A place I discovered too late in the game, but will be visiting again. Government-funded art museum is located on the Washington Mall, and is just blocks away from the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Definitely a place I'd recommend for art buffs, with exhibits alternating between European to modern art. Vast campus is tastefully designed and the most surprising part, is that it's a government institution, which you'd never know that it's a lovely art gallery. Wide range of exhibits alternate between visiting exhibits to French and the Italian Renaissance among many others. Between the many gift shops and a very good (but pricey) cafeteria, this is definitely a must-visit for those who genuinely love art. Best of all, it's FREE!

However, take public transportation. DC has a spectacular metro system and many cabs to use. Parking would be too much of a nuisance.

Definite place to visit for the kiddies. M&M themed store might make you hungry for those multi-colored chocolate candies, but truth be told, you're better off just buying a bag of them at a nearby convenience store to save yourself the money as this store is very pricey in charging you by the pound. But just about all the M&M-themed stuff you can think up: shower curtains, chess boards, basketballs, cups, etc. It all exists here. This is definitely a fun place to visit for a lark.

Classy joint within driving distance from the Strip. Restaurant has a laidback wine bar feel to it. Menu is expensive but given the exceptional preparation tended to it, I would shell out the money. Diverse menu offers the signature dish of steak which is fantastic, along with great appetizers and entrees to satisfy your palette. Service is wonderful to the point where you'll want to shake hands with the waiters (and they deserve every cent of a great tip, believe it). They personally cater to the whim of the consumer. Place is casual but don't go in wearing jeans, sneakers, t-shirts or tank tops. This is a nice place and your wardrobe should reflect it with khakis and button down shirts at the very least. Ambiance is dark as to set to the mood for couples or just a bunch of friends looking for a relaxing night and enjoying a great dinner.

I absolutely love this place and it's one of the few places in Los Angeles that manages to attain both a unique cultural and historical identity year round, even with the additional presence of a breakway shopping mall built directly behind it. Place offers plenty in what you want for food both meats and produce, along with a fairly good food court that specializes in a variety of meals that can fill you up. Place also offers a series of indie shops that specialize primarily in gifts and L.A. souvenirs.

Breakaway mall offers what you need in virtually any major commercial setting from the likes of Bath & Body Works to Cost Plus. Place also offers ample parking. Friendly for families too.

There are few genuinely great beer places in the world that can also double as a barbecue party-style setting (sans the actual barbecue or food) that would make you feel more akin to being at a college party than a bar. The Brooklyn Brewery is one of those stops.

Look no further if you want to enjoy a genuinely great beer and wouldn't mind an escape from Manhattan than by heading to this off the beaten path brewery in hip Brooklyn. Brewery offers picnic-style seating which is quickly snatched up by the late night crowds looking to get their beer on from young professionals unwinding after a long work day to out of town tourists looking for more than just a tour of the Empire State Building or a mandatory pilgrimage to Times Square.

This commercial brewery is a thriving, locally operated business that attracts quite a fair share of customers in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood for it's relatively diverse beer menu. Snacks are offered up as food alternatives so if you're expecting pub food, forget it. This place as it is a brewery, offers only it's signature product and it's in no short supply of that. Fantastic place for visitors who want to avoid New York tourism and just want a good beer, without the dozens of pictures involving city landmarks.

www.brooklynbrewery.com

Fun little side trip in San Francisco's Richmond neighborhood. This throwback to 70's and 80's toy nostalgia is like a hip little Smithsonian Museum for kids come to life. Many parents born post-Baby Boomer generation will get a kick out of seeing their favorite childhood remnants posted on the wall from Ghostbusters toys to the latest Pez line. Place offers vast selection of sandwiches, coffees and most importantly, ice cream which is the Toy Boat's specialty.

Located between 5th and 6th on Clement, this neighborhood corner cafe has been around for years, often doing repeat business with families and those who want to relive their childhood days. Limited seating is available. Parking in the Richmond can be trying but not impossible, given availability of parking lots.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/toy-boat-dessert-cafe-san-francisco-2

The tourists love it, the residents hate it.

A stone's throw away from Pier 39, Fisherman's Wharf is the city's neighborhood that if anything, is the single most tourist populated neighborhood in the city, offering virtually everything a tourist could hope for in San Francisco: lots of tacky stores, lots of tacky regalia, lots of picture-taking opportunities and lots of excess from museums to souvenir stores practically oozing out of one's ears.

It's also the one place you would go to if you want a genuinely good piece of California seafood. But if you can tolerate large crowds and Fisherman's Wharf is certainly in no short supply of that by it's visitors, then you can tolerate anything in San Francisco that's non-violent.

Lined up side by side across the street from one another is stores by the dozens, collected next to one another from a mom and pop souvenir store that offers all the postcards and t-shirts one could possibly want of the Eden of the West to your McDonald's and Rainforest Cafe that's lining up to get a bit of your dough for the kiddies.  Although if it's fast food ya want, I'd recommend skipping the golden arches in favor of a slightly more healthy alternative with the In  N Out Burger, a no frills, primarily West Coast-based fast food chain that offers only a cheeseburger, hamburger, fries, coke or shake which fries literally cooked from potato to fry in full healthy observation of the hungry public. No Happy Meal toys here but compared to the crap that McDonald's cooks up in it's food every day, the real prize is avoiding that and eating at a place like In N Out, which not to mention, has tasty food. Place offers a better and far healthier cooking process than McDonald's could ever possibly dream of trying. Directly across the street is the other chief element of Fisherman's Wharf which offers all kinds of seafood restaurants and eateries one might want in a seafood joint.

Place really heats up during the day for tourist season and it never stops with hundreds going through the neighborhood every day to observe the far too many street performers who dwell around the area to filtering in and out whatever Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum or Wax Museum their curious brains wouldn't ever want to get a hold. As with San Francisco, parking sucks but not impossible as tourist-engineered Fisherman's Wharf has many a parking lot or garages for any interested visitor.

http://www.fishermanswharf.org/

Boston has Faneuil Hall, San Francisco has Pier 39, Chicago has the Navy Pier, a family friendly architectural expanse hovering over Lake Michigan with more to offer than one might expect in photographs.

Part food court, part stained glass museum, part carnival, part IMAX movie theater. Chicago Navy Pier has been around since the early 20th century, initially used for freighters as part of a public infrastructure plan before being converted into a partial college classroom for the University of Illinois to better serve recent WWII veterans in 1946 before falling into a period of disuse from 1965-1989 until it's renaissance period saw the pier being turned into a public area that housed theater, public art, family friendly stores and a sizable food court that could cater to just about anybody looking for anything.

Place offers sweeping views of Lake Michigan and fantastic shots of Chicago both night and day for any tourist or any local taking pride in the Windy City. Family friendly environment has an array of rides for parents and kids to enjoy. Parking is available but expensive as Chicago is a very expensive city. But it's worth the free admission to spend time at the Navy Pier in style.

There are few places in Boston to where you can get a burger, fries and a beer for a little over 10 bucks these days and the Pour House is one of those few places.

The folks at Faneuil Hall should be ashamed of themselves, given the fact that they charge high prices for relatively simple food, a concept noticed by the Pour House which charges a relatively cheap fare for it's greasy cuisine like cheeseburgers and sandwiches.

Located prominently on Boylston as the city's own kind of Restaurant Row, Pour House has been catering to the Red Sox and college student crowd for years, offering general seating in a sports bar atmosphere. Lined up all along the walls is local sports insignia or far too many beer advertisements that round out the rowdy place. Essentially personifying a true Boston sports bar, Pour House gets by for it's fairly sizable menu and excellent selection in burgers which won't drain your wallet. Ordering a beer on draft is guaranteed to give you a massive size beverage that won't require a second order. Place is a tight fit but are you really going to a restaurant to veg out?

Service is fairly good with the staff primarily consisting of female college students paying the bills. Food and beer selection is very good and restaurant offers great deals on certain nights, which usually culminate in the words "Half off", which as expected, draws a sizable crowd, even more so on Thursday-Saturday nights.

http://www.pourhouseboston.com/

The word "bagel" has no meaning until you make a visit to New York City, and what better place to start than the likes of Ess-a-Bagel, Inc., a two location operation in Manhattan's Midtown neighborhood. A business that seriously knows how to redefine the term "bagel", Ess-a-Bagel has been in business for over thirty years and offers an amazing array of tasty breakfast and lunch treats that have the regulars coming back for more every day.

Diversify is the key here as evident by the menu which sells everything from chicken and beef sandwiches to tofu sandwiches to their signature dish: the New York bagel which indeed, does melt in your mouth and proves that Dunkin Donuts can never pull off the kind of work Ess-a-Bagel can genuinely do, given the fast food chain's penchant for dry, bland and surprisingly leathery bagels. Ess-a-Bagel if anything, can reaffirm your belief in what a good bagel should be about.

Having visited the location on 3rd Avenue, customers are herded through a line and assisted by the likes of several employees working behind the counter who work at a breakneck efficiency in getting the service done quick and easy with a minimum of fuss. Place offers good seating for customers to find a place, eat their dish and get out, although one might get a rude awakening upon lunch time when the masses converge for their hourly lunch breaks. Place is open morning through noon and is guaranteed to give you just what you want in a place that specializes in breakfast and lunch food. Prices are excellent with the most expensive dish running at $9.50 for a fish-related sandwich to as low as under two bucks for a bagel with butter. Sandwiches on average, cost just over 5 dollars.

Visit: http://www.ess-a-bagel.com/door/

Virgin Records. Best Buy. Borders. Barnes & Noble. Newbury Comics. Walmart. Target.

You name 'em, they're out there. Every single major mass market chain that has the latest pop star album or widescreen or full screen version of a movie on DVD. No doubt, these are the hot selling ticket items you'll see on sale the day they're released to the public on Tuesdays and just months, if not weeks down the line, you'll see said items retail for below their original sale price on the day of release and the number of them in inventory, will probably go down.

Chances are, the ones purchased on opening day will end up at a place like Amoeba Music in San Francisco, perhaps the only true music and movies establishment that sports both new and used to the point of sickening. This is where the bargain shopping hunt commences because the $3.95 you might pay for a used copy of Peter Jackson's King Kong on DVD, you'll pay for another used copy of said movie for $1.95!!!!

Perhaps one of the few music and movies stores to genuinely keep it real, with locations in San Francisco, neighboring Berkeley and Los Angeles, Amoeba Music sports an alarmingly huge inventory of CDs, records, DVDs and (gulp) VHS in huge stockloads. Newbies paying their first visit can easily spend a minimum of an hour and a half just sifting through the remarkably vast used DVD section in the movies room, which sits primarily in unorganized order, only making the customer all the more persistent in tracking down either a treasured copy of the then out of print cult film Re-Animator to the cheapest used copy of another 007 adventure. If one thinks they're initially done with the used DVD section in the movies room, they'll be shocked to discover another section waiting for them in the main room which sports the latest castoffs from your buddy's DVD bookcase which could be an Inspector Clouseau collection that retailed for nearly 70 bucks at your nearest Borders, for the bargain cheap price of 30 bucks here.

If you think the movies are an inspiring bunch, then I can't even get started on the music which could have virtually anything from Coltrane to Cream, Garfunkel to Gaye. Amoeba's creme de la creme of course is obviously the music and it's main operation is the bowling alley-sized music room (and yes, the San Francisco Amoeba location was once that in Grateful Dead haunt, the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood). Customers from as young as 12 years old to as old as one could possibly be mobile at whatever age, will be on of the many patrons sauntering through each aisle, allowing just enough elbow space for one to look through each section and decide what they want, and don't want. Literally wall to wall, aisle to aisle are CDs both used and new and retailing anywhere from the normal retail price to under a buck and it's not just limited to the obscure Connie Francis albums your mom might be listening to, but it could be the latest Modest Mouse release. If anything, this Amoeba Music will reinforce the belief that music, no matter how much it's downloaded, will never retain the same physical spirit one would get with a copy in their possession and what better way to combine the love of getting a great CD by hunting for it. If you don't want to hunt for it, be like the rest of the lazy saps by going out and getting it on the internet.

Store requires you to check your bag in and given the employees working there, one shouldn't worry about the security of their baggage as the employees are too busy dealing with the huge numbers of people rolling in and out every day to get their music and movies fix. That's not to say that everyone's an honest person and you certainly shouldn't hold Babe Ruth's rookie card in your bookbag but if one is worried about carrying possessions with them, leave it to the store's check in counter to help physically relieve you of the agony of having to carry it with you while looking through the hundreds of CDs and DVDs in your search.

NO trip in Chicago is a trip to Chicago without a stop to The Wiener Circle in Chicago's rapidly gentrifying Lincoln Park neighborhood. This years long mainstay was briefly featured on Dave Attell's late night cult documentary show "Insomniac with Dave Attell" on Comedy Central in one of it's more outrageous unscripted moments with a bunch of foulmouthed African American women in a scene of frenzied chaos as they dole out as many insults as they do hot dogs to the after midnight crowd, giving them a fine Chicago delicacy if I do say so myself.

One will not be coming here with dieting in mind when it comes to this Chicago staple, a late night takeout joint that has prime dibs on it's North Clark establishment. If you want a good Chicago dog the only way Chicago could genuinely serve a good hot dog, this is the place to go. But leave both your pride and your thin skin at the door upon interacting with one of the many foulmouthed employees manning the counter who redefine the term "super rude" with vulgar, crass and downright filthy talk to enlighten the masses as part of their charm. You have to understand that these folks work late into the night and they encounter a lot of characters, and such characters might be on an equally foulmouthed drunken bender. Whichever character just happened to stroll into The Wiener Circle with the thought that they were going to conquer the employees in a one sided verbal fistfight are clearly mistaken when meeting the employees running the counter who don't give you service with a smile, but service with a finger and such wonderfully colorful terms like relating bodily fluids to condiments for your hot dog.

Aside from such memorable service is the hot dog, which The Wiener Circle doesn't disappoint. If anything, Chicago has got New York and any other city both in the country and in the world at large on a genuinely good Chicago dog or pizza. Wiener Circle serves up good hot dogs albeit, with a profanity-laced greeting that only a place like the Wiener Circle could get away with and still have a revolving door of repeat customers like myself.

You want a glimpse of what they are, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo1LPf9mnyU

Great place for kids and adults like, providing both a trip down memory lane and the ability to look at all kinds of toys that come from all over the country and the world. This place will definitely bring out the kid in you from the assortment of stuffed animals on the first floor to the ridiculously impressive LEGO section. Place has plenty to offer in terms of wanting to look around get shopping ideas. Seriously, there is no place in New York for kids, for a place like here.

Big one floor mall conveniently located by the highway. Often attracts quite a business on weekends and during the holiday shopping season. Parking is vast yet distant.