Places clairebeware Wants to Go

Canyon walls shrouded in ferns.

A nondescript building that's been functioning as a speakeasy for nearly a century and a half.

One of the most scenic stretches of road in America winds between some of the country's oldest trees.

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

These delicate buggers are some of the rarest fossils that have bubbled up from the Tar Pits.

Aqueducts have dramatically changed this old lake, now home to tufa towers and its very own species of tiny brine shrimp.

Quite simply the largest tree in the world (by volume).

Carved by a waterfall in a hard-to-reach rock formation, this heart-shaped rock has inspired romantics for decades.

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

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

Behind this beachfront shop lies a spectacular, colorful sea cave with an equally colorful past.

Each year these high desert hills are absolutely covered with poppy flowers in a surreal show of nature.

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

A prohibition-style speakeasy takes up residence in the last Victorian residence in Hollywood.

This strange seaside tower got its name from a wealthy eccentric who would hide coins among its stones.

Olfactory delights in San Francisco's Botanical Gardens.

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

A tiny theater hidden in an alley plays a constant stream of short silent films for anyone willing to peer through the peephole.

Hollywood's most famous landmark, the "temporary" sign that has stood for decades longer than intended.

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

An underground mansion with fruit-bearing trees and grapes growing beneath the surface of central California.

Towering basalt columns, a creation of fire and ice.

Shop selling 500 flavors of soda has something for everyone.

The only theatre in the world constructed specifically for sound movement.