Best Cities OUTSIDE America

No love for Tijuana?

Cabo San Lucas -- on the tip of Baja California -- is a nice place. Not big like other Pacific Coast cities Mazatlan and Puerta Vallerta, but it's getting more and more tourists.

 

Nice avatar, Beef.

 

Calgary over Montreal?

Jesus, only in hockey maybe. That's like picking Buffalo over New York.

We excuse you, Flash, you're from the Maritimes.  

 

Been to Montreal a few times. I prefer Quebec City. It's far more scenic. And I found the people way nicer.

 

Screw those Frenchies.

 

Amsterdam is one of my favorite places on earth. If my wife and i were to ever move to another part of Europe, Amsterdam would be the place....

Oslo is beautiful. I've only been there in the dead of winter and i was so overwhelmed by its beauty that if i don't ever see it in the summer, i still wouldn't feel like i missed out.

Paris. I know its expensive, but walking the streets of Paris is free and is probably one of the most fun things you will do there

Florence---there is a church there called Santa Croce. It houses the tombs of Michaelangelo, Dante, Galileo, and Machiavelli. It's a beautiful church and standing in front of their tombs is a humbling experience (at least it was to me)

Anyone ever been to Japan? I'd love to take a couple weeks and travel through the country. I'm curious to see what Tokyo is like and I'd really like to see Hiroshima. It might sound morbid, but visting that city has always intrigued me.

 

Vienna
Luzerne, Switzerland.
Sydney
Jerusalem

 

Jerusalem is another city i'd love to see. My wife spent a few summers there when she was growing up and loves it. We hope to go there next year (only time and money has prevented us from going--not fear of terrorism). Speaking of the middle east, I'd also love to see Jordan, though I'm not sure how we would be received there so probably put that one off for a little while.

 

There are a lot of place to which I haven't been but would love to go.
Top of the list:
Israel
Italy
Greece (especially the Greek island)

 

You fuckig asshole you forgot to put down Paris, France you idiot.

 

I spent summer-fall of 1987 in Portugal on a cultural exchange program and have wanted to go back ever since. At the time, Portugal, Spain and Greece were the three best bargains for American travelers, but that allegedly has changed with those countries' entry into the European Union.

Lisbon is a neat place, but I spent more time out in the suburbs of Monte Estoril and Cascais than in the city proper. The family I stayed with in Monte Estoril lived about a 10-minute walk from the beach.

Most of my time in the country was spent in rural areas, but I got to visit cities like Porto, Beja and Coimbra enough to learn that you don't have to hit all the big tourist traps to have a good time. That made it a little easier to not be disappointed by not visiting the Algarve, a big tourist area on the south coast that supposedly drew so many Brits that you didn't even need to speak Portuguese. One of my hosts let me spend a weekend at his family's vacation house in Povoa de Varzim just as a hurricane hit the region for the first time in 20 years.

Part of the program was a three-week break during which we were allowed to go and do as much as we wanted/could afford as long as we were back in Lisbon in time to catch the plane home (there was a kid from Ohio on the same program with whom I traveled most of the time). We kind of hustled through Spain, but did spend a day walking around Barcelona. If I had been as fluent in Catalan as I was in Castling (which was just enough to buy food, drink and train tickets), I might have spent the whole time there.

I actually wound up spending most of my break in Austria and West Germany (Bavaria, actually), hopscotching from Munich to Garmisch to Innsbruck. A weekend in Vienna was followed by spending all of Thanksgiving week in Salzburg, where I almost drank myself into rehab. I didn't miss turkey or pumpkin pie nearly as much as the football. If only XM or Sirius had been around back then (can you even get those in Euroville?).

France was being douche-baggy even for France that year, and it was a big hassle just getting a visa in order to ride the train through. All I saw of Paris was a gorgeous sunrise one November morning as I tried to get from one train station to another on my way back to Lisbon.

As for places I'd like to visit someday:
Perth (my sister lives about a two-hour drive from there)
Capetown
Johannesburg
Rio de Janeiro
Buenos Aires
Montevideo
and, of course, all those northern and middle European places I missed out on last time

 

If you can look past the absolute filthiness, then Kingston, Jamaica, is a really cool city. Lived there for 6 months. Cool, and crazy.