Places Jessica Leigh Hester Wants to Go

The very first subway station in New York City is beautiful, decked out in chandeliers, and ... abandoned?

Stroll through a wonderland of stupendous moss-covered trees.

A precariously balanced rock perches on the edge of a cliff created tens of thousands of years ago by glacial erosion.

Who said a biker bar is no place for a taxidermy squirrel collection?

Once frequented by heavyweights of the Russian arts scene, this café is stuck in the 1800s.

Located in a veterinary school, this macabre exhibit displays the effects of animal diseases.

One of the world's most advanced radio observatories sprawls across the Atacama Desert.

Housed in the university planetarium, the thousand-strong collection of tiny towelettes includes a used one from the hosts of Car Talk.

Private collection of art inspired by cabinets of curiosity.

The incredible private taxidermy collection of an eccentric zoologist.

See massive fossils that are over 200 million years old in northeastern Arizona.

An abandoned lighthouse awaits its destiny: being buried under shifting sand.

A small chapel celebrating the spiritual bond between dogs and humans.

The peaceful space is adorned by paintings by the famed abstract artist Mark Rothko.

One of the city’s oldest watering holes was originally the home of a famous James Brown (not that one).

This portion of a lovely Belize beach is infested with (harmless) sharks and rays.

Huge masonic hall in Philadelphia with lavishly themed rooms.

Whale bones, scrimshaw, and sperm oil make up just a part of this comprehensive collection of whaling history.

In this Parisian garden's grotesque former life as a zoo it fed exotic animals to the bourgeois and put humans on exhibit.

For 20 years, this whale skeleton has been slowly dripping oil on the floor of the museum where it hangs.

A well-preserved network of cavernous tunnels have spent silent centuries removing Toronto's waste.

Antique gaffe kept in the basement of a small Vermont natural history museum.

This mysterious taxidermy man-beast of the seven seas resides at the Banff Trading Post.

This pump on the bad side of Victorian London betrayed a horrifying revelation about the water supply.