Seven ceramic sculptures are scattered around this California college campus.

Life in this isolated, hilltop lighthouse was lonely, but it sure was lovely.

Centuries of crashing waves carved out this small hole in the rock, which lights up at certain parts of the year.

Offering commanding views of the California coastline, this restaurant was a hub for the artists and bohemians of Big Sur.

This Big Sur waterfall drops 80 feet directly into the Pacific Ocean, and inspired the hillside house up top.

The last remaining relic of San Francisco's glittering 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition.

A collection of 20th-century automata, penny arcade games, and musical contraptions.

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

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

The seawater playground of gilded-era San Francisco burned to the ground in 1966.

A walk-in working camera obscura produces 360-degree live images of the San Francisco coast.

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

Carnivorous plants, medieval aphrodisiacs, and the largest original wood structure glass conservatory in the western hemisphere.

A museum glorifying the life of Stalin, located in the city of his birth.

A cluster of historic bathhouses built on the famed hot springs that gave the Georgian capital its name.

A psychedelic labyrinth on the San Francisco bay.

A huge musical instrument played by the ocean.

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.

A literally moving statue of stacked metal giants just continually trying (and failing) to find love.

Where the alchemists dream of transmuting base metal into gold was actually achieved.

A pier that used to act as a busy ferry dock is now a decaying favorite of local fisherman and urban artists.

The first skyscraper to include a Ferris wheel built into the facade.

The charmingly disheveled clock tower of Tbilisi's puppet theater.