Lehigh Valley International

Founded in 1746, Princeton is one of the oldest universities in America and among the most beautiful — a campus of collegiate Gothic towers, ivy, and courtyards in a leafy New Jersey town. Nassau Hall, built in 1756, was the largest stone building in the colonies, briefly served as the capitol of the United States in 1783 (the Continental Congress met here), and still bears scars from a cannonball fired during the 1777 Battle of Princeton. The town and university have hosted an extraordinary concentration of minds: Albert Einstein spent his last decades here at the Institute for Advanced Study, walking to his office on Mercer Street, and the campus and town have appeared in everything from "A Beautiful Mind" to F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels.

One of the oldest and most beloved fly-in restaurants in America. Pilots have been landing at Sussex Airport and walking to the Chatterbox since the 1960s. On summer weekends, the ramp fills with Cessnas, Pipers, and Bonanzas. The restaurant serves classic American diner food — burgers, shakes, fries — but the real draw is the community. This is what the $100 hamburger tradition is all about.

The 1921 Hangar No. 1 at Lakehurst — National Historic Landmark, 966 feet long, large enough to hold the Hindenburg with room to spare. Where four U.S. Navy rigid airships (Shenandoah, Akron, Macon, plus borrowed Los Angeles) were based 1921-1939. The actual 1937 disaster site is marked by a chain-link outline of where Hindenburg fell, with a memorial plaque listing the 36 dead. The Navy Lakehurst Historical Society runs guided tours by appointment (security clearance required — it's an active military base). Among the largest interior volumes of any wood-frame structure ever built, the hangar still has the original "ship" mooring rails on its floor. The most famous 32 seconds in aviation history happened 200 yards from the front door.

Liberty Island sits in upper New York Harbor, about 1.6 miles southwest of Manhattan's Battery. The 305ft statue (designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, internal frame by Gustave Eiffel) was dedicated October 28, 1886. From altitude, Lady Liberty is surprisingly small — the surrounding harbor, Ellis Island just north, and the Manhattan skyline rising to the northeast give the scale. Ellis Island processed over 12 million immigrants between 1892 and 1954. Both islands sit in the Hudson estuary where the river meets the harbor.