Places Edited by Rachel James

This piece of Australian modern art is part joke and part history.

The remains of this hell for leather wild west town can still be found in the Arizona desert.

The ancient ruins of an extinguished city amidst the bustle of a modern one.

This historic address is home to the beloved ball and is an almost totally empty building among the most expensive real estate in the world.

Annual convention held by the largest pyrotechnic community in the world.

On Japan's Tashirojima Island, cats are king.

Think you have a tough job? Try carrying 200 kilos through a cloud of sulfur down the side of a volcano.

A Japanese shrine to dolls.

One of the world's southernmost bars.

A city built from mud and known as the "Manhattan of the desert."

The world's largest neutrino telescope searches for secrets of the universe at the South Pole.

A Saint Nicholas-themed ghost town in the Mojave desert.

There is an art, a science, and certainly a responsibility to occupying the Big Red Chair, and this is where it's learned.

A fantastic Christmas tradition where defecation meets the manger.

The home made famous by the 1983 holiday classic is now a perfectly preserved shrine to the movie.

World's largest Christmas store.

Costumed elves and mountain bikers co-exist peacefully at this abandoned Christmas-themed adventure park.

An Aztec snake god has taken the material form of an apartment complex.

An Italian crevasse filled with abandoned buildings gives visitors a look at the world without humans.

A failed piece of Orientalism has become the proud symbol of a community.

Real bones which are said to have belonged to a Polish dragon.

A roadside collection of over-sized iron creations that are a bit more macabre than most.

Make your reservation to have coffee with some kitties.

The longest trolleybus route in the world, from Simferopol and Yalta.