Places Samir S. Patel Wants to Go

Despite a recent paint job, the factory still sits empty.

A star-shaped fortress town fort built in the geometric model of the Renaissance utopian city.

A stranded woman lived alone on this remote island for 18 years, inspiring the great children's novel "Island of the Blue Dolphins."

Something's missing between the arcades of the Palazzo della Ragione in "the city of the three withouts."

A spectacular hidden beach in Ireland has the dark, disturbing nickname of "Murder Hole Beach."

Sunset-colored dunes of volcanic ash make taking a poor photo impossible.

The sinister ruins of one of the worst dam failures of the 20th century lie in this astonishing alpine setting.

Houses are tucked between, on, and underneath giant boulders.

This gaping hole in the middle of a remote mountain lake looks like a portal to another dimension.

An actual 1957 Cadillac De Ville, encased in 15 cubic yards of concrete.

Cave where bat-eating snakes hang down from the ceiling.

A charming 17th-century alley is lined with secondhand bookstores and antiquarian shops.

America's silhouette includes 100 square miles of wilderness jutting into Canada thanks to an old mapmaking error.

These magnificent city walls rise from the barren sun-baked Spanish plains like something straight out of a fairytale.

The sad remains of a monument to martial arts legend and movie star Bruce Lee—in the middle of Balkans.

This king penguin is a knighted brigadier of the Norwegian Army.

The largest catacomb system in the world.

A tiny piece of the Moon is embedded in this stained glass masterpiece.

Hundreds of caves filled with thousands of centuries-old statues and murals.

An abandoned Victorian-era amusement park is rusting away amidst luxury houses.

Climb atop one of the world's longest and heaviest trains for an unbelievable journey across the Sahara Desert.

Large-scale contemporary artworks tower over fields and lurk in forests around a Jacobean manor house.

Each spring this woodland floor is carpeted with purplish flowers as far as the eye can see.

A mysterious crater-like pond has a spooky tendency to empty and fill with complete disregard to rainfall patterns.