No telescopes, no power, no gift shop: The Observatory of Chichen Itza, one of the world's oldest observatories, takes astronomy back to basics.

Every equinox this Maya pyramid puts on a spooky ancient light show.

If you can look past the nearby sewer pipes, this urban sinkhole grotto is a mini-paradise.

The colorful, smiling concrete silos of Vancouver.

Made of granite, this is a symbol of the Inuit peoples near water that expresses abundance.

A working steam clock, one of only a few in the world, located in Vancouver's Victorian Gastown.

A colorful statue honoring the local salmon in glass and bronze.

An eclectic restaurant serving from and to the nearby Chittenden Locks.

Allowing humans and fish alike to migrate from freshwater to saltwater and back again.

A young botanist's horticultural vision realized through a lifetime of planting, tending, and collecting seeds.

A commemorative mural in this tiny Ballard park honors the neighborhood's rich Scandinavian ties, particularly with Seattle's Norwegian sister city Bergen.

Continuing a tradition of movie magic on the site of America’s oldest continually operating movie theatre.

This jazz venue welcomes performers nightly and students daily.

Statue of Lenin, from Cold War era Czechoslovakia, now in a neighborhood of Seattle.

Residents of Fremont in Seattle have considered it the center of the universe since the 1970s.

A giant Troll lurks under one of Seattle's oldest bridges.

This massive, ancient stone was disassembled and then put back together again.

This Toronto garden collects stares and tchotchkes in equal measure.

The remains of the oldest bone-headed dinosaur in North America.

A fantastic place to see murals, and an important location in the history of Toronto's legal street art scene.

One of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World holds the world's tallest metal staircase.

A collection of more than 12,000 shoes, displayed in a building shaped like a shoebox.

The giant birds honor two native North American species.

One of Canada's most incredible rare book collections holds hundreds of thousands of gorgeous tomes that the general public can touch.