At Chicago's revered Field Museum, visitors are invited to learn about and literally explore DNA.

Beloved bar home to musicians of all eras and reputations.

Combination beer garden and music venue in the heart of Wicker Park.

These pretty kitties killed and ate as many as 135 railway workers.

A monument to the art of slicing people open.

A lush green oasis in the middle of Chicago.

Each of these gorgeous, intricately decorated rooms is painstakingly crafted to the scale of 1 inch: 1 foot.

This $3 million model train takes you through Chicago, Seattle, and the thousands of miles in between.

A curious collection of miniatures in a quiet corner of the Chicago Children's Museum.

To find the "unicorns of the deep" you've got to go downstairs.

Where dioramas can follow you home.

This awkward aquarium sculpture is one of the strangest statues in Chicago.

All of Chicago's wood-paved streets are long gone but two alleys remain.

A hollow cement depiction of time's inexorable effect on the human body.

A little-known subterranean street runs under some of the best-known buildings in Chicago's River North.

The final resting place of New Orleans' most famous voodoo priestess.

A 200-year-old building in the French Quarter that was to be Napoleon's home in the New World.

A Museum of Holography frozen in 1974.

Nonprofit art center that promotes outsider, intuitive, and self-taught art.

The subtle science of a master molecular gastronomist.

This pebble beach is so beautiful that taking its rocks is against the law.

A massive sea stack famous for its appearance in The Goonies.

Allowing humans and fish alike to migrate from freshwater to saltwater and back again.

A museum dedicated to the history and exploration of both popular music and science fiction.