The battery and US Army base under the Golden Gate Bridge was active until 1994. The Spanish started building it in 1776 and then it was taken over by Mexico when it battled for independence. After the Spanish-American War, the US seized California and continued using the area as a Read more
San Francisco’s famous Lombard Street is much longer than just the squiggly bit with eight bends, it goes all the way from the Presidio Boulevard, through the hill where Coit Tower is, to Pier 27 on the shore. Tourists love to drive down the curvy bit of the road, and Read more
Federal land as a national park. Technically not part of California so you can’t smoke recreational Marijuana here. I recommend the first ferry as it gets you there just as the prison opens. The main exhibit is on the evolution of the US correctional system, like at Eastern State Penitentiary Read more
It’s not usually open to the public, but the once-a-year Doors Open Toronto event invites everyone to take a peek inside a collection of heritage buildings and city infrastructure. The interwar water treatment plant still provides about a third of Toronto’s drinking water supply at nearly a billion liters a Read more
I wanted to do a quick visit to Buffalo just before Christmas, but the border closed before I could go. So, I got a refund for my ticket to the Buffalo Botanical Gardens and credit for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House tour. The gardens open in the morning and I Read more
At first, when I looked up the place in Cleveland I thought it would be a museum on maritime science and weather patterns of the Great Lakes, like the National Museum of the Great Lakes. But I was wrong. It’s just a family-oriented science museum located on the Great Lakes. Read more
Walter Scott, the first premier of Saskatchewan, hosted a competition for the legislative building to be built in Regina in 1905. The design by the Maxwell Brothers from Montreal was chosen and the building was completed in 1912. It was initially designed to be constructed with red brick before Scott Read more
If you’ve already bought your ticket from the Mets Cloisters location, you can walk right in and skip the line. This is everything I’ve been looking for in terms of a good mix of Roman mosaics, Greek bronze, European modern art, and seeing my French friends Seurat, Degas, Pissarro, and Read more
During the first quarter of the 20th century, 30,000 men worked to dig the New York Subway. The work was dangerous and collapses were frequent with many of those who died unnamed Italian and Irish immigrants, back then seen as less than desirable. All this work was undertaken when trams Read more
Muhammed Ali stayed here after he lost to Joe Frazier across the street at Madison Square Garden, Nikola Tesla invented alternating current on the 33rd floor, and CBS recorded music to broadcast to troops overseas during the Second World War. This hundred-year-old art Deco monolith in New York City is Read more