Places Laura Andersen Wants to Go

These former theme park figures have a new lease on life outside a water plant-turned-restaurant.

Visitors flock to see this church tower's unintended feature: It happens to resemble a giant chicken from multiple points of view.

One of the last of the great 1920s movie palaces is a Floridian Greco-Spanish-Persian dreamscape.

The history of the traveling carnival is remembered by this sprawling collection of vintage wagons, games, and rides.

The first custom-designed building to showcase the works of Dale Chihuly is a wonderland of glass and light.

A gleaming white tower in ornate Indian style soars above the low-slung bungalows of north Tampa.

A luxuriant botanical garden below sea level.

An oddities shop that dabbles in the deathly and beautiful.

This home is decked out like a psychedelic explosion of colors and bowling balls.

Florida might be at its most surreal in this museum devoted to the famed Spanish artist.

One of the earliest and best-preserved buildings in Charles County, Maryland.

The rock on which Moll Dyer was found frozen to death is said to still bear her handprint.

Home of the physician who set the leg of John Wilkes Booth after the Lincoln assassination.

This scenic Maryland park was the site of one of the worst prison camps of the Civil War.

Captain John Smith thought these cliffs were amazing in 1608 but sharks thought so 20 million years before him.

A cave on the Maryland border where civilians took refuge during the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.

A girls' boarding school inspired by the Chicago World's Fair, once abandoned, now restored to strange and scenic glory.

One of the oldest active carousels in the country—but it might be missed by all but the keenest-eyed boardwalk strollers.

This building at the south end of the boardwalk was once home to the U.S. Life-Saving Service and the U.S. Coast Guard before being rescued itself.

The heart of Dutch football history.

How one woman gave orphaned sculptures a new home in the city of Utrecht.

A family-run botanical garden with tropical plants, artsy sculptures, and eccentric buildings.

This World War II-era bunker hides between medieval chapels in Nijmegen's city center.

The largest airborne operation in history was launched to capture this bridge.