Elevated freight railway turned wildly successful urban park.

This black shoreline is made up of exploded lava particles.

Watch the newest land on the planet form before your eyes.

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

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

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

Gold Rush-era tombstones line the park's paths.

Golden Gate Park's historic collection of plants.

Olfactory delights in San Francisco's Botanical Gardens.

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

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

In all of the 29 years it was in operation, no prisoners ever escaped successfully... or so they claim.

The yawning maw of this pagan visage is said to bite off the hands of liars.

Macabre astrological automaton clock dating to the late 1400s.

This tipsy office building in downtown Prague was originally called “Fred and Ginger.”

The former Nazi Germany concentration camp stands as a museum to remember this dark chapter in European history.

A forgotten remnant of the Soviet Union, Transnistria is an unrecognized country hidden behind a heavily militarized border between Moldova and Ukraine.

The European towns of Brașov and Râșnov each have proud signs reminiscent of the Hollywood sign.

The possible imprisonment of Vlad the Impaler here earned the medieval castle its nickname, "Dracula's Castle."

A gigantic statue of a Russian soldier watches over the ancient city of Plovdiv, a prominent reminder of the Soviet period in Bulgaria.

A striking symbol of the Bulgarian capital.

These historic defenses ensured the city within would survive hundreds of years of occupations, sieges, and invasions.

An Albanian monument to the Communism that nearly crushed the country is now a crumbling wreck.

Hundreds of thousands of concrete bunkers crowd Albania long after the fall of Communism.