Part of the fun of travel is enjoying the local flavor. So on your next trip, eat the local food, see the local sights…and stay at the local jail. Here are a few weird hotels we discovered. What is the weirdest hotel you have ever stayed in?
HOTEL: The Old Jail
LOCATION: Mount Gambier, Australia
DESCRIPTION: The Old Jail offers the accommodations—and decidedly spooky atmosphere—of a huge, 19th-century rural prison. The hotel was once the South Australian State Prison, which operated from 1866 to 1995. Not much has changed when it was converted into a hotel. Showers are still communal and best are still cots, but the cell doors can now be opened from the inside. “Inmates” sleep four to a cell (either with strangers or family) or can pay double for a private, two-person suite.
HOTEL: Utter Inn
LOCATION: Lake Malaren, Sweden
DESCRIPTION: Literally “Otter Inn,” the hotel was conceived as a modern art project by artist Mikael Genberg. Guests enter through a cottage floating on the surface of Lake Malaren then decend 10 feet into an underwater “reverse aquarium,” where the room is dry—but surrounded by water and fish that are visible through wall-to-wall picture windows.
HOTEL: Dog Bark Park Inn
LOCATION: Cottonwood, Idaho
DESCRIPTION: It would be odd to sleep on your back on top of a doghouse, like Snoopy, but it’s odder still to sleep inside the dog. The Dog Bark is a two-story wooden dog. It was built and is managed by a husband and wife team of chainsaw artists who invested the money they made selling dog-shaped wood carvings on QVC into building a dog-themed hotel. (And, yes, dogs are welcomed.)
HOTEL: Kakslauttanen Hotel and Igloo Village
LOCATION: Nordkap, Finland
DESCRIPTION: Guests get to sleep in real igloos made of ice and snow blocks. They are completely dark and the only source of heat are the down sleeping bags. (The less adventurous can sleep in heated glass igloos.) Facilities also include an ice-cold swimming pool, the world’s largest smoke sauna, and the world’s largest restaurant made of snow, which has to be rebuilt every winter.
Featured article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wonderful World of Odd.