Places captnsusan Wants to Go

A bloodstain from "the wound of the transverberation of the heart."

This banal Parisian entranceway is not what it seems.

A 400-year-old church covered floor to ceiling in ex-voto offerings from the faithful.

Museum on French naval history, with magnificent figureheads, a historic diving suit, and a boat used by Napoleon.

This surreal statue brings a famous French novel about a supernatural cad to arresting life.

A lone cannonball remains lodged in the walls of the Hotel de Sens as a sober reminder of a revolution.

A favorite Paris bar for U.S. expats, including Gershwin, Hemingway, and James Bond.

Medieval museum built over Roman baths that features famous tapestries of a lady and a unicorn.

A Parisian cemetery where the elite and artistic are interred beneath an eccentric collection of tombs.

Site of a classic 19th-century physics experiment to prove the earth is rotating.

A surrealist timepiece by the artist of melting clocks.

A 16th-century fountain marks the site of a lost medieval cemetery once filled with mass graves.

A bike train runs along a disused railway line through the tranquil French countryside.

The first island in the world designated a light-pollution-free astronomical observation point.

A half-mile long and three stories high, this bridge over the Des Moines River Valley mimics a descent into a mine shaft.

This volcanic cave lake is essentially hard proof that Iceland is the most magical place on Earth.

Teeny tiny hotel on the coast of the Canary Islands.

“You better take care of me Lord, if you don't you're gonna have me on your hands.” ― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.