A island reachable by a causeway at low tide is possibly one of the earliest Western European locations to be identified in text.

The quaint little store that is said to have inspired a famous Dickens novel was only given its name after the book was released.

The curios of pharmacist and collector Henry Wellcome.

The only university zoological museum in London houses extinct animals, bizarre natural history specimens, and a Micrarium of microscopic creatures.

An unusual round church in London with a Templar past.

Ruined 11th century abbey built by King David I in Edinburgh, Scotland.

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

The most iconic structure in Scotland has been home to bishops, colonels, and Sean Connery characters.

The world's largest collection of witchcraft regalia.

This shop and gallery is a modern-day cabinet of curiosities, unassumingly positioned along an urban thoroughfare.

A kaleidoscopic warehouse-maze of handmade neon signs.

This ornate Victorian marketplace was the setting for Diagon Alley and the Leaky Cauldron in the Harry Potter films.

A shop full of natural curiosities, carnivorous plants, and costumed taxidermied mice.

Aqueducts have dramatically changed this old lake, now home to tufa towers and its very own species of tiny brine shrimp.

The one-time watch house for incoming ships at the Golden Gate now stands abandoned and hidden in trees.

Carved by a waterfall in a hard-to-reach rock formation, this heart-shaped rock has inspired romantics for decades.

Tiki luxury on Nob Hill.

San Francisco's newly reopened hands-on science museum.

A hotel and restaurant serving as the mecca of kitsch.

A favorite haunt of dinosaur loving children and hallucinogen loving hippies alike.

A strange house built only at night, with rumored mystic inspiration.

Relics of the 1894 Midwinter Exposition continue to delight visitors today.