Places athompson411 Wants to Go

Under the right circumstances, this waterfall in Yosemite briefly turns a luminescent fiery orange.

Hot springs monkey spa in the middle of Hell's Valley.

The ancient dwellings of the Puebloans, located in the cliffs of majestic mesas.

The fountain marks the area where hundreds of accused witches were burned at the stake.

Two stunning 17th-century libraries and a cabinet of curiosities.

Philadelphia boasts one of the best — and most often overlooked — traditional Japanese gardens in North America.

Enormous lake at the bottom of a unique cave system.

An Italian crevasse filled with abandoned buildings gives visitors a look at the world without humans.

A floating cat sanctuary on an Amsterdam canal.

Giant busts of 42 U.S. presidents sit, crumbling in a field in Virginia.

This 1920s Dutch barge is now a floating bookstore.

One of the oldest used bookstores in the U.S. has been selling antiquarian treasures since 1825.

The popularity of Sherlock Holmes led to the creation of his fictional address, turning the orderly London street numbers askew.

A 200-year-old bar in the historic French Quarter refuses to give up its place in history, nor its role in securing ours.

A taste of the macabre Tokyo's ritzy shopping district.

Started as a kitchen garden, now the second largest botanical garden in the world.

This hidden Art Nouveau courtyard is an opulent feast for the eyes.

The land is full of geologic eye candy, such as otherworldly spires, mushroom-shaped hoodoos, and prehistoric fossils.

This 17th-century street hidden beneath Edinburgh was once a breeding ground for the black death.

This iconic Parisian bookstore doubles as the "Tumbleweed Hotel" for traveling writers.

The perfectly preserved underground rooms where Churchill plotted the war against Germany.

For two weeks every June, fireflies in the Smoky Mountains perform an astonishing light show.

Eighty million natural history specimens call this gargantuan museum home.

This lower Manhattan bar is set up in an old bank vault that rests beneath a skyscraper that hides even more historic splendor.