Atlas Obscura is a user-written travel website that highlights the lesser-known, awesome destinations and locations around the world.

Skip the Empire State Building…

Atlas Obscura is a travel website for the best destinations that you wont find in your average travel guide. The site operates on the principle that most travel publications only tell readers about places that countless people have already discovered — the Eiffel tower or the Empire State Building, for instance. Atlas Obscura, on the other hand, wants to tell you about “miniature cities, glass flowers,” “bone churches,” and “books bound in human skin.” The site recommends awesome, unique destinations and locations around the world that are relatively hidden from the average traveler.

Go to the Bone Church Instead.

Atlas Obscura has a community-oriented aspect that allows it to stand out from more traditional travel publications. Articles and entries to the Atlas can be submitted by anyone that’s willing to contribute to the community by sharing an awesome destination found anywhere around the world. All of the submissions are reviewed by Atlas’s editorial team in order to maintain quality content. The content on the site is definitely high quality, and it’s also extremely weird. Examples of articles on the site include the masses of elephant seals that sit on the shores of Nuevo State Park in Pescadero, California, as well as the Heyri Art Valley, an artist’s colony in Paju-Si, South Korea. Each article is accompanied by a helpful description of where and how to visit the location. If you’re planning a trip to another state or country and want a unique taste of local life, Atlas Obscura has a huge list of things to check out.