Crazy Junkyard

Once every two years, the Grand Place, a central market in Brussels, Belgium becomes one of the largest flower gardens in the world.

The flower carpet of Grand Place has a different model every time and it’s made out of roughly 700,000 begonias. This is definitely one of the must see- attractions of Brussels.

2008′s carpet was based on the patterns of the 17th Century French Savonnerie tapestry. A perforated plastic with the design on it is laid down and the spaces between the floral design areas are filled with rolled turf. The stems are packed so tightly, 300 stems per square meter, directly onto the stone, so they won’t be blown away. No soil is used at all. The 2010 Flower Carpet will be on the Grand-Place from August 13th till August 15th.

Roller coasters have long been a huge draw for thrill seekers everywhere. Nothing quite says “being alive” like testing fate on a speeding bullet, dipping and spinning around a steel cage of death. If you’re looking for one of the wildest and craziest roller coasters rides around, then look no more. We have gathered the best of the best for thrill seeking roller coaster junkies.

1. Superman: Ride of Steel:

At a height of nearly 21 stories, “Superman: Ride of Steel” is the world’s top-rated coaster. With a 221 foot drop, Superman reaches a top speed of 77 miles per hour and delivers a lot of airtime (that funny feeling of weightlessness as the coaster goes over a hill), making it a favorite of coaster enthusiasts.

2. Millennium Force, Cedar Point, OH:

Towering at a height of 310 feet, Millennium Force is one of the tallest and fastest gigacoasters in the world, with a huge 300-foot vertical drop and a top speed of 93 miles per hour.

3. Kingda Ka, Six Flags Great Adventure, Jackson Township, NJ:

Towering at an incredible height of 456 feet (45 stories!), Kingda Ka is a strata-coaster (exceeds a height of 400 feet) and accelerates from 0-128 miles per hour in less than four seconds. A hydraulic launch shoots the train straight-up the 456-foot tower, pauses at the top and goes straight downward into a 270-degree spiral.

4. Alpengeist at Busch Gardens Europe, Williamsburg, VA:

It is also one of the world’s tallest and fastest full-circuit coasters. The ride was manufactured by Bollinger and Mabillard (B&M) and is themed after a runaway ski lift. With six inversions and a 170-foot drop, Alpengeist reaches speeds of 67 mph.

5. Expedition GeForce, Holiday Park:

Expedition GeForce, located at Holiday Park in Haßloch, Germany, is one of the largest coasters in Europe. Expedition Geforce is nearly 174 feet tall and reaches speeds of close to 75 miles per hour. Since its debut in 2001, Expedition Geforce has been a favorite of coaster enthusiasts.

The SSC Ultimate Aero is a powerful engine sports car manufactured by Shelby SuperCars. The precious SSC Ultimate Aero TT is the world’s fastest production car, which travels at a top speed of 257 mph.

Owns the Guinness-verified world’s fastest car, the SSC Ultimate Aero which was clocked at an average two-way speed of 255.83 mph – besting both the Bugatti Veyron and Koenigsegg CCX. Motorcars of Las Vegas, the sole distributor of the Ultimate Aero, has chassis #SSC-07-004 on its showroom floor ready for its first owner.

The new version known as 2009 SSC Ultimate Aero has been modified where some changes have been added to the exteriors, interiors, and the increase of horsepower about 15%. The most important change is the single piece aluminum block engine that improves the oiling capabilities and structure of the engine, so that the SSC Ultimate Aero produces an output of about 1287 horsepower.The interiors are mostly designed of carbon fibers that bound the doors, steering column, speedometer and tachometer.

Tree House Restaurant (New Zealand):

This unusual restaurant started life as an ad campaign for Yellow, a New Zealand company similar to the Yellow Pages. The idea was to build a restaurant in a tree using only resources listed in the company’s directories. Tracey Collins of Auckland made it her mission to build the restaurant-in-a-tree using Yellow.  The designer was careful to minimize the impact on the tree and the surrounding forest, he said in a release.

Pelican Bar (Jamaica South Coast):

The Pelican Bar is located on a sand bar roughly 3/4 of a mile off of Jamaica’s South Coast.  It is one of the most unique places in the world to witness a sunset.  The Pelican Bar specializes in Red Stripe beer and local rum.  We highly recommend a visit to this unusual property, even though it is not an official restaurant (food must be prearranged and brought out by boat).

Bed Restaurant (Miami):

BED is the most relaxing dining spot in the city. Huge mattresses with mounds of pillows let you relax with a hot date or a small party, after you place your shoes in a cubby and put on BED’s complimentary socks.The trance music and slow-motion videos projected on screens attempt to soothe you, as do creative drinks like the blackberry julep, a new, fresh-fruit take on the mint julep.

Military-Themed ‘Buns and Guns’ Restaurant (Lebanon):

At Buns & Guns in Beirut, Lebanon, everything is military themed – from the decor and names of the menu items to the helicopter sounds that play constantly in the background.

Hospital Themed Restaurant (Latvia):

A unique, weird restaurant has opened in Riga, Latvia named “Hospitalis“.It is a must-see place if you like gore things. The restaurant looks like a medicine cabinet, while you are treated as a patient and taken good care by the long-legged waitresses in nurses uniforms.The food is served in flasks and operating-room’s dishes and isn’t that cheap (7 and more lats per meal), but this is a bizarre experience that is worth breaking the bank. Besides, the place is owned by local doctors, but unfortunately, the president of Latvia, who is also a doctor, declined his appearance at the opening once he realized how weird this place actually is.

Death Themed Restaurant (Ukraine):

A group of Ukranian undertakers have constructed the first death-themed restaurant – built inside a 65ft-long coffin. Inside you’ll find funeral wreaths, black shrouded walls and human-sized coffins. Menu items include dishes with names like “Let’s meet in paradise”.

Modern Toilet Restaurant (Taiwan):

Taiwan has one of a chain of restaurants called Modern Toilet where you sit on a toilet and eat from a toilet shaped bowl. Modern Toilet is a restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan with a modern decor and a full-on toilet theme. All 100 seats in the crowded diner are made from toilet bowls, not chairs. Sink, faucets and gender-coded “WC” signs appear throughout the three-storey facility, one of 12 in an island-wide chain of eateries.

Undersea Restaurant (Maldives):

the Ithaa Undersea Restaurant still interesting to talk about. Known as the first-ever transparent undersea restaurant in the world, the restaurant sitting five meters below the sea level of the Indian Ocean, surrounded by a vibrant coral reef and encased in clear acrylic offering diners 270-degrees of panoramic underwater views.

Sky Restaurant (Belgium):

This strange restaurant combines the delights of dining with a thrill of well, a thrill ride. You’ll travel about 150 feet into the sky before you chow down on a gourmet meal prepared mid-air. Restaurant uses a mobile crane to lift its entire 22-seat open-air dining room over city streets all over Europe.

Cipriano Landscape swimming pool is staffed by the industry’s leading landscaping and swimming pool professionals. Horticulturists, stone masons, swimming pool technicians and heavy equipment operators balance the firm’s special ability to complete an entire landscaping and swimming pool project within one corporation.

The world’s largest swimming pool, acknowledged by the Guinness World Records, is located at the resort of San Alfonso del Mar in Algarrobo city on the southern coast of Chile. It measures 1,013 metres (3,323 ft) in length, covers an area of eight hectares (20 acres) and contains 250,000 cubic meters of water.

This pool is constructed to show what the world could look like if climate change continues down its scary path and coastal cities flood.This is a nice idea of promoting awareness about global warming.

This is a  unique guitar shaped swimming pool. The pool has been included in several movies and TV spots.

This is one of the beautiful swimming pool at Mexico.

The tropical swimming pool at Moody Gardens Hotel. Surrounded by palm trees and served by a poolside bar, the swimming pool is a favorite option for year-round recreation. The fitness center also has an indoor lap pool.

This is World’s deepest swimming pool.

The swimming pool is designed in a heart-shape.The pool is medium-sized and surrounded by small and large plants, providing a fresh and shady atmosphere. The water is very clear and appealing.

Some prefer the sound of crashing waves and beach access.  In that case check into the Skye Lighthouse, in Scotland. Photo courtesy of Jon & Allison.

Traveler’s with a Tarzan complex should feel right at home in the Ariau Amazon Towers Hotel (The Tree Top Lodge) in Brazil. Catwalks (around 4 miles of them) 70ft in the air connect the different towers including the dining room and the bar. The Honeymoon suite practically floats 100ft up in a mahogany tree. The place is full of amazing wildlife (including sloths and monkeys). Located just 35 miles from Manuas, Brazil, the hotel is built entirely at the level of the rainforest canopy. The experience is great for the whole family and children up to 10 that are sharing a room with parents or guardians are free (including meals).

Pipe-dreaming, Austria’s Drain Pipe Hotel. Only 15 dollars a night for a room in a Latvian prison. Not bad. I’m sure you could figure out a way to stay there cheaper.

This underwater hotel, slated to be finished in 2010.A 7 story hotel will open in Istanbul, Turkey. This might start a whole thread of new underwater hotels and maybe even fork out to new underwater cities.Visitors to Istanbul will soon have a chance to view the most spectacular ocean views on the planet. A seven floor, seven-star hotel is being built underwater on what was formerly a tobacco factory. There will be exhibition halls, and restaurants, and all rooms will be sea facing.

Due to open in 2009, this incredible $730-million Hydropolis will be submerged 20 metres below the Persian Gulf.

If you just want more than just a little local color, go to Kuala Lumpur for a rainbow-like stay.  I think it looks like a child’s painting, full of whimsy.

Guests may find their teeth chattering at the Snow Hotel in Kemi, Finland.

Fancy living like a hobbit, Beckham Creek Cave Haven. Beckham Creek Cave Haven is equipped with state of the art technology to ensure guests don’t have to live like Neanderthal man.

Facing the Caspian Sea, the buildings are named Hotel Full Moon – a disc with rounded edges and a hole in one of the top corners – and Hotel Crescent, a curving arch similar to a crescent moon – and will mark out an area appropriately named Full Moon Bay. Designed to appear drastically different from different viewing angles – from one angle Death Star and from the other Gherkin – Hotel Full Moon will be a 150 meter-high, 35 story luxury hotel with 382 large rooms.

Weird but also wonderful are the Cappadocia Cave Suites in Turkey, carved during Hittite, Byzantine and Roman days, but now used as lodging. Your ancient room, nestled among caves used as places of worship, includes wifi and an espresso machine.

If you prefer more action, nightlife and well, gambling then Las Vegas offers all sorts of strange hotels, with the most wierd and my favorite– the Luxor.  It is so American to think we can replicate the pyramids.

A hotel dog lovers will particularly enjoy, the Dog Bark Park Inn is a hotel located in Cottonwood, Idaho, Some of the decorations and furniture inside the hotel are made by an artist to fit in with the hotel’s theme.

The Ice Hotel is created anew each year out of 15,000 pounds of snow and 500 pounds of ice. The 34-room hotel features an ice chapel, two art galleries and a host of outdoor activities. The temperature inside the hotel ranges from 23 to 28 degrees Fahrenheit, and the beds are carved from ice. You don’t sleep directly on the ice, though–there’ s a wooden plank between the ice and a comfy mattress, plus you’re insulated with a special sleeping bag that can withstand the harshest climes (-40 degrees Fahrenheit).

Twisted House: John McNaughton ‘Twisted House’ 2005, Indianapolis Art Center Artspark, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Shell House: Located in Japan, the Shell House is a sculptural large shell shaped structure that built in the woods of Karuizawa, located in Kitasaku, Nagano. The Shell House was designed by Japanese Architect Kotaro Ide.

Shoe House: The Shoe House in Hallem PA. Located next to US RT 30 (Lincoln Highway). This is the first year Santa is on top of the shoe, none of the previous (according to the curent) owners decorated for Christmas.

Kettle House: The metal catches the color of the sunrise from the beach on the other side of the road.

Pumpkin House: This rather strange Pumpkin House was near Deerwood in Minnesota. I guess Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater must live here!

Isabella Pink House:  A color wheel shows the principal hues divided into two major segments. The area made up of red, red-orange, orange and yellow-orange is said to consist of warm colors, while the area made up of yellow-green, green, blue-green, blue, and blue-violet is said to consist of cool colors. The so-called primary colors (when mixing pigments for paint, for example;) are red, yellow, anil blue, and all other colors can be created by mixing these together; when all three are mixed in proper proportions the remit is a deep gray approaching black. When mixing light itself, however, the three primary colors are different (reddish-blue, or magenta, yellow, and bluish-green, or cyan), and a mix of these three produces white light; this is the principle of color television.

The House Of The Rising Sun: This is a house on the Drina River, near Bajina Basta, town in Western Serbia. Morning sun is giving light to it…

Multiplicities villa: This was part of the Ordos 100 project, a development of villas in Ordos, Inner Mongolia – an autonomous region of northeastern China. Ordos 100 includes 100 villas designed by 100 architects from 27 countries, all chosen by starchitects Herzog and de Meuron. The master plan was designed by FAKE Design, AKA Ai Wei Wei. Each architect is responsible for a 1000 sq. meter villa.

Flying House:Flaying house, podium house, tree house, unique house, bird house or air house… what do you think about the name this house..??

Tree House: The tree house on top of a 50 meter tree is probably the scariest but the fertilizer bunker pictured here defies everything you thought you knew about statics.

Ice House: I think, this is a perfect house design to get cool in summer.Amazing design, and good idea.

Tree House Design: Crazy house in Cincinnati, OH, close to Hyde Park. I want to meet, or at least see the person that decided to make their house look like this.

River House: This house is in Vernon, France, crazy and amazing.

Boat Matching House: Boat Matching House. Burano, Italy. Digital Pastel artwork by Donna Corless.

Crooked House: This is a real house, but it’s actually a building in a Polish shopping center.

Cube Houses: These are One of Rotterdam’s most famous houses.

Stone House: This Stone House is located in Guimaraes, Portugal.

Unique Roof  Home: This House is in Caspar, California.This House has Amazing roof.

UFO House: This picture of a futuristic-looking ‘UFO’ house was taken at an abandoned resort in Sanjhih, Taiwan.

Crazy House feat Irene’s konverted kiosk: This house only had a few wonky mirrors and turnstile barriers that moved top half left and bottom right,and the famous moving walkway just like the one in ‘Grease’,but there was a real fun atmosphere in there.

The classical natural wonders are huge and hard to miss – vast canyons, giant mountains and the like.. Many of the most fantastic natural phenomena, however, are also least easy to spot. Some are incredibly rare while others are located in hard-to-reach parts of the planet. From moving rocks to mammatus clouds and red tides to fire rainbows, here are seven of the most spectacular phenomenal wonders of the natural world.
Blue Holes: Blue holes are giant and sudden drops in underwater elevation that get their name from the dark and foreboding blue tone they exhibit when viewed from above in relationship to surrounding waters. They can be hundreds of feet deep and while divers are able to explore some of them they are largely devoid of oxygen that would support sea life due to poor water circulation – leaving them eerily empty. Some blue holes, however, contain ancient fossil remains that have been discovered, preserved in their depths.

Red Tides: Red tides are also known as algal blooms – sudden influxes of massive amounts of colored single-cell algae that can convert entire areas of an ocean or beach into a blood red color. While some of these can be relatively harmless, others can be harbingers of deadly toxins that cause the deaths of fish, birds and marine mammals. In some cases, even humans have been harmed by red tides though no human exposure are known to have been fatal. While they can be fatal, the constituent phytoplankton in ride tides are not harmful in small numbers.

Mammatus Clouds: True to their ominous appearance, mammatus clouds are often harbingers of a coming storm or other extreme weather system. Typically composed primarily of ice, they can extend for hundreds of miles in each direction and individual formations can remain visibly static for ten to fifteen minutes at a time. While they may appear foreboding they are merely the messengers – appearing around, before or even after severe weather.

Sailing Stones:The mysterious moving stones of the packed-mud desert of Death Valley have been a center of scientific controversy for decades. Rocks weighing up to hundreds of pounds have been known to move up to hundreds of yards at a time. Some scientists have proposed that a combination of strong winds and surface ice account for these movements. However, this theory does not explain evidence of different rocks starting side by side and moving at different rates and in disparate directions. Moreover, the physics calculations do not fully support this theory as wind speeds of hundreds of miles per hour would be needed to move some of the stones.

Ice Circles: While many see these apparently perfect ice circles as worthy of conspiracy theorizing, scientists generally accept that they are formed by eddies in the water that spin a sizable piece of ice in a circular motion. As a result of this rotation, other pieces of ice and flotsam wear relatively evenly at the edges of the ice until it slowly forms into an essentially ideal circle. Ice circles have been seen with diameters of over 500 feet and can also at times be found in clusters and groups at different sizes as shown above.

Fire Rainbows: A circumhorizontal fire rainbow arc occurs at a rare confluence of right time and right place for the sun and certain clouds. Crystals within the clouds refract light into the various visible waves of the spectrum but only if they are arrayed correctly relative to the ground below. Due to the rarity with which all of these events happen in conjunction with one another, there are relatively few remarkable photos of this phenomena.

Columnar Basal: When a thick lava flow cools it contracts vertically but cracks perpendicular to its directional flow with remarkable geometric regularity – in most cases forming a regular grid of remarkable hexagonal extrusions that almost appear to be made by man. One of the most famous such examples is the Giant’s Causeway on the coast of Ireland (shown above) though the largest and most widely recognized would be Devil’s Tower in Wyoming . Basalt also forms different but equally fascinating ways when eruptions are exposed to air or water.