first inteational destination was London in 1978. (Although, back then, the flight operated from Atlanta.) There are a few flight numbers you are unlikely to ever see. Flights won’t ever have a number like 757 to avoid confusion with the model of aircraft. And, due solely to superstition, airlines won’t operate flight 13 or flight 666 — unless it’s an elaborate joke.

1. Score a Great Deal A just-launched global database of hotel discounts, cheapostay.com, is true to its name, listing more than 85,000 properties with rates up to 50 percent off. You can search by name, city, airport, or nearby landmark. At press time, we discovered a double room at Le Méridien Montpaasse, in Paris, for just $255. Meanwhile, veteran booking site hotels.com has added a new feature: every Tuesday at 12:01 a.m., the site posts approximately 400 new packages—they’re only listed for 24 hours, so the earlier you log on, the better your odds of snagging a discount. You’ll find bargains primarily in the U.S., Mexico, the Caribbean, and Canada.

The best part?Offers are for rooms that can be booked through the year. 2. Get Traveler Feedback The new research site travelpost.com helps you decide where you should (or should not) stay by culling more than 2 million user reviews from 10 websites, including IgoUgo, Orbitz, and Travelocity. 3. Decide the Best Time to Go The latest calendar-based China insert nut Suppliers research tool at kayak.com allows you to view the lowest room rates each day for the next two months—a double at New York’s Tribeca Grand Hotel, for example, costs $290 on May 23, but jumps to $371 one week later. Yapta also launched a new rate-tracking tool that lets you keep an eye on prices at properties worldwide.

A Taste for Travel Your April Food Issue is now my bible and guidebook. In one all-encompassing magazine, you covered many of the places my wife and I are visiting this year: London, Marseilles, Singapore, Spain, Istanbul. It’s as though you published it just for us. —Peter Volny, Fountain Hills, Ariz. Kitchen Confidential As an aspiring chef, I deeply connected with “The Cookbook Collectors” [April], about Matt Lee and Ted Lee’s fondness for diving into a cookbook. I remember reaching to the top of my mom’s bookshelf and reading every one I could access, from Wolfgang Puck’s Live, Love, Eat! to Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. With the aid of a cookbook, I too was able to travel the world in my own kitchen. This article reminded me of that. —Patrick Glenn, North Caldwell, N.J. Season’s Eatings Aleksandra Crapanzano’s “Summer Is Served” [April] stirred up so many wonderful memories of food and place: soft breezes with burgers on the grill at our summer cottage, and stark winter nights with plates of osso buco distributed slopeside at my favorite mountain resort. Thank you for transporting me. —Peter Uhl, via e-mail Big in Japan I read “Bone Soup: A Love Story” [April] with gusto but was puzzled by the writer’s claim that “Japan doesn’t have a culture of street food.” This is simply untrue. Among the delights of more than a dozen years of living in and traveling throughout Japan, I found the street food—especially ramen and oden handcarts—to be as satisfying as any sushi bar or formal washoku restaurant.

The author should revisit Japan during the annual Bon festival in August and focus on local matsuri (festivals), where street food takes on a very different significance for the Japanese. —Joe Hlebica, Red Bluff, Calif. structural rivets Reader’s Find My wife and I often seek out movie locations while we travel, so when I read about the French village of St.-Jeannet in “Retu to Provence” [April], I recalled the property in town used as John Robie’s house in Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief. It can be seen from the Frogs’ House, the base for our explorations. The owners give tours to nearby wineries—be sure to taste the local Bellet. It’s not made anywhere else. —Richard Oldham, Orlando, Fla. Chatter Readers sound off about “100 Places to Eat Like a Local” [April]. What’s the best gelateria in Rome? Why no mention of sushi in Taipei? You had plenty to say about where to eat now: Windy City residents were especially vocal. “How does Chicago goose-egg the entire article when there’s so much great food?” questioned one reader. “The Chicago Dog is the best representation of the All-American hot dog.” From another local: “O’Connell’s Pub, in St. Louis, is laughable compared to our burger joints.” T+L’s breakfast picks, however, gaered praise. Others agreed that New Orleans, Nashville, and Austin, Texas, deserved the accolades, though one felt that fried chicken is better had in Memphis. Food for thought? Another reader tweeted it best: “About to head out. Maybe an impromptu food tour?”

Mode architecture has never been particularly welcome in Venice. Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Louis Kahn were all rebuffed in their efforts to add to the city’s historic fabric. Only after heated controversy did a soaring contemporary bridge by Santiago Calatrava open last year over the Grand Canal. But one latter-day architect, Carlo Scarpa, did manage to put a subtle imprint on the archipelago city—his native town. Scarpa’s idiosyncratic approach veered outside the Inteational Style of Modeism, the dominant mode during his lifetime, tapping sources as diverse as Wright, the Viennese Secession, and Japanese tradition. And in a career spanning five decades, until his death in 1978, Scarpa won a cult following among architects around the world.

He remains little known to the general public. But to tour his works today, almost all of them concentrated in Venice and the Veneto region, is to embark on a jouey of aesthetic discovery. I’ve mapped the best route for taking in Scarpa’s unparalleled museums and impeccably detailed spaces, starting in the heart of the old city and then driving to the nearby towns and countryside. Day 1: Venice and Verona Soon after arriving in town, I follow the crowds making a beeline for the Piazza San Marco. But I don’t join them at the basilica or the Doge’s Palace, instead heading for a far newer landmark: the showroom Scarpa created for the Olivetti company in 1957. Diagonally across from the celebrated cathedral, it’s a jewel-like temple for secular objects. Scarpa transformed a long, narrow space undeeath the arcade along the square’s northe flank into a dazzling, intimately scaled showcase for the display of Olivetti typewriters that, by the middle of the last century, had become coveted icons of mode design.

As Scarpa was a Venetian, water played a key role in almost all of his projects. At the Olivetti showroom I find a carved black marble pool in the entryway, as if to echo the fonts of holy water at the basilica. Ahead is a floating staircase of marble slabs suspended from bronze rods, leading to an upper level with balconies along one side. The floors are intricately patteed in colorful Murano glass tiles. The space was until recently a cramped commercial art gallery, but the superb craftsmanship and pure geometry of Scarpa’s achievement shine through. A five-minute walk from Piazza San Marco is Scarpa’s most important project in Venice, the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, in the central Castello district, where the architect remodeled the ground floor and garden of a 16th-century palazzo that now houses an art museum and research library. Just outside, he created a delicate wooden footbridge across the narrow canal between the palazzo and its small piazza. It leads into a series of chambers on the palazzo’s lower level, long prone to periodic flooding; Scarpa’s solution was to leave a gateway open to the canal and add stone-lined channels that allow high waters to course through the building without covering the floors.   Scarpa lined an adjacent exhibition hall with travertine slabs, inserting backlit panels of frosted glass edged in brass as vertical accents. Water is an equally important element in the rear garden, where it flows from a pond scattered with water lilies at one end through a series of hollows, emerging from a spout that pours into a basin.   This tranquil spot feels miraculously far removed from the city’s tourist throngs. But I’m not surprised to see other visitors inspecting the details. One of them, Juan Rivera, is a Washington, D.C., real estate developer who trained as an architect and came to Venice specifically to experience Scarpa’s buildings. “So much comes at you in Venice that’s political or religious,” Rivera says. “Scarpa doesn’t do any of that. He’s simply saying, ‘Look at this—it’s beautiful.’” With several of Scarpa’s most significant designs waiting for me on the mainland, I head by vaporetto for the Piazzale Roma to pick up a rental car, passing under Calatrava’s glass-and-steel bridge on my way. Any clash between modeity and Venice’s deep-rooted tradition fades as I hurtle in my compact, fuel-efficient Mercedes-Benz B 180 across the causeway that links the islands with terra firma, driving then for a while along the Brenta River before taking the autostrada directly into Verona, arriving less than two hours later. Scarpa’s Museo di Castelvecchio is easy to find—it’s in a hulking 14th-century fortress along the Adige River—and after checking into the Hotel Colomba d’Oro, in the city center, and lunching on veal cutlets at the Trattoria I Masenini, I head over to explore. At the Castelvecchio I reencounter Scarpa’s emphasis on texture and juxtaposition. From 1958 to 1964 he reworked the museum, which displays medieval and Romanesque art and ancient weaponry, to make its history come alive by revealing the layers of the past. He inserted mode windows behind the Gothic arches and laid new carved stone and grooved concrete floors that resemble plush carpets. The interiors have a spare elegance that renders this one of Europe’s most sublime museum buildings.   Day: 2 On to Asolo   The next moing, I drive about two hours northeast along the autostrada and then on smaller roads through a bucolic landscape to Asolo, the picturesque hill town where Scarpa lived from 1962 to 1972. Asolo proves an ideal base for exploring two more Scarpa designs as well as villas drawn up by that most famous architect of the Veneto region, Andrea Palladio. Entering Possagno, I make my way to sculptor Antonio Canova’s former home and the adjacent museum, partially designed by Scarpa, known as the Gipsoteca. The building provides an airy exhibition hall of white planes and glass, which harmonizes with Canova’s white casts. As he did at the Olivetti showroom, Scarpa made the best of a narrow plot, designing a cascade of levels that descends toward the cast of Canova’s masterpiece The Three Graces, poised in front of a glass wall with a sparkling pool outside.   Day 3: Tomba Brion   All this painstaking attention to detail reaches its pinnacle at Scarpa’s most elaborate creation, the Tomba Brion. A short drive south of Asolo, at the end of an allée of cypress trees in the village of San Vito d’Altivole, Scarpa drew up a private necropolis on an L-shaped site around the edges of the municipal cemetery. Massive, sloped concrete walls screen out sound and the sight of cofields and houses beyond. A cubic chapel seems to float in a pool of water at the entrance. The architecture is vaguely reminiscent of Mayan ruins or Japanese temples, but mysteriously reinterpreted in a way that makes the visitor feel altogether transported into some ethereal realm where a serene beauty has banished all other elements. In a fitting epitaph to my Veneto pilgrimage, I find Scarpa’s grave near a coer of the L shape, inside the public cemetery. It’s a simple marble slab inset with brass lettering and lines that radiate outward, as if beckoning a new generation to follow his example. Michael Z. Wise is a Travel + Leisure contributing editor. For dozens of driving getaways, including wine country weekends, New England foliage tours, and scenic European routes, go to travelandleisure.com/ideas/driving.   Many airlines fly nonstop to Venice’s Marco Polo Airport, located just eight miles north of the city.   Stay Hotel Colomba d’Oro Colorful lodging near the Castelvecchio Museum. 10 Via Cattaneo, Verona; 39-045/595-300; colombahotel.com; doubles from $340. Hotel Flora 17th-century palazzo with a courtyard garden. San Marco 2283/A, Venice; 39-041/520-5844; hotelflora.it; doubles from $284. nut insert Factory Hotel Villa Cipriani Former home of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, with a garden overlooking the surrounding countryside. 298 Via Canova, Asolo; 39-0423/52341; villaciprianiasolo.com; doubles from $295. Eat Al Covo Well-crafted dishes like house-made gnocchi with baby calamari and spider crab. Castello 3968, Venice; 39-041/522-3812; dinner for two $130. Hosteria Ca’ Derton da Nino Excellent small-town fare. 11 Piazza Gabrielle d’Annunzio, Asolo; 39-0423/529-648; dinner for two $130. Osteria Alle Testiere Tiny, informal seafood spot; reservations recommended. Calle del Mondo Novo, Castello 5801, Venice; 39-041/522-7220; dinner for two $120. Ristorante al Conte Pescaor Seafood specialties including homemade tagliolini with king prawns and asparagus. San Marco 544, Venice; 39-041/522-1483; dinner for two $100. Trattoria I Masenini Next door to the Castelvecchio Museum. 34 Via Roma, Verona; 39-045/806-5169; dinner for two $80. See Banca Populare di Verona 2 Piazza Nogara, Verona; 39-045/867-5111. Fondazione Querini Stampalia Castello 5252, Venice; 39-041/271-1411. Former Olivetti showroom Piazza San Marco, Venice. Gipsoteca 74 Via Piazza Canova, Possagno; 39-042/354-4323; museocanova.it. Museo di Castelvecchio 2 Corso Castelvecchio, Verona; 39-045/806-2611; comune.verona.it/castelvecchio/cvsito/index.htm. Tomba Brion Via del Cimitero, San Vito d’Altivole. Venice University Institute of Architecture Santa Croce 191, Venice; 39-041/257-1111. Hosteria Ca’ Derton da Nino Excellent small-town fare. Alle Testiere With only 24 seats and a strong following, getting a reservation can be a challenge, but if you succeed, you'll be rewarded with fresh seafood—including seasonal specialties like tiny softshell crabs—a varied wine list, and friendly service. Sommelier Luca Di Vita presides over the tiny salotto, outfitted with an antique marble-topped bar, where he advises patrons on how to pair the best Veneto whites. Piatti del gioo might include sautéed John Dory with lemon and orange, sprinkled with tarragon, and Luca’s homemade ginger-and-vanilla gelato. Al Covo Well-crafted dishes like house-made gnocchi with baby calamari and spider crab. Hotel Villa Cipriani Former home of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, with a garden overlooking the surrounding countryside. Museo della Fondazione Querini Stampalia Hotel Colomba d’Oro Colorful lodging near the Castelvecchio Museum. Hotel Flora Ristorante al Conte Pescaor Seafood specialties including homemade tagliolini with king prawns and asparagus. Trattoria I Masenini Lunch on veal cutllets at this spot, located next door to the Castelvecchio Museum. Banca Populare di Verona Former Olivetti showroom Instead of the basilica on San Marco, head for a far newer landmark: the showroom architect Scarpa created for the Olivetti company in 1957. Diagonally across from the celebrated cathedral, it’s a jewel-like temple for secular objects. Scarpa transformed a long, narrow space undeeath the arcade along the square’s northe flank into a dazzling, intimately scaled showcase for the display of Olivetti typewriters that, by the middle of the last century, had become coveted icons of mode design. As Scarpa was a Venetian, water played a key role in almost all of his projects. At the Olivetti showroom is a carved black marble pool in the entryway, as if to echo the fonts of holy water at the basilica. Ahead is a floating staircase of marble slabs suspended from bronze rods, leading to an upper level with balconies along one side. The floors are intricately patteed in colorful Murano glass tiles. The space was until recently a cramped commercial art gallery, but the superb craftsmanship and pure geometry of Scarpa’s achievement shine through. Gipsoteca Venture to sculptor Antonio Canova’s former home and the adjacent museum, partially designed by Scarpa, known as the Gipsoteca. The building provides an airy exhibition hall of white planes and glass, which harmonizes with Canova’s white casts. Castelvecchio Museum Architect Scarpa’s Museo di Castelvecchio is easy to find—it’s in a hulking 14th-century fortress along the Adige River. From 1958 to 1964 Scarpa reworked the museum, which displays medieval and Romanesque art and ancient weaponry, to make its history come alive by revealing the layers of the past. He inserted mode windows behind the Gothic arches and laid new carved stone and grooved concrete floors that resemble plush carpets. The interiors have a spare elegance that renders this one of Europe’s most sublime museum buildings. Tomba Brion The building's architect, Scarpa drew up a private necropolis on an L-shaped site around the edges of the municipal cemetery. Massive, sloped concrete walls screen out sound and the sight of cofields and houses beyond. A cubic chapel seems to float in a pool of water at the entrance. The architecture is vaguely reminiscent of Mayan ruins or Japanese temples, but mysteriously reinterpreted in a way that makes the visitor feel altogether transported into some ethereal realm where a serene beauty has banished all other elements. Venice University Institute of Architecture

. One homeowner retued while the thief was looking for valuables, so he hid under the bed to avoid detection. He walked out to discover the burglar tiptoeing across the lobby floor. In order to avoid making noise, Yang decided to take off his shoes, according to the Daily Mail. Earlier this month, a man identified by the last name Yang was allegedly attempting to burglarize a hotel in China’s Wuhu province. In a surveillance video released by Wuhu County police this week, the burglar is seen sneaking across the floor of the lobby with his shoes in his hand. Related: How Hotel Slippers Led Police to a Burglar in Manhattan Beach But, little did he know, the hotel owner was in the next room over.

The case is still under investigation. The burglar bolted and attempted to flee, but the owner caught up to him in the parking lot and apprehended him. He was arrested that day.December 28, 2018 One man with sticky fingers was done in by his own smelly feet. This isn’t the first time that a burglar in China has figuratively shot himself in the foot by removing his shoes. But the stench from his feet was Blind Rivet Nut reportedly so strong that the homeowner immediately found him. Yang was taken in by police and questioned, where he revealed that he had burglarized several other hotels that night because he was short on cash. Things were going well for the burglar until the owner was startled by a sudden and shocking smell. Earlier this year, a “habitual and professional” criminal was caught sneaking into homes in the Anhui province, according to the South China Moing Post

Did you think these were less risky to travel with than, say, the three ounces of blueberry jam you stole—I mean, confiscated—from me on my way home from Maine last summer? Or the life-threatening snow globe souvenir my colleague bought for her daughter in Colorado? How about that full-sized tube of toothpaste—or better yet, the water bottle I brought from home for my six-hour flight? Couldn't you see your way to un-banning those before knives, bats, and clubs? And as tons of news outlets are making clear, flight attendants are with us—they're not terribly thrilled at the prospect of knives on board, and we certainly can't fault them. We'd love to know what you were thinking, even if our golfer friends are excited by the prospect of carrying their gear aboard. Really, we are.. Signed, The Trip China Weld Studs Fasteners Manufacturers Doctor Team See also: Snakes (Almost) on a Plane and Pack This: TSA-Friendly Toiletries. We'd also like that blueberry jam back.March 06, 2013 Dear TSA, We are so happy to hear that you'll be easing packing restrictions for travelers. But golf clubs, baseball bats, and pocket knives? What an odd place to start

 Trendy as they may seem, I am a big fan of food joints with a singular focus: concentrate on just cupcakes, and you’re bound to have great ones. My favorite part, however, was the dessert: again, in the quest to do one thing and do it well, the Shop offers only ice cream sandwiches.. We had weld studs Factory startlingly fresh-tasting house-made mint ice cream between a chunky chocolate chip cookie and a thin, crackling brownie—really delicious, and exactly what we wanted, how we wanted it (Beau’s a cookie guy, while I am all for brownies). Sarah Storms is an assistant editor at Travel + Leisure. A visit to the February-opened, Lower East Side-situated Meatball Shop is simultaneously an exercise in control and an embarrassment of riches: with a meatball-only menu and seemingly endless ball, sauce, and cheese combos, this uni-concept resto is anything but limited. Recommended by a friend who’d endorsed the Shop as be-all, end-all, Last Supper-good, I made my maiden voyage this past week. A veritable New York hotspot, no doubt, with an eclectic crowd of good-natured caivores congregating outside to wait for one of eight intimate blonde wood tables (that owners Daniel Holzman, previously of Le Beardin, and Michael Cheow personally reclaimed from a 100-year-old tenement building in the East Village) or a seat at the central, boisterous communal one. With so many incredible choices, there is no possible way to go wrong—we have plans to retu to The Meatball Shop very, very soon.

There will always be flash-in-the-pan imposters, but the greats stick out—and stick around. The food is fantastic—whether you go for “balls à la carte,” (picking from chicken, spicy pork, classic meat, or vegetarian), or sliders, like we did, your meal is fully customizable. With an “Old New York” look—dark red walls adoed with a funky mix of portraits and a full white-tiled bar dotted with wooden stools and vases filled with wildflowers—and “New New York” sensibility: DIY dry-erase menus and ingredients sourced from organic farms, this is a restaurant to add to your roster of Manhattan must-eats. My dinner mate, Beau, and I made a point to try each sauce (tomato, spicy meat, mushroom, and parmesan cream) and every meatball, in combinations carefully chosen by our sunny, expert server

3 of 13 Ray Nayler Elista, Russia The king is threatened daily in this Russian town because here, it’s all about chess. Slab City, CA, is unafraid to embrace its quirks, and it’s one of a rare breed of towns that draw travelers for their novelty factor at a time when the world feels increasingly homogeneous, teeming with high-rises and chain stores.   Advertisement Blind Rivet Nut 5 of 13 Marc van der Chijs Thames Town, China The Chinese reputation for knockoffs and enthusiasm for European products has spawned this full-on replica of an English town in a suburb of Shanghai, complete with cobblestoned streets and red phone booths. The local polar bear population rivals the human one, and it’s not abnormal for the townspeople to shoot a bear in self-defense (hunting is illegal). It’s actually an outlying neighborhood of the town of Tartu, and one that looks frozen in time. For stories of more colorful local characters, stop by Showtown Bar and Grill.) Advertisement 7 of 13 Jessica Jewell Slab City, CA There are no laws in this Califoia town on the site of an old World War II Marine barracks in the desert near the Salton Sea.

Tourists gawk at the ghost town—it doesn’t have a zip code anymore—even as 10 people continue to call it home (as of the 2011 census). Related: The World's Strangest Beaches Consider Thames Town: the Chinese knack for knockoffs has spawned this full-on replica of an English town in a suburb of Shanghai, complete with cobblestoned streets and red phone booths. Most of the residents were relocated in the 1980s after a young boy fell into a sinkhole in his yard, but a few stuck around and refuse to leave. Large rock formations jut out over some streets, providing welcome shade during sultry summer months, and cafés make use of locally cultivated chorizo, almonds, and olives. It was rumored that Saunière unearthed documents in the church’s altar. sheffieldmurals. Still catering to the circus community, the town allows folks to leave circus trailers and elephants on the lawn.  Advertisement 6 of 13 Frank Kasperek Lily Dale, NY If watching Long Island Medium is your guilty pleasure, you must visit Lily Dale, a town of noted psychics in upstate New York. Many find themselves drawn to meditate at the town’s Forest Temple. Advertisement 13 of 13 Andy Field Rennes-le-Château, France This small hillside village in the South of France is rife with conspiracy theories, most notably that the Holy Grail is hidden here. Have a pint at the pub, post the photo to Facebook, and your friends will be none the wiser..com Advertisement 11 of 13 Duncan McNeill / Alamy Setenil de las Bodegas, Spain This small Spanish town along the Rio Trejo in Cadiz has a split personality: many residents in the lower half continue to live in cavelike structures built into a gorge. “It’s something you have to see to believe. Advertisement 2 of 13 Tom McLaughlin Monowi, NE Everyone in town knows the name Elsie Eiler, and it’s not just because she’s the mayor—she’s the sole resident. Steven Cantor, who directed the recent HBO documentary No One Dies in Lily Dale, tried to capture the town’s peculiar energy.

You know you’ve arrived when you see Salvation Mountain, a large installation by artist Leonard Knight. Make an appointment with one of the many mediums in the town or attend a service at the Healing Temple.com). You heard that right: no body has been buried in the local cemetery in almost a hundred years. Now Roswell is alien obsessed, and even the local McDonald’s is shaped like a flying saucer. The town hosts lectures and was also the focus of a HBO documentary. Why? The perpetually frigid temperatures prohibit corpses from properly decomposing. Its other strange claim to fame is being the only Buddhist region in Europe; Elista’s chess complex includes a museum of Buddhist art. Just outside of Tampa, FL, there’s a town popular with retiring performers who keep circus trailers and elephants on their lawns. Indeed, some of the world’s finest chess players have paid a visit to Elista, which is the capital of the Republic of Kalmykia. Advertisement 12 of 13 Timberwolf Response Group Roswell, NM A UFO allegedly crashed in Roswell in the summer of 1947, altering this town forever. Advertisement 4 of 13 Bob Snead Gibsonton, FL For decades Gibsonton (a. If you’re inspired to go hunting for the unusual, you may not have to look far. In upstate New York, Lily Dale is odd in an entirely different way, attracting an outsize population of mediums and psychics who claim to reconnect with the afterlife.) Skeptics and believers alike will find much to think about at the Inteational UFO Museum and Research Center (roswellufomuseum.a. Advertisement 8 of 13 Radosław Surowiec Supilinn, Estonia With street names like potato, bean, and pea (Hee, pictured), Supilinn naturally inspired the nickname of Soup Town. About 200,000 people annually visit Tasmania’s self-proclaimed “outdoor art gallery”—with a population of less than 1,000. Just a short drive from Tampa, Gibsonton is also home to the Inteational Independent Showmen’s Association, which runs the Museum of the American Caival. The town attracts a mixed crowd of snowbird RV owners and folks really trying to live off the grid. The population had been diminishing since the 1930s, when this northe Nebraskan town had 150 residents, and by 2000, it was down to one couple: Elsie and her husband, Rudy, who has since passed away. Following the influenza epidemic of 1917, Longyearbyen banned burials in the town’s graveyard. Either way, you will find yourself connecting with spiritual forces in this unique village of enlightened folks. Its low-slung wooden homes look much as they did when it was a 19th-century slum. Play a game on the enormous chessboard painted on the ground in the Town Square or head to Chess City, a domed complex that hosted the 1998 Chess Olympiad.

The statue of a giant boot pays tribute to a past resident, Al Tomaini, a circus giant with size 27 shoes.   1 of 13 Marina Gotovchits Longyearbyen, Norway There is no dying allowed in this remote Arctic town—well, you can die, but you can’t be buried here. Advertisement 9 of 13 Thomas Henry Centralia, PA A fire started at a mine in this town on May 27, 1962, and more than 50 years later, it’s still famously buing. There are now more than 60 murals that depict historic scenes, as well as art studios open to the public and, as of 2003, an Inteational Mural Festival. The faux-English backdrop is popular with couples taking wedding photos.com. (Note that Lily Dale is a gated community; registered medium services are available year round, but most events are held exclusively in summer, when there is a gate fee of $5­–10 per person; lilydaleassembly. Now in her mid-70s, Eiler serves beer at the Monowi Tave (with an official liquor license) and tued her late husband’s collection of 5,000 books into a one-room public library. UFO tourism has attracted folks to this small New Mexico town, where visitors frequent UFO-themed shops like the Alien Zone and tu up for the annual summer UFO Festival.” That sentiment applies to each of the strange towns that made our list, perhaps most of all Elista, a Russian town almost as passionate about chess—an enormous board covers much of the town square—as it is about Buddhism.k. Legend claims that these coded documents led him to hidden treasure, which he used to finance the renovations. After all, we’re not talking about just an offbeat tourist attraction; these places take strange to a whole new level. Saunière was also the inspiration for the character in Dan Brown’s best seller The Da Vinci Code. “There are dozens of psychic mediums strolling the grounds, doling out messages from the beyond, particularly during regularly scheduled, immensely popular group sessions centered around an old tree stump, which they believe to be a vortex of spiritual energy,” says Cantor. While there’s no running water, the town does have an open-air nightclub called the Range, run by a resident and with performances by local musicians on Saturday nights. You can have a pint at the pub and a snack at the local chip shop and—rather less authentically—pose by statues of James Bond and Harry Potter.  Advertisement 10 of 13 QLEE Sheffield, Australia Following the maxim that if you build it, they will come, in the 1980s, locals formed a tourism association and launched a campaign to paint murals (a strategy that had helped revitalize the Canadian town Chemainus).February 05, 2013 Deep in the Califoia desert exists a strange, lawless town, where folks live without running water, yet create outdoor art installations and host concerts. Even after a polar bear takes its last breath in this mining town, it must also be sent away for its final resting spot. (The cult TV show Roswell provided an added boost. Showtown) was the spot where caival and circus folks spent the winter and where many chose to retire. While every town has a story, these strange spots have the best punch lines. In the 1800s, priest Bérenger Saunière made lavish renovations to the local Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, and many questioned his source of funding, believing that he didn’t fund the renovations by simply selling masses and donations. Your hometown might even take inspiration from a place in Australia that went to unconventional means to put itself on the tourist map—by covering its buildings in dozens of murals

3 of 13 Ray Nayler Elista, Russia The king is threatened daily in this Russian town because here, it’s all about chess. Slab City, CA, is unafraid to embrace its quirks, and it’s one of a rare breed of towns that draw travelers for their novelty factor at a time when the world feels increasingly homogeneous, teeming with high-rises and chain stores.   Advertisement Blind Rivet Nut 5 of 13 Marc van der Chijs Thames Town, China The Chinese reputation for knockoffs and enthusiasm for European products has spawned this full-on replica of an English town in a suburb of Shanghai, complete with cobblestoned streets and red phone booths. The local polar bear population rivals the human one, and it’s not abnormal for the townspeople to shoot a bear in self-defense (hunting is illegal). It’s actually an outlying neighborhood of the town of Tartu, and one that looks frozen in time. For stories of more colorful local characters, stop by Showtown Bar and Grill.) Advertisement 7 of 13 Jessica Jewell Slab City, CA There are no laws in this Califoia town on the site of an old World War II Marine barracks in the desert near the Salton Sea.

Tourists gawk at the ghost town—it doesn’t have a zip code anymore—even as 10 people continue to call it home (as of the 2011 census). Related: The World's Strangest Beaches Consider Thames Town: the Chinese knack for knockoffs has spawned this full-on replica of an English town in a suburb of Shanghai, complete with cobblestoned streets and red phone booths. Most of the residents were relocated in the 1980s after a young boy fell into a sinkhole in his yard, but a few stuck around and refuse to leave. Large rock formations jut out over some streets, providing welcome shade during sultry summer months, and cafés make use of locally cultivated chorizo, almonds, and olives. It was rumored that Saunière unearthed documents in the church’s altar. sheffieldmurals. Still catering to the circus community, the town allows folks to leave circus trailers and elephants on the lawn.  Advertisement 6 of 13 Frank Kasperek Lily Dale, NY If watching Long Island Medium is your guilty pleasure, you must visit Lily Dale, a town of noted psychics in upstate New York. Many find themselves drawn to meditate at the town’s Forest Temple. Advertisement 13 of 13 Andy Field Rennes-le-Château, France This small hillside village in the South of France is rife with conspiracy theories, most notably that the Holy Grail is hidden here. Have a pint at the pub, post the photo to Facebook, and your friends will be none the wiser..com Advertisement 11 of 13 Duncan McNeill / Alamy Setenil de las Bodegas, Spain This small Spanish town along the Rio Trejo in Cadiz has a split personality: many residents in the lower half continue to live in cavelike structures built into a gorge. “It’s something you have to see to believe. Advertisement 2 of 13 Tom McLaughlin Monowi, NE Everyone in town knows the name Elsie Eiler, and it’s not just because she’s the mayor—she’s the sole resident. Steven Cantor, who directed the recent HBO documentary No One Dies in Lily Dale, tried to capture the town’s peculiar energy.

You know you’ve arrived when you see Salvation Mountain, a large installation by artist Leonard Knight. Make an appointment with one of the many mediums in the town or attend a service at the Healing Temple.com). You heard that right: no body has been buried in the local cemetery in almost a hundred years. Now Roswell is alien obsessed, and even the local McDonald’s is shaped like a flying saucer. The town hosts lectures and was also the focus of a HBO documentary. Why? The perpetually frigid temperatures prohibit corpses from properly decomposing. Its other strange claim to fame is being the only Buddhist region in Europe; Elista’s chess complex includes a museum of Buddhist art. Just outside of Tampa, FL, there’s a town popular with retiring performers who keep circus trailers and elephants on their lawns. Indeed, some of the world’s finest chess players have paid a visit to Elista, which is the capital of the Republic of Kalmykia. Advertisement 12 of 13 Timberwolf Response Group Roswell, NM A UFO allegedly crashed in Roswell in the summer of 1947, altering this town forever. Advertisement 4 of 13 Bob Snead Gibsonton, FL For decades Gibsonton (a. If you’re inspired to go hunting for the unusual, you may not have to look far. In upstate New York, Lily Dale is odd in an entirely different way, attracting an outsize population of mediums and psychics who claim to reconnect with the afterlife.) Skeptics and believers alike will find much to think about at the Inteational UFO Museum and Research Center (roswellufomuseum.a. Advertisement 8 of 13 Radosław Surowiec Supilinn, Estonia With street names like potato, bean, and pea (Hee, pictured), Supilinn naturally inspired the nickname of Soup Town. About 200,000 people annually visit Tasmania’s self-proclaimed “outdoor art gallery”—with a population of less than 1,000. Just a short drive from Tampa, Gibsonton is also home to the Inteational Independent Showmen’s Association, which runs the Museum of the American Caival. The town attracts a mixed crowd of snowbird RV owners and folks really trying to live off the grid. The population had been diminishing since the 1930s, when this northe Nebraskan town had 150 residents, and by 2000, it was down to one couple: Elsie and her husband, Rudy, who has since passed away. Following the influenza epidemic of 1917, Longyearbyen banned burials in the town’s graveyard. Either way, you will find yourself connecting with spiritual forces in this unique village of enlightened folks. Its low-slung wooden homes look much as they did when it was a 19th-century slum. Play a game on the enormous chessboard painted on the ground in the Town Square or head to Chess City, a domed complex that hosted the 1998 Chess Olympiad.

The statue of a giant boot pays tribute to a past resident, Al Tomaini, a circus giant with size 27 shoes.   1 of 13 Marina Gotovchits Longyearbyen, Norway There is no dying allowed in this remote Arctic town—well, you can die, but you can’t be buried here. Advertisement 9 of 13 Thomas Henry Centralia, PA A fire started at a mine in this town on May 27, 1962, and more than 50 years later, it’s still famously buing. There are now more than 60 murals that depict historic scenes, as well as art studios open to the public and, as of 2003, an Inteational Mural Festival. The faux-English backdrop is popular with couples taking wedding photos.com. (Note that Lily Dale is a gated community; registered medium services are available year round, but most events are held exclusively in summer, when there is a gate fee of $5­–10 per person; lilydaleassembly. Now in her mid-70s, Eiler serves beer at the Monowi Tave (with an official liquor license) and tued her late husband’s collection of 5,000 books into a one-room public library. UFO tourism has attracted folks to this small New Mexico town, where visitors frequent UFO-themed shops like the Alien Zone and tu up for the annual summer UFO Festival.” That sentiment applies to each of the strange towns that made our list, perhaps most of all Elista, a Russian town almost as passionate about chess—an enormous board covers much of the town square—as it is about Buddhism.k. Legend claims that these coded documents led him to hidden treasure, which he used to finance the renovations. After all, we’re not talking about just an offbeat tourist attraction; these places take strange to a whole new level. Saunière was also the inspiration for the character in Dan Brown’s best seller The Da Vinci Code. “There are dozens of psychic mediums strolling the grounds, doling out messages from the beyond, particularly during regularly scheduled, immensely popular group sessions centered around an old tree stump, which they believe to be a vortex of spiritual energy,” says Cantor. While there’s no running water, the town does have an open-air nightclub called the Range, run by a resident and with performances by local musicians on Saturday nights. You can have a pint at the pub and a snack at the local chip shop and—rather less authentically—pose by statues of James Bond and Harry Potter.  Advertisement 10 of 13 QLEE Sheffield, Australia Following the maxim that if you build it, they will come, in the 1980s, locals formed a tourism association and launched a campaign to paint murals (a strategy that had helped revitalize the Canadian town Chemainus).February 05, 2013 Deep in the Califoia desert exists a strange, lawless town, where folks live without running water, yet create outdoor art installations and host concerts. Even after a polar bear takes its last breath in this mining town, it must also be sent away for its final resting spot. (The cult TV show Roswell provided an added boost. Showtown) was the spot where caival and circus folks spent the winter and where many chose to retire. While every town has a story, these strange spots have the best punch lines. In the 1800s, priest Bérenger Saunière made lavish renovations to the local Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, and many questioned his source of funding, believing that he didn’t fund the renovations by simply selling masses and donations. Your hometown might even take inspiration from a place in Australia that went to unconventional means to put itself on the tourist map—by covering its buildings in dozens of murals