There is no trying to fall in love with this Star Wars fountain, you just do or do not.

Staircase winds down the side of Telegraph Hill through gardens, wild parrots flying overhead.

The miraculous hydrant that saved the Mission District in 1906.

These WWII-era murals were initially booed as a libelous portrayal of the American dream but have survived multiple attempts to have them destroyed.

This concrete tangle of square pipes has stood as a proud thorn in the city's side since the '70s.

A shining, cold, black organ lies in San Francisco's financial district.

The oldest dim sum restaurant in the United States is a nostalgic jewel.

The randomness of this wall of lava lamps helps encrypt up to 10 percent of the internet.

An easily overlooked stretch of ornate window fronts and gaslight lamps that could be right from the pages of Dickens.

A charming 17th-century alley is lined with secondhand bookstores and antiquarian shops.

The name of this famed hospital was once a byword for the horrors of medical and psychiatric care.

From scholastic to sepulchral - now under reconstruction.

A sliver of nostalgia in Seattle's Viretta Park.

The 16th-century church has the only stained glass windows that survived the Scottish Reformation intact.

The only thing stranger than stumbling onto these philosophical musings is the story of the homesteader who created them.

Tokyo’s only Vaudeville-cuckoo clock–steampunk-Victorian curio cabinet time piece.

The decommissioned steam engine’s whistle can still be heard three times a day at one of Japan’s oldest train stations.

A lonely chimpanzee lures you into a narrow alley leading to this hidden shrine.

Rumored to be a giant robot in disguise, this colossal chef has been the beloved symbol of Tokyo’s kitchenware district for decades.

This water goblin statue represents a 19th-century urban legend about a haunted canal that became a Japanese idiom.

A few hidden stones are said to bring fortune and love.

Rubbing salt on this small stone dog is said to make wishes come true.

Inside the columbarium, thousands of colorful, high-tech Buddhas guard the ashes of the dead.

Not quite the menace it once was, this monster still has some chops.