Places Jessica Leigh Hester Wants to Go

An old trolley bridge was converted into a breathtaking garden bursting with colorful flowers.

The oldest Italian café in Boston, this spot also serves as a veritable museum of vintage coffee ephemera.

This futuristically sylvan church is a glass-enclosed marvel of modern architecture.

Once part of a dam servicing an early 19th century grist mill, the tucked-way falls are a tricky-to-find urban oasis.

Nine of the very few concrete ships ever made in the U.S. are beautifully decaying off a Virginia pier.

The ceiling of this vintage movie palace is covered in fantastic Art Deco murals.

Centuries-old hoofprints and wagon tracks reveal themselves after a good winter storm.

The largest glacial erratic boulder on Cape Cod.

These six walrus head statues harken back to a time when this area wasn't far from the oceanfront.

Named after the German word for "a longingness to travel," this park brings together thousands of city and street signs from around the world.

This ancient amphitheater was restored in the early 1990s.

Explore the wide world of desert plants at this unique Palm Springs botanical garden.

Tucked away in downtown Westerly is America's first shark history museum.

A tiny monument to the classic American candy.

This tiny, painted door at the base of a tree stump has been a fixture of the Harvard University campus for decades.

This unassuming stone commemorates a condiment factory gone up in smoke.

This former Masonic hall has been turned into an art project that uses even more metaphysical iconography.

These impressively detailed battle scenes depict the violence and tragedy of war in miniature.

The poems Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia etched into its windows are still visible today.

One of two lighted lanterns hung in the church belfry on the eve of the Revolutionary War to warn that the British were on their way.

Louisa May Alcott based “Little Women” on her experiences growing up in this house with her sisters.

This replica stave church looks like a piece of Norway was simply plopped down in South Dakota.

An 18-mile-long tunnel for sewage waste will soon wind within the bowels of Washington, D.C.

This beloved Baltimore spot features caged dolls, a giant Pez collection, and many, many mannequins.