Places summermaddux Wants to Go

A romantic escape inspired by the legend of a child-eating five-headed dragon.

In the former treasury of a popular temple, a rare sculptural depiction of Kannon’s diverse avatars.

This surreal thumbs-up monument commemorates a shiatsu legend.

The menus here are a love letter to the culinary history of New Orleans.

These towering cliffs jut dramatically from the middle of a barren desert.

A museum showcasing the work of a self-taught painter and sculptor spanning four decades of output in seclusion.

This garden boasts a magnificent collection of orchids and a spectacular view of the surrounding valley.

Home to a garden of poisonous plants and the only legal cannabis and opium farms in Tokyo.

An antiquated aquarium housed in a converted government anti-nuclear bunker.

Pleistocene megafauna fossils are the subject of Nevada's newest state park at the northern edge of the Las Vegas metropolitan area.

These natural hot springs form four-tiered soaking pools with temperatures ranging from 85 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit.

Huts like this were once a hub for the female divers who collected pearls and seafood off Japan's coasts.

Descendants of the samurai who guarded Matsusaka Castle during the Edo period still live in these charming historic houses (and visitors can enter one of them for free).

This pair of small sea rocks has been "wed" using rope and ancient Shinto tradition.

This ancient shrine has been rebuilt every 20 years since the eighth century.

A lesser-known sister to Paris's world-famous museum, located within a Buddhist sculpture paradise.

For but one summer in 1975, this rural suburb became a busy tourist spot when a local girl claimed to have seen ghostly faces on an old stele.

A colossal statue of a woman hugging a modern building.

A monument to placate the spirits of an ancient forest.

A Gothic gym and community space that encourages fitness for misfits.

A complex of ancient Buddhist rock-cut caves with a large, well preserved prayer hall.

Inside a former smuggler's cave, an artificial waterfall and light show.

A free park where visitors can learn about and collect 440 million-year-old fossils.

Photographs of the faces of the town's dead cover the walls of this small Italian church.