Jaunted

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Could Los Angeles' Funky Watts Towers Be in Danger of Closing?

Los Angeles' Watts Towers is off the beaten track, which may be its biggest problem. The endangered folk art installation with the name that sounds like an office building is suffering from lack of maintenance and visitors.

Italian artist Simon Rodia made the structures, with the tallest one reaching about 98 feet. The unusual outdoor exhibit is a site to see with 17 towering steel sculptures covered with mortar and decorated with broken glass, sea shells, pottery and ceramic tile and hand-painted Canton ware. Rodia made them without machines, scaffolding, bolts, rivets or welds; he used simple tools: pipe-fitter pliers and a window-washer's belt and buckle.

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Museum Travel / Argentina Travel / Beatles / Beatles Travel / Music Travel / Tourist Traps / Buenos Aires Travel / → All Tags

The British Invasion Moves to Argentina Thanks to New Beatles Museum

When we think of the Beatles we usually think of Liverpool—or lately iTunes—but it looks like Buenos Aires wants to be one of the top spots when it comes to checking out their mop tops.

Rodolfo Vazquez, who we can only describe as a super fan, has collected over 8,500 pieces of Beatles history and has put it all on display for the public to check out. Back in 2001, the people at Guinness paid him a visit to certify that he had the largest collection of Fab Four junk in the world, and since then his collection has continued to grow. Unfortunately, the new space is only able to accommodate about a quarter of what he owns, so you’ll have to come back every year and hope that he rotates the displays in and out.

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Movie Set Travel / California Travel / Tourist Traps / Tours / Movie Travel / Hollywood Travel / Lists / → All Tags

Three SoCal Studios Where You Can Tour Some Movie Magic

It’s fine if you don’t have the acting skills—or the body—to make it in Hollywood, because the movie studios are always welcoming new faces to the lot as long as they are willing to pay. This year, skip Disney and Universal and head to one of the other major attractions in Southern California—movie studios. Here’s our picks for three of the best:

· Paramount Pictures:
The Studios at Paramount Pictures run tours pretty much every weekday throughout the year, and they’re back from their holiday break so you should be all set. They’re the longest running studio in Hollywood, and you can bet your tour guide will mention that once or twice as he or she shares the ins and outs of the business (and name drops like crazy) as you’re shuttled from movie set to back lot.

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How to Interact with a Human Statue

Dude above is making bank—check out his "tips" lining the railing.

Above is one of the human statues that are to be found all around the Strip in Las Vegas, or for that matter, anywhere with a steady stream of tourists with coins jiggling in their pockets. This guy at The Venetian—imitating a generic Italian historical figure (we thought maybe Dante, then thought better)—is someone making a living from just standing still and being entertaining for doing just that.

We've seen human statues all over the world (the greatest concentration seems to be on Barcelona's Las Ramblas), and we've seen tourists make complete asses of themselves in the attempt to tip and get a photograph with the statue. So, for your future reference, we present:

The Etiquette of Interacting with a Human Statue.

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New Year's Travel / New Year's Eve / Events / Lists / New York City / Times Square / Snow Travel / Travel Tips / Tourist Traps / → All Tags

Five Rules for Going to the New Year's Ball Drop in Times Square

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but New Year's celebrations can be so delightful! And since you've got a place to go—Times Square—let's go, let's go, let's go! Okay now ignore that attempt at rewriting the song "Let It Snow" and pay attention, because we're about to give you the lowdown on crossing New Year's in Times Square off your bucket list.

Many people, as we've come to discover, just flock to Times Square all willy-nilly for the ball drop, mistakenly thinking they'll have things like tons of port-a-potties or food vendors. Not true. It's a rugged experience, and you've got to prepare for it and know the rules. Aside from no alcohol allowed, there are five major guidelines to having a great time at the ball drop and still getting a view of the action.

The Five Rules for Going to The New Year's Ball Drop in Times Square...

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Caught in the Mix of the Shibuya Scramble, a True Tokyo Tourist Trap

What are some of the biggest tourist traps in Tokyo? When we were there recently, we tried to figure that out and came up mostly empty. There's the Meiji Jingu shrine, but that's visited by just as many locals as tourists, and even the showy shopping districts of Ginza and Aoyama see plenty Japanese in indulging in a bit of being tourists in their own country. And then we remembered the infamous Shibuya Scramble, the intersection outside of the crazy busy Shibuya Station, and we headed into the fray to see what all the fuss is about...

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Tourist Traps / Celeb Travel / Lady Gaga / Museum Travel / Fashion Travel / → All Tags

Madame Tussauds Will Unveil Eight Different Lady Gaga Wax Figures Next Month

Next month, Lady Gaga will be in 9 places at once. There'll be her—wherever she is—plus eight life-size wax figures of her debuted at eight different Madame Tussauds. Gaga will join a range of other pop stars made into wax, like Michael Jackson and Britney Spears. The official unveiling happens December 9, so all the "Little Monsters" better get themselves to a big city with a Tussauds for the occasion.

Already the wax museums are calling the event "the biggest and most ambitious figure launch in Madame Tussauds history." According to the press release, the figures are all being made in London before being sent to the eight Madame Tussauds, in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, New York, Hollywood, Las Vegas, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Each figure costs 150,000 GBP ($238,335) to create, meaning that the whole project is a whopping 1.2 million GBP ($1.9 million). For that, the fake Lady Gagas better bring in a whole bunch of tourist dollars.

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Souvenirs / Tourist Traps / Theme Parks / Tennessee Travel / Music Travel / Tourism / Amusement Parks / → All Tags

The Time We Bought a Dolly Parton Blanket At Dollyworld

What to buy when you’re in Dollywood? A hoodie? Booty shorts? A Dollywood license plate? Well, if you do as we did, you could buy all three and then be walking out when you see the perfect Dolly souvenir willing you to buy it.

Reader, we bought it. “It” being a four foot Dolly blanket with “I will always love you” scrawled on it in lipsticky red by Dolly’s own fair hand.

Our friend thought we were mad – it was $29.99, after all, and that’s a lot to pay for a joke – but we knew we were right. Also, it’s entirely practical – winter is coming and we could do with some kind of throw on our bed. And it may as well be Dolly as some hideous garish patterned thing that we’d find in Target.

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Weird Travel / Vermont Travel / Fall in Vermont Field Trip / Montpelier Travel / Animals / Tourist Traps / → All Tags

People Come From All Over the World to See This Goat

This goat, the very one you see above, resides in a treehouse-type pen in a farm field outside of Montpelier, Vermont. He doesn't go anywhere and do much, and yet the busloads of tourists come to him. Why? Because this is a goat that can do a stupid animal trick, and apparently people will travel to see that, and pay a quarter to participate.

He happens to live at Morse Farm a maple syrup producer locally famous enough to attract the fall foliage bus tours, especially the ones full of Europeans eager for a peak at traditional Americana. Maybe the goat helps souvenir sales? Anyways, here's his gig: you walk out to his pen in the field, put a quarter in an old gumball machine to retrieve goat feed. You put it in a cup at the end of a rope, and the goat hears the food drop into the cup and he begins to frantically bite at the rope, quickly raising the cup up his treehouse perch and to his lips. He quickly gobbles it down and the tourists go crazy. It'd be kind of cute if goats didn't have freaky, horizontal rectangle-shaped pupils.

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Visit Doc Brown's House For The 25th Anniversary of 'Back to the Future'

This year is the 25th anniversary of one of our favorite movies—Back to the Future. Michael J. Fox and company reunited last night on the Spike network to celebrate the occasion, and they’re stamping out plenty of Blu-ray Discs in advance of the movie’s release in high definition next week. Since we can’t travel back to 1955 to see some of the movie’s filming locations, we’re suggesting a visit to Doc Brown’s mansion instead.

Doc Brown’s Arts and Crafts style home isn’t really in Hill Valley, but it’s actually in the real life town of Pasadena. It was famous before the movie, as it is The Gamble House, and it is listed as a National Historic Landmark. If the name of the house sounds familiar—that’s because it should—it’s Gamble as in Procter and Gamble.

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British Airways / London Travel / Concorde / Airplanes / Vintage Travel / Tourism / Tourist Traps / → All Tags

Concorde's Next Landing May Be In The Thames

We’ve taken some time to look at where the Concorde has landed all over the globe, but one of the supersonic birds might be on the move. No longer will visitors need to plan a side trip to visit a piece of aviation history, as one of the planes might be taking up a prime slice of tourist trap real estate in London.

Yes, it's true - one of the jets is sitting at London-Heathrow airport, not really doing anything right now, so fans of the plane are looking to move it onto the Thames next to another tourist hotspot: the London Eye. And when we say "onto the Thames", we mean it - it'd be fixed up on a floating pontoon in the river itself.

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China Travel / Thailand Travel / Bangkok Travel / China / Thailand / Bangkok / Madame Tussauds / Tourist Traps / Wax Museums / Hard Rock / → All Tags

Madame Tussauds and Hard Rock Cafes Set Their Sights on Asia

If you've been pining for some China travel or Thailand travel, but have been holding off because they're too unique or interesting or exciting, you might want to start looking at some of those exciting Asian LCCs that we've been writing so much about. News on the hotel and entertainment front has it that the countries are getting some of the West's most refined tourist traps, the better to enhance the region's cosmopolitan flavor. Charming.

China is getting a new Hard Rock Cafe, to be attached to Macau's existing Hard Rock Hotel and its casino. This will be the second Hard Rock in China, presumably part of our plan to bankrupt the Chinese by tricking them into buying overpriced plates of fries. That's assuming that the people who dine at the establishment will be local, and that they'll also be the ones purchasing merchandise from the shops and gambling in the casino. If it's American tourists doing that, it won't do much good for our currency imbalance at all. More the opposite.

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