If you're ever in Durango, CO.

Check this out!! Bad-assery.

http://www.honeyvillecolorado.com/

If you're ever in Bisbee AZ, take a tour of the Queen Anne Mine. If you're ever in Drumheller Alberta, take a tour of the Atlas Mine. If you're ever in Sydney Nova Scotia, take a tour of the Sydney Mine, I've never been disappointed by a mine tour.

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...xAkDdxWv7ibA8w



If you're ever in Washington State and near the north peninsula, PLEASE check out the cute little town of Port Townsend!

If you're ever in Ottawa, Ontario...Canada's capital...check out the giant sink hole, 30 feet deep in the busiest intersection downtown and about a block from Parliament Hill. What idiot decided to start building a Light Rapid Transit System through the middle of downtown!

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...ft9yFq-k-xpUdQ


If you're ever in Seattle take the water taxi over to West Seattle and take in the many sights Alki Beach has to offers

http://www.govisitchicago.com/wp-con...ker-compa1.png




Well not so much as go there but do this I guess if you're not that familiar with the windy city! They give a tour as well as fun facts about Chicago and hop on and hop off privileges during any part of the tours

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/i...abU7ecoB9JoBSj








The food isn’t anything to write home about. but how can you not love a place immortalized by a SNL skit!

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...AT-QKzYii8mJWA


If you're ever in Port Angeles Wa check out Next Door Gastropub!

If you're ever in NYC, do this. I'm usually not a fan of "tours" but this was really interesting and beautiful.
http://www.tug44.org/tugboats.trawle...elinexvi-1.jpg

http://www.newyork.com/tours/full-is...e-sightseeing/

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...Ut4W-USYRHqYrH



Dogpatch bar and resturant in Munising MI

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/i...Q7GY7j_oauY8KQ


He Who Eats Mud 3247 N Broadway St Chicago, IL 60657

They have cards, t-shirts and other items!

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...gvYnvk3v-B91eQ

Unabridged Books 3251 N Broadway Chicago, IL 60657

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...A00GEZUTAJ_7PZ



Melrose Restaurant 3233 N Broadway St Chicago, IL 60657

One does not come here for the food, one comes to people watch at their outside dinning area!

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i..._1w_fX_YwknSqm



Kit Kat Lounge & Supper Club 3700 N Halsted St Chicago, IL 60613

Besides good food they offer Cabaret & Drag shows

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...oKAs85s4O2S11g


Ann Sathers 909 W Belmont Ave Chicago, IL 60657


If you're looking for a fantastic breakfast, this is the place!

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...yOoa5qKHqr0X4_




5348 N Clark St Chicago, IL 60640

If you're looking for something to satisfy your sweet tooth or something to pick up and take back to your hotel for later, this is the place!

http://www.healthbeautylife.com/wp-c.../06/EMP_01.jpg


EMP Museum - Music + Sci-fi + Pop Culture (this isn't your dad's museum)

Seattle WA

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/i...JHhiUJQ1AlfoO2

Amoeba Music Los Angeles

IF you can't find what you're looking for in here, trust me, you don't need it!

In Arizona....
 

The Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin West tour. I thought it would be boring but it was quite interesting!


http://images.adsttc.com/media/image...jpg?1414197948
(Picture source: ArchDaily.com)

http://www.franklloydwright.org/tali...and-tours.html

MONA: The world's most far-out museum
MONA Museum of Old and New Art

Chiseled into an escarpment on the banks of the Derwent River in the northern suburbs of Hobart is a subterranean fortress housing one of the most confronting and controversial collections of art in the world.

The crowning achievement of Tasmanian David Walsh, a mathematician and art collector who made millions perfecting algorithms that let him to beat casinos and bookies at their own game, MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) has made a name for itself by breaking every rule in the book ...

“When you go to a conventional museum you are forced to walk up stairs and past pillars meant to make you feel small and then have academics tell you it’s culture,” ... “But David wanted none of that so he built this place underground.”

Visitors are given an iPod touch that uses GPS to work out which artwork they are standing in front of, then gives a running commentary from Walsh himself, interviews with the artists and plenty more. That all comes via a button on the iPod marked “Art Wank”

From the lobby, a spiral staircase descends 17 meters underground, ending in a cathedral-like basement cordoned by a 250-million-year-old Triassic sandstone wall that Walsh, who once described himself as a “rabid atheist,” left exposed to challenge creationists on their beliefs.

What follows are three levels of steel and stone festooned with art and objects based around sex, death and evolution that are concurrently shocking, educational and entertaining.

To impart just a taste of the museum, first among these is a chocolate sculpture of the remains of a Chechen suicide bomber. Yes, chocolate.

One level up, a wall has been lined with white porcelain molds of female genitalia, while another wall shows a very large image of a man engaged in an unhealthy act with a dog.

A room-sized machine made of giant test tubes fed by a series of pumps parodies the digestive tract by turning food into a brown gooey paste, while an engorged and distended Porsche Carrera sagging with fat offers comment on mindless overindulgence.

Then there’s “Bit.fall,” a “rain-painting machine” created by German born artist Julius Popp. Spanning two stories, this multi-million dollar contraption uses 128 computer-controlled nozzles to drip cascades of water in the shape of phrases selected daily from news websites. You really need to see it, of course.

Sprinkled among these masterpieces of modern art, as though there were never a reason to keep them apart, are selections from Walsh’s private collection of antiquities.

They include a 1,500-year-old Egyptian sarcophagus, gold coins taken from one of the statues at the Partheon in Athens and a collage made of Neolithic flints.

MONA is built on the ground of Moorilla Estate, Tasmania’s second-oldest vineyard...Visitors can also stay the night at one of eight luxurious art-laden pavilions inspired by shipping containers and stylish A-frame homes of the 1960s that look like Darth Vader’s lair.

Combined with an outdoor concert stage set on a grassy hillock, a book shop, jewelry store and the scenic river bush land setting, it’s little wonder MONA topped “Gourmet Traveller” magazine’s list of the top 100 places to visit in the world.

..."

Ian Lloyd Neubauer is a Sydney-based freelance journalist specializing in adventure travel.