Looking much like the real whales this area is known for, a new visitor center will rise from the tip of a Norwegian island 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle. “The Whale” by architecture firm Dorte Mandrup aims to be an unobtrusive addition to the setting while also drawing even more visitors to the remote area of Andøya, a prime whale-watching destination.

“The new Arctic attraction, The Whale, tells the story of the big inhabitants of this underwater world, rising as a soft hill on the rocky shore – as if a giant had lifted a thin layer of the crust of the earth and created a cavity underneath,” say the architects.

“A single curved concrete shell makes up the roof of The Whale. This parabolic form effectively transmits the forces to three support points in the corners of the building, creating a large, inner column-free room.”

The “whale tail” effect is only visible from a certain angle, but it’s still pretty cool, and the structure’s low-lying form is meant to help human visitors maintain a minimal impact on the area (though ecotourism remains controversial, as some say it’s having a negative impact and others say it helps raise crucial funds and awareness for affected species.) Other popular activities in Andenes include taking in the northern lights, exploring fjords, hiking, fossil hunting and berry picking.

The design beat out stiff competition from the likes of Snøhetta, Reiulf Ramstad and Bjarke Ingels Group, chosen for its combination of creativity and respect for the natural environment. You can see all of the proposals at The Whale’s website and judge for yourself.

It’s not often that tourists line up to collect trash in the cities they’re visiting, and pay for the privilege, too. But in Amsterdam, ‘plastic fishing’ is a surprisingly popular way for outsiders to experience the city’s canals and give back at the same time. As awareness grows about the problem of plastic pollution, so does Plastic Whale’s list of customers. The organization provides two-hour tours in boats made of recycled plastic pulled from those same waterways, arming tourists with fishing nets and encouraging them to scoop up anything that doesn’t belong in the canals.

That detritus might include random items like wallets, keys, aluminum cans and candy wrappers, but it mostly consists of plastic – enough to provide Plastic Whale with a fleet of ten boats. The organization takes the trash to its facilities, sorts it and recycles it, with some of the plastic (and steel) becoming a range of high end office furniture in collaboration with manufacturer Vepa.

“Plastic Whale Circular Furniture is created following the full principles of circular production and design. So besides the recycled Amsterdam Canal plastic, we also make optimal use of other ‘waste streams’ at Vepa’s factory, including recycled steel for in our chairs and residual fabrics for the chair’s cushioning. Nothing goes to waste. At the end of its life cycle, we even take your product back from you. And pay you for it, because we’ll be using it as raw material in new products.”

Plastic Whale describes itself as a “social impact experience” where 100% of what tourists pay goes to their recycling goals. The canals get cleaner, new products get produced and visitors get a little more conscious about the impact of plastic on the environment while experiencing the city in a whole new way. Plastic Whale’s ultimate goal is to go out of business as less plastic appears in the canals in the first place.

The company books its weekend plastic fishing expeditions seasonally through Airbnb.

Images via Plastic Whale’s Facebook

A former haven for Nazi war criminals, child molesters and their sympathizers, Villa Baviera is now a bizarrely whitewashed German-themed tourist attraction tucked into Chile’s Andean foothills. Established in 1961, the cult compound formerly known as Colonia Dignidad (Dignity Colony) hosted infamous concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele, known as the ‘Angel of Death,’ and served as a special torture center and illegal arms cache. Now you can drink beer and watch people stomp around in lederhosen as if none of those terrible things ever happened.

The insensitive nature of the transition of the 54-square-mile compound’s use is just the beginning, considering that an investigation in the ‘90s found evidence of decades of child abuse, torture and mysterious disappearances. Founder Paul Schäfer, a fugitive wanted in Germany for pedophilia, served as the authoritarian leader of 300 residents. Children were separated from their parents and siblings, all media from the outside world was banned, and sex was forbidden without Schäfer’s approval.

In the ‘70s, dictator Augusto Pinochet made use of the compound to detain political dissidents. Schäfer was finally apprehended in 1997 and died in prison in 2010, and though 20 colony elders were convicted of aiding him in his abuses, the roughly 120 remaining residents were allowed to keep the property and do what they wanted with it, which was to turn it into a money-maker. Rather than making it a memorial to the Holocaust or the crimes that were carried out on the compound, they decided everybody would rather feign collective amnesia.

The result is a 21-room hotel, swimming pool, playgrounds, wedding tents and restaurants along with all the German food and beer you can consume. A guard tower once used to spot escapees still looks out over the property, and the perimeter is still edged with barbed wire fencing, but hey, those hot tubs will help you relax away the memories of the atrocities committed there, right?

Catch more on the history of this twisted tourist attraction at Bloomberg and in the upcoming Hollywood film ‘Colonia’, starring Emma Watson.

Caught the travel bug? Visit the world’s 10 filthiest, germiest tourist attractions and you could catch much, much more than you bargained for!

The famous red wine bath at the Kowakien Yunessun hot springs spa resort and water amusement park in Hakone, Japan gives the term “drinking problem” a whole new meaning. On the bright side, alcohol has antiseptic properties.

Sure it’s easy to resist drinking bathwater tainted by dozens of strangers but when the water’s been turned into wine, you’d better just hold your nose and pray for your health.

Blarney Stone, Ireland

No visit to Ireland would be complete without kissing the Blarney Stone; just ask the roughly 400,000 people who visit Blarney Castle in Cork each year to do just that. Take into account several centuries of tradition and you’ve got a pretty good chance of picking up much more than the gift of gab.

Kudos to Flickr users colinfinkle2, Mark Folse, and Becky Lane (romplane) for striking a blow for – or maybe against – germophobes worldwide.

Market Theater Gum Wall, Seattle

So it seems the gross & grotty Gum Wall under Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle is to be steam cleaned and scrubbed free of used chewing gum – the first time in 20 years this dirtiest of dirty jobs is to be done. Where’s Mike Rowe when you need him?

The cleaning wasn’t prompted by public health issues, however, as according to the Pike Place Market Preservation & Development Authority the sugars in the gum are beginning to erode the bricks! Once the walls are clean, visitors are encouraged to pick up where they left off.

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Sick Transit The Worlds Germiest Tourist Attractions

There’s a lot more to America’s southernmost state than the headline-worthy misadventures of Florida Man and Florida Woman. Culturally distinct from the rest of the South, Florida has been heavily influenced by its Spanish and Caribbean roots, not to mention whatever mysterious set of circumstances a la the Bermuda Triangle make the state such a unique incubator for strange shenanigans. Beyond the obvious attractions like Disney World and South Beach that pull in millions of tourists every year, there are many more sights offering a little slice of the state’s unusual history. These 12 offbeat destinations are each very Florida in their own way.

An Abandoned Island Fort You Can Visit, Dry Tortugas

Take a relaxing three-hour boat ride or a 45-minute plane ride from Key West to the remains of Fort Jefferson, a massive 19th century fortress that was abandoned for nearly a century before becoming a wildlife sanctuary and national park. Once hosting Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon and the real-life Pirates of the Caribbean, the island chain known as the Dry Tortugas was crowned by a hexagonal all-masonry fort in the 1840s and briefly used as a prison for Union deserters in the Civil War before hurricane damage and all of its obsolete cannons led to its abandonment.

Coral Castle, Homestead

(images via: psyberartist)

A single 100-pound man worked tirelessly for three decades to build Homestead’s Coral Castle, a complex of strange shapes made from over 1,000 tons of sedimentary rock. Touted as an engineering marvel rivaling Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Egypt, the ‘castle’ was created as a tribute to Edward Leedskalnin’s sixteen-year-old lost love, who abandoned him on her wedding day. (In fact, Billy Idol wrote a song about it – ‘Sweet Sixteen.’) While some people like to imagine that the used mystical powers to move the huge stones, the truth is, medieval techniques like winches, ropes and pulleys helped him position each porous slab of stone. Still, it’s a remarkable feat and a beautiful sight.

JFK’s Secret Island Bunker, Riviera Beach

(images via: visit florida/Peter W. Cross)

President John F. Kennedy’s personal nuclear fallout shelter was located in a seemingly unlikely place – a small island in the Intracoastal Waterway off Riviera Beach. Built in just two weeks in the lead-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the shelter is little more than a corrugated metal hole in the ground on Peanut Island, which is conveniently located a few hundred yards from a Coast Guard station and about a five-minute helicopter ride from the Kennedy estate in Palm Beach. This humble little place is the headquarters from which the president would have run the remains of the free world had any missiles actually been launched. Tours are available via the Palm Beach Maritime Museum, and the island is accessible by ferry and water taxi if you don’t have your own boat.

Flagler’s Folly: Failed Overseas Railroad, Pigeon Key

(images via: jack says relax, key lime pie yumyum)

The industrialist and oil magnate responsible for founding the Florida East Coast Railway and nearly single-handedly developing much of Florida’s Atlantic coast was never afraid to dream big, even if it meant spectacular failure. After all of his successes elsewhere in the state, Henry Flagler envisioned a railroad extension that would take visitors from the town of Homestead all the way to the tip of Key West, an island that’s technically closer to Cuba than it is to the mainland U.S. Dubbed the ‘Overseas Railroad,’ this extension would enable Flagler to corner the trade market adjacent to the new Panama Canal and would have to span 60 miles of unobstructed water and many more miles of inhospitable islands. Through arduous effort, the workers made it happen, and upon its completion in 1912 it was called the Eighth Wonder of the World. Flagler died a year later, never to learn that his precious railroad would be partially destroyed in a hurricane in 1935, and that an astonishing 432 workers still toiling on the extension’s bridges would perish. The island where they were housed and died, Pigeon Key, was abandoned twice in the decades since, but its historical buildings have now been restored as a museum and a remaining 2.2-mile section is open to pedestrians and cyclists. A more modern roadway, the Overseas Highway, was built upon many of the other railway sections in the 1950s.

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Freaky Florida 12 Of A Weird States Weirdest Attractions