Now there are even more reasons to hightail it to Baltimore. This weekend the city welcomes its newest attraction: The National Pinball Museum.

Here’s the story I put together about the museum for msnbc.com Travel:

David Silverman, founder of the National Pinball Museum opening Saturday, Jan. 14, in Baltimore, Md., first discovered the coin-operated, arcade-game known as pinball when he was 4 years old.

“Back then, New York was one of the cities that banned pinball,” Silverman, 63, told msnbc.com. “Lawmakers considered it gambling and they thought it was associated with the mafia. So I first saw a pinball machine while on a vacation with my parents in upstate New York.”

Silverman grew up to be an avid pinball player and, eventually, a pinball machine collector. “My first machine was ‘Fireball,’ which was made by Bally, a major pinball company. My wife liked the game, so we kept it lit up in the living room. One game led to another and now I have more than 900 machines.”

While searching for parts and people to repair and maintain the machines in his collection, Silverman learned the history of pinball and discovered that it had roots reaching back to the 18th century.

“The early games were handmade and were played liked billiards with a cue stick,” said Silverman. “Then the coil spring came along and the cue stick was replaced by the plunger. Flippers didn’t come along until 1947, but that changed pinball from a game of chance to a game of skill.”

Like the metal balls in the pinball machines, the National Pinball Museum has been bounced around. Until it lost its lease in September 2011, the museum was located in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood. It’s new location, in Baltimore’s attraction-rich Inner Harbor, is smaller (two floors instead of four) but still offers a history gallery with original artwork and more than 40 vintage machines and an interactive gallery with more than 50 working machines, including some classic film and TV-themed machines dating back the 1940s and 50s, that may be played.

If you go:

The National Pinball Museum is located at 608 Water St. in Baltimore, Md., and will be open Friday-Sunday beginning Jan. 14. Admission tickets include play time on the machines in the museum’s Pinhead Gallery.

The cafe opened in late December 2011 and is the fifth Juan Valdez at a U.S. airport. (JFK and Newark airports each have two Juan Valdez cafes.)

While I’m sure the Juan Valdez coffee is delicious, if it’s coffee you’re after at MIA, you should really try the traditional Cuban coffee served at Cafe Versailles (five locations), the Cafe La Carreta (Terminal E, 1st level) and the La Carreta Restaurant (Terminal D, Gate D3).

While you’re there, be sure to spend a few moments in the art gallery located just beyond the security checkpoint at Central Terminal E. An exhibit titled Sewn Dreams features the work of fiber artist Dina Knapp, whose client list has included artist, dancers and celebrities such as Cher, Bob Marley, Joanne Woodward and Phyllis Diller.

Bob Marley - from the Sewn Dreams exhibit at Miami International Airport

What sort of souvenir do you search for in gift shops when you’re stuck at the airport or touring a town?

Some people pick up postcards, shot glasses or magnets.

Not David Weingarten.

On a two-week trip through Europe in the late 1970s, Weingarten received a miniature version of Germany’s Speyer Cathedral as a present from his uncle and tour guide, the noted architect Charles Moore, who also bought a souvenir-sized copy of the building for himself.

The small gift left a big impression. Weingarten, now of Ace Architects in Oakland, Calif., began collecting souvenir buildings in earnest. Today, with his partner, Margaret Majua, Weingarten owns the largest collection of three-dimensional architectural replicas of structures from around the world.

For a feature on msnbc.com’s Overhead Bin, I chatted with Weingarten about his collection.

Q: In addition to that original tiny cathedral, what types of structures are represented in your collection?

A: That cathedral has been joined by replicas of 5,000 other buildings, monuments and human-made places of all sorts and every description — famous and deeply obscure, special and mundane — from around the world. The collection is the most extensive of its type and includes some souvenir buildings made very recently and others made in the early 19th century, which are now 200 years old.

Q: 5,000 souvenir buildings! Where do you keep them all?

A: We used to keep all the little buildings in a small building outside our home. But several years ago, despite some aggressive editing, the collection threatened to spill out of the small building containing them. We made a bigger place for the little buildings.

Q: How do you organize the collection?

A: By place and type. Many of the world’s great cities possess a shelf or two or, in the case of New York, a cabinet. There are sections for the continents, for nations, for world’s fairs and expositions and for a range of arcana, such as American souvenir buildings made in Japan. There are also sections of little buildings turned out as salt and pepper shakers, lamps, coin banks, bookends, smoking accessories, lipstick holders and calendars. You get the idea.

Q: What is the attraction of souvenir buildings for you and for the rest of us who buy and bring them home from our travels?

A: Like some of their full-size counterparts, souvenir buildings work on our memories, very often in unanticipated ways. Miniatures of the Empire State, Chrysler, or Woolworth buildings or the Statue of Liberty make us think of these Gotham monuments; yet, also, more than this. We may remember our last visit, our companions on that trip, people and places seen, a subway ride or maybe a walk through Central Park. Memories prodded by architecture are seldom strictly architectural.

Q: Do you have a favorite souvenir building among the collection?

A: My most-esteemed miniature is a large, late 19th century, sterling silver model of the Bank of England in London. The full-sized building was designed, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, by the highly eccentric architect John Soane. Interestingly, the model shows the bank as Soane designed it, before some very disfiguring 20th century alterations. That illustrates another appealing quality of souvenir buildings: these slight tourists’ trifles very often outlast the substantial buildings and monuments they represent. This is especially the case with world’s fair souvenirs, which are miniatures of buildings designed with the intention that they would soon be demolished.

Q: And what happened to Charles Moore’s souvenir-sized copy of the Speyer Cathedral?

A: After Uncle Chuck died, in 1993, his house/studio in Austin, including his large collection of architectural models, folk art, books, etc., was transferred to the Charles Moore Foundation. I made off with his cast metal miniature of the cathedral and today, both [souvenirs from that 1970s trip] occupy the same glass shelf in the collection here.

Learn more about the world’s largest collection of souvenir buildings here.

All photos courtesy David Weingarten.

Marian Anderson by John W. Mosley

The Philadelphia International Airport has a fine new exhibit up featuring work by Philadelphia photographer John W. Mosley (1907-1969), a self-taught photojournalist who specialized in documenting African-American culture in the city.

According to the exhibit notes, Mosely was a prolific photographer who was known to photograph up to four events every day and whose work was published in numerous African-American newspapers, including the renowned Philadelphia Tribune.

Joe Frazier by John W. Mosley

Today, John W. Mosley’s photographs and negatives, estimated to number about 300,000, are preserved in the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection of Temple University Libraries. In 1984, the collection was donated by historian, author, and bibliophile, Charles L. Blockson, who amassed one of the nation’s largest private collections of manuscripts, rare books, sheet music, letters, prints, drawings and objects related to the history and culture of people of African descent.

John W. Mosley: Photographs of Philadelphia’s African-American Community, 1930s-1960s, From the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia” is located between Terminals E and F at Philadelphia International Airport and is open to the public through May 2012.

John Mosely, Self-portrait

All of Andersen’s journeys to other countries began in Copenhagen, so it’s appropriate that the big leather trunk Andersen used to bring along on his journeys is on display in the baggage claim at Copenhagen International Airport.

Photo courtesy Copenhagen International Airport

The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport’s Terminal 1- Lindbergh turns 50 this month and, to celebrate, there are special events, shopping discounts and a call for travelers to share memories on the MSP Facebook page.

Here are few highlights:

“A marriage proposal in the rotunda at the F and G concourses. The guy got down on one knee right in the middle of traffic. The couple told us (Travelers assistance) that they had meet in the MSP Airport and that is where he wanted to propose. She said yes…..”

“I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, but moved up here in the early 70′s when I was in college. I recall at that time that the Lindbergh Terminal had pay toilets. $.10 to use a stall! …”

“I remember when they filmed Airport there- mom & dad brought me to the airport to watch them film the scene where Van Heflin buys the insurance at the little insurance kiosk, which was located in the upper level where the shops are all located now (If I recall correctly). Can’t watch the movie without recognizing ‘my’ airport.”

MSP has also posted some photos from its archive. My favorite is this one of the Beatles arriving at the airport in 1965.

And, if you read through the list of 50 ‘fun facts’ about MSP’s Terminal 1 – Lindbergh, you’ll learn that there was once both a drugstore and a children’s nursery in the Ticketing Lobby, that the first baggage carousels were installed in 1970 and that the pay toilets weren’t removed until the mid-1970s.

A new exhibit on Concourse T at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport features 51 puppets from around the world, all on loan from the Atlanta’s Center for Puppetry Arts.

In addition to the chickens (above), you’ll see traditional puppets, such as Punch and Judy, marionettes, hand-puppets and string puppets and non-traditional ones, such as those used for traditional Vietnamese water puppetry, in which puppeteers stand in chest-high pools and use the water as a stage.

But travelers who touch down at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) now have an opportunity to get down to specifics with a new exhibition exploring the history of microscopes.

Simple microscope with case 1673–1748; Courtesy SFO Museum

“From mid-seventeenth-century simple microscopes to the modern compound optical devices by German makers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these are the instruments that revealed the long-held secrets of the natural world—the existence of microorganisms, the structure of biological cells, and the composition and operation of a variety of previously unseen life forms. Nearly 350 years after Robert Hooke introduced a ‘newly visible world,’ we continue to rely on the microscope in our eternal quest to better understand the world we inhabit and the challenges posed by that which remains invisible to the unaided eye.”

[From the exhibition release]

If you can’t make it to the airport, you can view a selection of microscopes and other objects from the exhibition online.

Detail of specimen slides with seeds c. 1820; courtesy SFO Museum

A World Examined: Microscopes from the Age of Enlightenment to the Twentieth Century is on display pre-security in the International Terminal Main Hall Departures Lobby, at San Francisco International Airport through June 24, 2012.

New library in Stuttgart, Germany

E-readers such as Kindle or Nook may be hot holiday gifts this season, but that doesn’t mean libraries are a thing of the past. In fact, with architecturally significant buildings, exhibitions and a wide range of amenities, the public libraries in many cities rank alongside museums and other cultural attractions as must-see destinations for many travelers.

Here are five libraries worth a visit:

Stuttgart Central Library, Stuttgart, Germany
Officially dedicated at the end of November, the new central library in Stuttgart, Germany, has joined the Mercedes-Benz Museum as a major local attraction. Designed by Korean architect Eun Young Yi, the Stadtbibliothek is a nine-story, cubed, glass block structure that looks staid and grey during the day but glows iridescent blue at night. Inside, an open, all-white floor plan pushes the books to the perimeter, surrounding the children’s library and the multi-zoned reading, research and gathering spaces.

Don’t miss: To emphasize that this new facility is open to all, the word “Library” is written in English on the outer wall of one side of the building and written in German, Korean and Arabic on the other three.

Central Library, Seattle, Washington
When it opened in 2004, the New York Times’ Herbert Muschamp described the downtown Central Library in Seattle, Wash., as “a blazing chandelier to swing your dreams upon.”

Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas, the unusually-shaped steel and glass building with 30 miles of books arranged in an ingenious ‘Books Spiral’ has become one of the city’s most visited attractions. “More than 2 million people visit the Central Library year,” said Seattle Public Library spokesperson Andra Allison. “You can’t go anywhere in the building without seeing tourists with cameras.”

Don’t miss: Take a guided or self-guided tour, but don’t miss the view from the 10th floor.

British Library, London
With more than 150 million items, London’s British Library is one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive. In addition to public tours and events, the library displays world treasures from a collection that includes the 1215 Magna Carta, Leonardo da Vinci’s notes on architecture and arithmetic, illuminated manuscripts and Shakespeare’s First Folio.

Don’t miss: Current exhibitions explore the role of supernatural phenomena in the work of Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘lost’ novel.

Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark
Founded in 1648, Denmark’s Royal Library holds printed Danish works dating back to 1482. The original 1906 library building on Copenhagen’s harbor was expanded in 1999 with an angular, shiny black granite addition now referred to as the Black Diamond. Today, the library is one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions and is home to the National Museum of Photography, a 600-seat concert hall with its own 10-member ensemble, a garden, a roof-top terrace and several exhibition spaces.

Don’t miss: Public tours of the old and new library buildings are offered each Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m.

Trinity College Library, Dublin, Ireland
Dublin’s Trinity College Library is Ireland’s largest. It’s also one of the country’s biggest tourist attractions, mostly because the library is home to the Book of Kells, a lavishly decorated, four-volume illuminated manuscript created by Celtic monks in the 9th century. Two volumes are displayed to the public at a time: one is open to a significant, decorated page; another shows two pages of script.

Don’t miss: In addition to the Book of Kells and other related manuscripts, visitors may tour the library’s Long Room, which contains oak bookcases filled with 200,000 of the library’s oldest books, a collection of marble busts depicting writers, philosophers and men connected with the college and Ireland’s oldest harp, which dates to the 15th century.

Which special libraries have you visited in your travels? Add your suggestion below.

When you do, rush over to the pre-security departure lobby of the International Terminal Main Hall to see the exhibition of automata and “self-moving” mechanical creations on loan from the Morris Museum in Morristown New Jersey, which houses the incredible Murtogh D. Guinness Collection of Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata.

Here’s a link to a radio piece I produced about the collection for NPR back in the 2005.