Places Jackieacosta Wants to Go

Order a boozy baba au rhum at the oldest patisserie in Paris.

An iconic and eccentric bar for "Manouche" Jazz music keeps expanding its space—and its influence.

Executions were once held near this beautiful 18th-century fountain.

This Parisian café sticks almost exclusively to an ethos of reuse.

Fully loaded, Tunisian-style sandwiches are on the menu at this unassuming hole-in-the-wall.

Saintly bones pressed into a wax effigy of a Catholic superstar.

A popular shrine where the Blessed Virgin allegedly appeared in 1830, displaying a holy armchair and two incorruptible remains of Lady Saints.

Marie Antoinette and Napoleon Bonaparte were fans of this 200-year-old French chocolatier.

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

A magical, macabre wax museum, beloved by locals, uses real artifacts to depict an assassination from the French Revolution.

Claude Monet was baptized in this lavishly ornate Paris church.

This oddly shaped boulder in Paris is rumored to be cursed.

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

Travel back in time at a Moroccan-inspired restaurant that was the height of glamor in the 1970s.

A short distance from the Eiffel Tower is the final resting place of several of the city’s more well-known and interesting characters.

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

A 16th-century Andalusian palace.

This former charity hospital for elderly clergy houses some of Seville’s most treasured paintings.

The final resting place of the great navigator, or maybe his brother.

Hidden behind a wall, Spanish nuns distribute their signature sweets on a revolving tray.

Drink the 'Blood of Christ' in this Roman Catholic fever dream.

The morbid items in this small and hidden museum are not for the weak stomached.

This fascinating and poignant museum chronicles every imaginable aspect of Spanish colonialism in the Americas.

After the queen of Spain had a dream where these statues fell and crushed her, they were removed from the palace and given new homes around Madrid.