Home, Stimulating Home - Reversible Destiny Lofts

Home is a place where you should be able to relax and feel comfortable. Unless you live in one of the Reversible Destiny Lofts in Mitaka, Japan, where the architecture is designed to constantly challenge your brain and keep you on your toes. The concrete floors feature random bumps. Random ladders, poles and balconies are situated everywhere. Nothing is shaped as it should be, including the rooms themselves. 

The goal of the architects was to design a living space that will keep its inhabitants’ bodies and minds stimulated so that they can live longer. Sort of like an architectural version of Sudoku. I get what the designers were going for, I really do … but I dunno. I think I’d rather be able to shuffle to the bathroom in the middle of the night without tripping over an artfully placed mogul. 

Tight Landings - Maho Beach

If plane spotting is your thing, then you'll want to book a trip to St. Maarten in the Caribbean, where planes get so close to Maho Beach while landing that beachgoers can practically touch them. As it is, the force from the plane is so strong that sand often goes flying, and sometimes people are actually blown off their feet!

Why people would be trying to feel the underside of a descending jet instead of running screaming from it is beyond me ... oh, who am I kidding? If I were there, I'd be trying to cop a feel, too.

Treetop Dining - Soneva Kiri Resort

Never dined in a treepod before? Well, then you’ve never lived, my friend. At the Soneva Kiri Resort in Koh Kood, Thailand, visitors can opt to take their meal in a wooden pod that’s hoisted into a leafy rainforest canopy and served by a waiter via zipline. Even glasses of wine can be delivered to you by this wonderful, flying man.  

I am currently saving every penny to be able to blow it all on this experience. After all, it’s not every day that you get to eat like a very rich monkey!

Wheeee! - Ten-Story Slide at City Museum

What's the best part of the playground - the swings? Nah. The monkey bars? Boring. The see-saw? That's just an accident waiting to happen. Here's the correct answer: the slide! And here's where you can find the most awesome slide in the whole world: City Museum in St. Louis, Missouri, which features a 10-story slide that deposits you in a room called "the Fungeon."

Actually, all of City Museum is pretty cool, created by an artist who wanted to build a museum-playground that would appeal to kids and adults alike. Among other attractions, there's a giant indoor tree house and a human-size hamster wheel, as well as a display of the world's largest pair of underwear. And everything's made from reclaimed materials. But seriously? They had me at "giant slide."

Need to Disappear? - Mirrorcube

Tree hotels, while cool, are totally passé. Been there, done that, amirite? Well, the Swedes have stepped up their tree hotel game with Mirrorcube, the world's first invisible room. Nestled in the trees of the town of Harads in northern Sweden, the cube-shaped room is made of mirrored walls so that it blends in with the environment and virtually disappears. Even the birds didn't know it was there and kept crashing into it, so the designers had to add on an infrared film that only they could see.

My only question: When is Ikea gonna start selling these invisible cube rooms? I need one for my backyard. Although, thinking about it, the self-assembly could get a little tricky.

Atlantis is in China - Shicheng Underwater City

I bring news. Atlantis is real, my friends! And it's located in a lake in China. Also, it's not actually Atlantis, but an ancient Chinese city called Shicheng that was purposely flooded with water in the late 1950s to make way for a dam.

The water-preserved city was largely forgotten about until 2001, which was when the Chinese government decided to dive down and explore this historical and architectural goldmine. What they found were beautiful stone buildings, forgotten city streets, an imposing wall that encircled the city, and Chinese mermaids. Well, just kidding on that last one. But wouldn't that be the coolest?

Catching a Bite to Eat - Lambert's Café

If you find yourself in Missouri with a hankering for carbs, the place to go is Lambert's Café, where they apparently sell the biggest, most buttery rolls on this side of the Ozarks. The only catch? You'll need to know how to catch -- the only way to get your hands on the dinner rolls is to field one from the waiters, who chuck them at you from across the room.

Visitors come from afar just to catch the rolls at Lambert's, at the risk of getting bonked in the head by a stray piece of bread. But hey, I could think of worse, less delicious things to be hit in the head with.

Now You See It, Now You Don't - See-Through Church

Here's a church that won't stay put - not exactly a spiritually comforting notion, but definitely an awesome one architecturally. The See-Through Church of Limbourg, Belgium, is an art installation that was designed to look completely solid from certain angles and like it's dissolving into thin air from other angles. The piece is called "Reading Between the Lines."

So what were the artists trying to say? That art is impermanent? That churches are impermanent? That life is impermanent? Oh, that's deep.

Crimson is the New Green - Hitachi Seaside Park

Who says that botanical gardens need to be green? At Hitachi Seaside Park, in the Ibaraki prefecture of Japan, the dominant colors of the flowers and shrubs might be yellow, purple, blue, pink or crimson, depending on the season. The explosive colors are almost otherworldly, making ordinary old green gardens look passé.

I am, of course, jumping on the next available plane to Japan to see this natural wonder for myself and to frolic in all the color. Because I'm sure the urge to frolic (and to cavort and to gambol) will be very strong here.

It's Obviously Black Magic - Crooked Forest

For this Halloween edition of Trippy Places, I present ... the crooked forest of Gryfino, Poland. What the heck is going on with this forest of about 400 trees? Why were they growing at a 90-degree angle? Did someone do this to them or is it a natural phenomenon? The world may never know. [Cue eerie wailing noises.]

Actually, the world has a few guesses. Some think that farmers purposely shaped the trees as saplings so that they could create interesting pieces of wood for furniture building. Others think a severe snowstorm may have kept the saplings in a bent position until the snow and ice melted. Still others (as in I) think that it was obviously black magic. But no one knows for sure, because just after the time the trees started growing this way, all the surrounding Polish towns were devastated by World War II, so no witnesses or records were left. Which might be an even eerier story, actually. [Cue more wailing noises.]