The 10 Most Surreal Places In The World

Published January 27, 2014
Updated December 3, 2019

From captivating forests to dramatic cliffs to ice caves, we look at the world’s most surreal places you'll be adding to your bucket list.

Surreal Places

Source: im9.eu

Surreal, fantastical, unbelievable—all of these words are the perfect descriptors for the following ten destinations. From captivating forests to dramatic cliffs to tiny islands, prepare to be amazed by the world’s most surreal places:

Surreal Places: Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland

Nestled next to the Atlantic Ocean, the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland is easily one of the most incredible, bizarre natural wonders in the world. The Causeway is home to more than 40,000 columns, most of which have six sides and form a honeycomb-like pattern.

Giant’s Causeway wasn’t always the spectacular tourist hotspot it is today, though. Created from cooled magma, it took nearly 60 million years of erosion for the columns to be visible. Scientists believe that they were finally revealed after the last Ice Age, around 15,000 years ago.

Thermal Springs, Pamukkale, Turkey

Take a trip to Turkey’s inner Aegean region near the River Menderes Valley and you’ll encounter Pamukkale’s thermal springs. People have bathed in these hot mineral-saturated waters for thousands of years, dubbing the area Pamukkale, or cotton castle.

Pamukkale in Turkey

Source: Biletnoktasi

The scallop-shaped basins of water and frozen waterfalls decorate the area’s cliffside. Here, the spring water is hot and high in calcium, magnesium sulfrate and bicarbonate. The Pamukkale hot springs flow at a rate of 400 liters per second, with their mineral-saturated flows forming its hollow, circular basins all the while.

author
Kiri Picone
author
Kiri Picone holds a B.A. in English and creative writing from Pepperdine University and has been writing for various digital publishers for more than 10 years.
editor
John Kuroski
editor
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.