Olfactory delights in San Francisco's Botanical Gardens.

Over 315,000 preserved amphibians and reptiles in jars.

The stones that traveled from Spain to eventually become a holy place for San Francisco's nature worshippers.

A garden oasis filled with flowers mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare.

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

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

This teeny-tiny park built by a San Francisco man in 1962 is mostly stairs.

A ruined hotel with an unlucky history and an eerie present.

A crumbling Beaux Arts monument to the Bay Area's age of rail.

A restored 1920s cascade stairway provides one of the best views of Oakland's Lake Merritt.

A temple devoted to inner esoteric mysteries located in a California commercial strip.

Julia Morgan's Moorish-Gothic labyrinth of fountains, trees, natural light and Oakland's notable dead.

The Laureates here get something even more coveted than a Nobel Prize: free parking for life.

The century-old bell and clock tower at UC Berkeley is the third-tallest in the world, and has fossils.

An eccentric home stands out in an otherwise average neighborhood with mosaics, mini topiaries, and kinetic sculpture.

Believe it or not, this is the final resting place of the man who created the Odditorium.

This collection of hand fans doubles as a history of femininity.

A veteran Disney animator turned his gift for storytelling to a museum devoted to his love of a California city.

At the edge of the high desert, California's second-largest natural lake is home to a unique subspecies of trout adapted to its alkaline waters.

A vaudeville performer mounted this hollowed-out redwood log onto the chassis of a truck, and toured the country spreading a message of conservation.

California's most comprehensive horticultural library.

A 1920s home transformed into an immersive art experience, where every room is a portal to another realm.

Guns that have been defending San Francisco since 1904.

A brooding mansion of clinker brick stands out among the Victorian houses of Pacific Heights.