Places coffeegrrrl Wants to Go

A ghost town at the airport is now a refuge for blue butterflies.

The one-time watch house for incoming ships at the Golden Gate now stands abandoned and hidden in trees.

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

Historic funicular railway, believed to be the shortest railroad in the world.

An inconspicuous footbridge beloved by San Diego locals.

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

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

A collection of 20th-century automata, penny arcade games, and musical contraptions.

The ghostly remains of an accidental sea.

A common entry point to the Griffith Observatory trail holds its own wonders.

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

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

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

A hotel and restaurant serving as the mecca of kitsch.

A shop full of natural curiosities, carnivorous plants, and costumed taxidermied mice.

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

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

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

The private clubhouse for the members of the Academy of Magical Arts.

A castle that was built stone by stone by an eccentric journalist.

Left untouched since a double murder-suicide in the 1960s, Los Feliz murder mansion remains a neighborhood mystery.

The rocks in this arid basin leave trails of movement behind them.

There is no trying to fall in love with this Star Wars fountain, you just do or do not.

A hand-built folk art installation covered with messages of God's love.