Places Elise Vale Wants to Go

Once thought to be the mysterious work of a witchy prophetess, a well with unusual properties turns objects into "stone".

A vast overgrown cemetery, once known as one of London's "Magnificent Seven."

Surreal riveted sea forts once protected the Kent shores from German attack.

The atmospheric road was never meant to be so creepy.

Northern Ireland's Brobdingnagian stepping stones.

This astonishingly geometric cave has inspired everyone from Jules Verne to Pink Floyd.

Terrifically morbid cemetary and site of famous Paracelsus' grave.

The oldest continual pilgrimage site in Britain was supposedly created by a gruesome beheading.

The bodies of some early polar pioneers are still buried beneath the harsh snows of the Antarctic.

A wooden hut from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Considered the most remote point in the entire world.

Nimrod Polar Expedition base, and home to hundred-year-old frozen whisky.

Natural time capsule containing an alien ecosystem.

An abandoned whaling station on an active volcano offers hot springs in Antarctica, surrounded by ruined giants of industry.

Fire meets ice at the southernmost volcano on Earth.

Antarctica's bustling metropolis, originally established by Richard E. Byrd.

The best place to send your postcards home from Antarctica.

A line of abandoned, alien-like fortresses dot the mountains of North Italy.

This church, better known for its weeping portrait of the Virgin Mary, also houses the world's oldest existing piece of taxidermy.

This 18th-century dissection theater's frescoes display a gorgeous tension between the terrestrial and esoteric.

The only substantial part of Nazi Germany's formidable defensive line through Northern Italy that survives today, largely intact.

The mountaintop inspiration for Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose."

This military mausoleum captures the solemn grandeur that most memorials only aspire to.

An Italian geologic wonder that served as the inspiration for the landscape of Dante's hell.