10 sexy sites from around the world

by Jessica Festa on

Forget castles, churches, fine art galleries, and history museums; the sites on this list celebrate the thing almost everyone has in common, sex. From penis parks to fertility shrines to bondage demonstrations, these sexy sites from around the world will make your trip a bit quirkier and your mind a bit filthier.

Haesindang Park
Samcheok, South Korea

Also known as Penis Park, Haesindang Park is full of totem-pole like penis carvings, which make for interesting hiking scenery, to say the least. The story behind the park is that there was once a virginal young woman who was engaged to be married. One day, she had her fiancée drop her off on Aebawi Rock in the sea to harvest seaweed while he did work on the beach. Sadly, a change in weather brought the woman to an untimely, tragic, and penis-less death. For years following the incident, the villagers were unable to catch fish and, thinking it was because of the dead woman, created a park in her honor where they created these carvings and held religious ceremonies. While many tourists may find this site quirky, it truly is a celebration of sex and penis worship.Love Land
Jeju, South Korea

There is nothing subtle about Love Land, as the statues and public art found at this park ooze eroticism. Visitors can stroll through 140 sculptures poised in sexual positions, as well as enjoy rotating exhibitions and educational films. Interactive exhibits will get your mind racing with naughty thoughts.

Molokai Phallic Rock
Molokai,Hawaii

This 6-foot stone penis replica sits at the base of Nananhoa Hill in Palaau State Park. According to the legend attached to the site, Nanahoa the male fertility god, lived nearby with his wife. One day, the wife caught her husband checking out a young girl and, outraged, yanked her hair. Nananhoa retaliated, attacking his wife who then rolled down the hill and turned into stone. Moments later, he also turned into stone, except in the form of a penis. To this day, the site is still a sacred place of sex and fertility where women come to pray and make offerings, as can be seen by the surrounding coins, flowers, and shells.

Body Politics
Canberra, Australia

Body Politics is Australia’s first National Museum of Erotica and contains a collection of erotic art, sexual artifacts, and pornographic materials. What’s great about this museum is it blends sexual celebration with education as visitors can learn about things like how porn has changed through the decades, and how ideas on sexuality have evolved. One particularly interesting exhibit is the vibrator collection, which features the first commercial vibrator in Australia made out of a plastic flashlight, slot car motor, and a rubber prosthetic penis molding.

Lingam Fertility Shrine
Bangkok, Thailand

While it’s not unusual to find a garden full of flowers, how about a garden full of penises? The Lingam Fertility Shrine, located behind the Nai Lert Park Hotel, was created to worship the female deity who is thought to reside on the property, Chao Mae Tuptim. Around the shrine is a garden containing crops of wooden and stone penises beautifully wrapped in ribbon and adorned with flowers. While the experience may feel like some kind of erotic surrealism, the legend behind the site is that women who wanted to bare children would bring offerings of flowers and incense. That is, until one woman became pregnant after leaving a more phallic offering. From one look at the park, you can see that the trend caught on.

Beate Uhse Erotic Musuem
Berlin,Germany

The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum is the biggest erotic museum in the world. Moreover, Beate Uhse, the woman whom the venue is named after, opened the first sex shop (“marital hygiene” shop) in 1962. What makes this erotic museum particularly unique is that it doesn’t just emphasize pornography, but sexuality, history, and love as well. Travelers will also love that the artifacts, dolls, masks, and art are from all over the world, from 18th Century silk paintings from China to Balinese penis carvings.

Sex Machines Museum
Prague, Czech Republic

While there are various museums around the world dedicated to eroticism through photography, art, and film, the Sex Machines Museum gives the idea a twist by focusing on sexual devices and pleasurable appliances. In fact, according to the museum website, it is the world’s only sex museum dedicated solely to sex machines. The museum encompasses three floors and 200 gadgets from the 16th century to present times, with life-like dolls demonstrating how to use the machines properly in times of passion (and times of abstinence if you’re looking at the scarily sharp chastity belts and electroshock penis rings meant to keep boys from masturbating).

Phallic Rock
Kharkhorin, Mongolia

Located near Erdene Zuu Monastary, the head of the phallic rock ironically points toward a vaginal-looking hill. It is said that the 2-ft long penis-shaped boulder was put there to stop horny monks who were turned on by the feminine hill from hooking up with young girls.

The City of Amsterdam
Amsterdam, Netherlands

It’s hard to choose just one sexy site in Amsterdam, as the city seems to ooze eroticism. First there is the famous Red Light District, where beautiful and scantily clad women beckon passersby in for some fun. Visitors can even take a guided tour of the area from a former prostitute through the Prostitution Information Centre (PIC). There are also myriad sex toy shops throughout the city selling every gadget, gizmo, costume, and cream you could want. Moreover, visitors have the choice to visit either the Sex Museum (shown right) or the Erotic Museum, which are both full of hardcore exhibits, pornographic photos, and crazy sex contraptions.

Erotic heritage museum Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada

I think the best part about the Erotic Heritage Museum Las Vegas is that it was created by a partnership between a pornographer and a preacher. The permanent and revolving exhibits focus on eroticism, sex, love and the belief that “sexual pleasure and fun are natural aspects of the human experience, that such pleasure must be made available to all, and that our individual sexuality belongs to each of us.” Sounds like fun!

10 landmarks for lovers of Western literature

by Jessica Festa on

Are you an enthusiast of everything Voltaire? Can you not get enough of Shakespeare and James Joyce? If you are a lover of Western literature, add these 10 landmarks to your upcoming travel itineraries.

The Shakespeare and Company Bookstore
Paris, France

It is only right that the first landmark on the list be in Paris, France, as this is where many French writers, such as Voltaire, Proust, Balzac, and Baudelaire spent most of their time. The Shakespeare and Company Bookstore has had some of the most well-known writers of the 20th century as clientele, including James Joyce, who published his famous Ulysses under the stamp of this bookshop. In fact, the founder of Shakespeare and Co., Sylvia Beach, was close friends with many of these writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, to name a few. What’s also special about this shop is not only do they host literary walking tours around Paris, but you can also sleep there as long as you help out with the chores.Ernest Hemingway House
Key West, Florida

Not only is Key West home to beautiful beaches and energetic nightlife, but it’s also a place with a literary history. In fact, Ernest Hemingway himself lived at 907 Whitehead Street for more than ten years. It was at this house that he created some of his best work, including the final draft of A Farewell to Arms, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. While Hemingway passed away on July 2, 1961, his old home is now a museum that is open to the public.

The Globe Theatre
London, England

According to David Joshua Jennings and John McCarroll at BootsnAll, the Globe Theatre was built in 1599 and hosted some of the most influential verses to date. Even the notorious quote “All the world’s a stage, and the men and women merely players” was uttered by William Shakespeare himself at the Globe. While the original theatre burned down in 1844, it was rebuilt to be almost exactly like the original. Attendees of this theatre should expect to sit on simple wooden benches, just like in the days of Shakespeare.

Walden Pond
Concord, Massachusettes

It was at this site that Henry David Thoreau wrote his novel Walden, which he wrote during his two years living on the pond from 1845 to 1847. His home was a small hut on a piece of land owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. This area helped to inspire the novel itself and was also influential in the American Romantic movement in literature. Today, the pond has been made into a state park where visitors can hike through trails, explore Walden Woods, or see the replica of Thoreau’s cottage.

Vesuvio Cafe
San Francisco, California

Travelers should love this landmark as it is the stomping grounds of many Beat Generation writers including Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsburg. The cafe is also right across the street from the famous City Lights bookstore. According to Stephanie Yoder at BootsnAll, there is a famous story of Kerouac “holing up in the bar, getting incredibly wasted and missing an important meeting with Henry Miller”. If you visit, be sure to order The Jack Kerouac, a mixture of rum, tequila, and orange juice.

Chelsea Hotel
New York, NY

There are few hotels in existence that could rival the clientele of Chelsea Hotel, which includes Titanic survivors, Bob Dylan, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Wolfe, and many other famous actors, writers, musicians, celebrities, and directors. Madonna’s Sex book was even photographed in room 822. The hotel is a cultural hub of art and literature, and visitors interested in learning about the hotel’s literary past can book a public tour.

James Joyce’s Dublin
Dublin, Ireland

While this technically isn’t a landmark but a series of related landmarks in one area, it is definitely worth adding to the list. James Joyce, Ireland’s most famous author, used Dublin as an influence for much of his work. In fact, a fun activity for visitors of Dublin is to trace the different sites that are mentioned in his writing. For the full James Joyce experience, start at the James Joyce Center, where you can see a recreation of the writer’s bedroom, then head over to the James Joyce Tower and Museum. Another noteworthy landmark is the House of the Dead, a small museum created in the house where Joyce spent his Christmases and is the setting in his novel Dead.

Mark Twain Museum
Hannibal, Missouri

Mark Twain, according to Michelle Fabio at BootsnAll, was born Samuel Clemens in 1835 in Hannibal, Missouri, the town that inspired his famous Adventures of Tom Sawyer novels. To honor Twain’s memory, the town has created the Mark Twain Museum, which is comprised of eight buildings that all played an important part in Twain’s youth. If you want to see the house where Twain grew up, visit 208 Hill Street, where you will find recreations of what the home looked like when it was still being inhabited by the author himself.

The Brontë Parsonage Museum
Haworth, England

Come to England and you can visit the home of three of the most famous 19th century British authors, Charlotte, Emily, and Ann Brontë (although their pen names were Currier, Ellis, and Acton Bell). These three were responsible for works such as Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. At the museum, you will see the dining table where these authors brought their ideas to life, as well as old photographs, original furniture, letters, and manuscipts.

The Eagle and Child Pub
Oxford, England

According to Stephanie Yoder of BootsnAll, not only is this a nice place to relax with a cold beer, it’s also the home to creative thinking. One infamous writing group, who dubbed themselves the Inklings, would meet here once a week to have a drink and compare manuscripts. Some names you may have heard of include CS Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, and JRR Tolkien who created The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Have a seat at their old table and take in the moments, sketches, and photos of these famous writers.