Places summermaddux Wants to Go

Tour the dark and beloved poet's former cobwebbed basement, which may have inspired "The Black Cat."

Century-old shop, specializing in Occult products.

America's most famous museum of medical oddities is home to the remains of Albert Einstein's brain.

The taxidermied remains of Charles Dickens' pet raven, which helped inspire one of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poems.

This collection of hand fans doubles as a history of femininity.

The only museum of sake in the United States is nestled in an unlikely California college town.

A ruined hotel with an unlucky history and an eerie present.

A still functioning vaudeville carousel that has operated for over a century boasts a colorful menagerie and past.

A psychedelic labyrinth on the San Francisco bay.

This turn of the century masterpiece has a mysterious goaty interloper.

The last remaining relic of San Francisco's glittering 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition.

A modern mechanical planetary system, part of a 10,000 year clock.

Visible below the waves are memorials to the city's Gold Rush dead.

An invitation-only museum of items natural and bizarre, arcane and exotic.

The restored and active Victorian-era final resting place of San Francisco.

There is no trying to fall in love with this Star Wars fountain, you just do or do not.

The seawater playground of gilded-era San Francisco burned to the ground in 1966.

A walk-in working camera obscura produces 360-degree live images of the San Francisco coast.

A winding path built in secret on the edge of the continent.

A 140-year-old castle with underground caves hidden in San Francisco.

Its buzzing collection honors vibrator history.

A huge musical instrument played by the ocean.

There are lots of hands and feet stamped in the cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, but Mel left behind something extra.

A shrine to a skeleton saint in the city of angels.