Places Michael Barera Wants to Go

In Chicago, a pizza-enthusiast has opened a museum dedicated to the history of pizza.

The famous author's birthplace is preserved in a town that he once described as narrow-minded.

This small, but long-running hobby club has built one of the largest model rail lines in the US.

This botanical garden outside Chicago boasts an array of more than 300 varieties of lilacs.

The 40-year-old machine serves soda quicker than you can catch it for a mere 75 cents a pop.

This urban drawbridge gained eternal pop culture fame when the Blues Brothers jumped it while it was raised.

Arguably the best example of an authentic Dutch windmill in the United States, rivaling its counterparts in the Netherlands.

One of the last functioning antique elevators in Chicago.

You have to love a museum with a truly dedicated focus. A focus on Superman, for example.

A notorious Route 66 eatery once frequented by Al Capone.

Cold War missile launch site which has been converted to a public park.

Quirky water tower advertises the long-gone Brooks Tomato Products Co.

The final resting place of up to 6,000 Confederate soldiers, the largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere.

Tour the luxe "glass cage" that inspired and unnerved the architecture world upon its debut.

Fragments of architectural wonders from around the globe are embedded in the newspaper building's walls.

World's second largest particle accelerator, where nature reveals its secrets.

Where Cusack's record store from the film "High Fidelity" was located.

Home to a protest movement, a bombing, and a dramatic change in labor history.

What was once the second largest steel mill in the US is now a sprawling complex of modern ruins.

An avant garde art museum at the University of Chicago.

A shining sculpture made of 3,115 lights, the number of visible stars in the Northern Hemisphere.

A replica viking ship from the Chicago World's Fair is still in dry dock in an Illinois park.

This modest post office sits on the site of H.H. Holmes' famous murder castle.

The final resting place of the world's first nuclear reactor.