Unusual Places Archives - Page 11 of 11

The Hidden Side Of Strange And Unusual Bath, England

I’ve been living in Bath for several years now, and although on the surface, it seems like a genteel little place, there is a darker side to the city – if you know where to look.

Bath straddles the River Avon in Wiltshire in the South West of England. Made famous by Jane Austen costume dramas, the city became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

But beneath the charming streets, Roman baths, and Georgian grandeur lies a weird city. A strange Bath, a place haunted by Druids with Masonic symbols hidden in plain sight. Ley lines crackle with mysterious power along the same streets used by tour buses, and under these streets lie curses to ancient gods.

15 Strange Underwater Places

Unusual Places

I first learned to scuba dive on the West Coast of Australia in 2000 and have spent a lot of time diving off the coast of New Zealand. The pictures below are from the Poor Knights Islands.

Living in England now means I don’t dive much – it’s just too cold around the coast here, but watching Blue Planet II recently gave me the itch to get back underwater!

Diving is a fantastic way to reach the world’s strange underwater places, some of which I’ve featured in my thrillers. You can read more or listen to my scuba diving adventures here.

For example, The Sunken Cities exhibition at the British Museum in 2016 laid bare the lost Egyptian cities of Thonis-Heraklion and inspired my short story The Dark Queen.

Here are 15 more sites around the world that harbour strange underwater places.

Granada And Cordoba In Andalusia, Spain With Historical Thriller Author, David Penny

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Andalucia brings to mind balmy evenings with the scent of oranges in the air, the sounds of flamenco guitar, and the exotic architecture of the Moorish Alhambra.

In this podcast interview, I talk to David Penny, author of The Thomas Berrington Historical Mysteries, which are set in medieval Spain.

You can listen above or on iTunes or your favorite podcast app, read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and full transcript below.

Show Notes

The inspiration for David’s detective novels set in Moorish Spain

Writing about an ancient place from modern time

Weaving religion into historical fiction

Finding an authentic flamenco experience in Spain
Recommendations for local food and drink

Getting used to local customs, like shop closure times

Adjusting to the slower pace of life in Spain

You can find David Penny at DavidPennyWriting.com and on Twitter @davidpenny_

25 Quirky And Unusual Things To See In London, England

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I love London. I lived there back in the 1990s and again 2011 – 2015, and I still go back every few months. The city is rich with layers of history and it has been my muse for a number of novels.

Tourists flock to the Tower or the V&A, but there are plenty of unusual things to see in London once you get off the beaten track. After all, a city doesn’t exist for centuries without attracting the macabre, the eccentric, and the downright strange…

So if you like art, history, or just the darker side of life, here are 25 quirky attractions to visit if you’re visiting the best city in the world!

12 Of The World’s Best Anatomical Museums

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When you book a trip to a new city, thoughts turn to popular attractions or places you might like to see. For most people, anatomical museums don’t usually rank high on the list.

But for a writer, medical museums prove fertile ground in which to find new ideas or story seeds.

If you write crime thrillers, they’re also an excellent way to ensure you’re getting the details right!

As an avid fan of such places myself, I’ve collected together 12 of the world’s best anatomical museums. If you’re into the macabre as I am, then you might enjoy them too!

7 Unusual Places To Visit In San Francisco

Unusual Places

In many ways, San Francisco is a high-tech city, with Silicon Valley just down the road, Twitter on Market Street and Ubers on every corner.

But it also has a rich religious history and some unusual places to visit if you want to venture further than the Golden Gate Bridge.

Here are some of the places that I found interesting when I visited on a book research trip for my thriller, Valley of Dry Bones.

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