I apologize for missing last week’s Saturday Night post. It completely slipped my mind that I had volunteered to do the Saturday evening posts. I was even going to go into the back room and ask who was supposed to post.
Turned out it was me.
Tonight’s post category comes from my travels. I have been lucky to have traveled extensively (although nowhere near as much as Dok) and there are some cities that stand out as being particularly interesting and fun to travel to. Thank you to all that have provided suggestions on previous posts and I will be incorporating those into future posts.
As I mentioned in the first post, the plan is for this to be an ongoing off-season series on Saturday nights in which I present to you my five favourite somethings and then you comment and tell me:
- How I’m wrong
- Your Top Five
- Suggestions for the next top five list
Without further ado, I present to you my Top Five Cities To Visit!
1 – Cancún
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Not only is the setting gorgeous. Not only are there tons of options of where to stay. Not only is there awesome nightlife. You get all of this in our continent within a 6 hour flight of most places we live in.
The water is warm, the food is delicious, and your dollar (Canadian or otherwise) goes a long way. Even further if you choose an All-Inclusive hotel. Plus, most people speak English so you don’t need to learn Spanish.
Pros:
Gorgeous location on the Caribbean with multiple North American influences.
Great beaches and nightlife.
Very good value for money.
Cons:
The cultural stuff is far away and must be sought.
It is popular and you can get idiots on vacation with you.
2 – London
Until the whole Brexit thing, London was the gateway to Europe. The cheapest flights across the Atlantic have always been to London, no matter where in North America you are coming from.
There is a shitload of history there and lots of things to see. Over the course of the last twenty years, London has become really cosmopolitan and the things to see, do, and eat have greatly expanded and improved.
Also, they all speak English even though you may not quite understand it.
Pros:
Easy and cheap to get there.
Many things to see and an easy entry into Europe to explore further.
Cons:
The weather sucks.
It’s an expensive city.
3 – Vancouver
I went to BeerGuyRob’s home town back in 2015 when the Women’s World Cup was on and I caught some games at BC Place. I also managed to grab a drink with friend-of-DFO Trevor Risk (who has written episodes of Letterkenny) at a speakeasy near Chinatown.
I loved everything about this city.
We stayed at an Airbnb on False Creek, so we took the Aquabus many places, including to the games. We rode bikes in Stanley Park and walked through downtown Vancouver to eat and shop.
Vancouver is a wonderful place to visit with an amazing view, tons of activities to do, and very friendly people.
Pros:
Easy to get to and around due to excellent public transport
They speak English!
Very friendly people and lots of cool things to do
Cons:
Hotels are expensive.
4 – Paris
Have you ever been to Paris? If you have, you understand why it is on this list. This city has been the model for many cities throughout the world including México City, where I was born.
The experience is unlike any other. Paris is France. It is the center of the French world. If you want to understand the French and the French influence on the world, you need to go to this city.
It is not the easiest city to visit. It requires you to do your part to understand the locals both in language and custom. If you do, however, it will provide you a wonderful and rewarding experience.
Pros:
Unique place unlike anywhere else in the world
Many things to focus on and see.
The food is amazing
Cons:
You need to make an effort to get the benefits of this place
You get the best of France here and also the worst
5 – Tokyo
Speaking of difficult places to visit, I’d have to take Tokyo as one of the toughest. The movie “Lost in Translation” did a great job of describing what it is like for an outsider.
However, as long as you understand that you will never understand Tokyo, you will have a wonderful time. It is a place that demands you to accept it for what it is and respect it.
You won’t understand anyone. They probably won’t understand you. With some effort and goodwill, however, you will discover a world you never knew existed and you will love it.
Pros:
Once you’ve been there once, you will never forget it.
You will experience things you won’t find anywhere else
Cons:
You need patience and an open mind
It won’t be easy
***
What say you in the comments?
Hold on a sec. Florida Atlantic?
My Blazers lost to them in the C-USA final, but we beat them at the end of the regular season when they had a 20 game win streak going, and were in the top 25. Wouldn’t it be something if they win the NCAA’s and UAB wins the NIT?
Aren’t both schools leaving Conference USA after this academic year?
Yeah, for the AAC.
Rimini
Copenhagen
San Diego
Rome
Munich
Munich is awesome.
Found a video of the UConn-Gonzaga game.
https://twitter.com/DansoAjydanso/status/1639764067224018944
Finally I have to mention my hometown of LA. It’s gorgeous, hideous, crazy, dangerous, beautiful and aligns perfectly with my politics. I have the stink of LA in my bones and goddammit if I could afford to retire here I would.
I love this town. I hate the traffic and I’ve been here for 31 years running.
And just like that…I heard gunshots.
Stay low, move fast.
Looking unimportant is also helpful.
Kansas State oh-fer last eight Elite Eight games, breaking their own record. That’s WVU-level failure.
Agreed with London – also because they stole ALL THE COOL THINGS and now display them in their museums. (& pubs & with real ale)
Hoonorable (sic) mention: Den Hague. So many cool lil museums & cafes, pubs, etc.
Overlooked stat: Since 1999 UConn is 7-2 in Elite Eight games, and 10-0 in the Final Four and National Championship. Why isn’t this more well known?
They lost to Michigan State in the Final Four in 2009.
That said UConn has a much better post-season record since the 1990’s is better than most of the so-called Blue Bloods.
And they wiped out Duke at least twice, which is reason enough for sainthood.
I actually met Kevin Ollie in a bar on campus one night. He was very nice, in that he was trying to break up a fight between my brother and some other guy and was very understanding when I got in his face and told him to fuck out of there. That part was completely my fault, since I thought he was trying to be the third man in and he really was just trying to keep people from getting arrested. Nice guy, but if he’s 6’4″ then either I’m 6’7″ or he was standing in a hole in the floor. Which given the bar we were in I would not rule out.
In no particular order.
Singapore
Tokyo
Lisbon/Porto
Cape Town
Rome
Also, I assume I had a very good time in Prague; I don’t really remember.
Good pivo will do that..
Good boxing match on ESPN right now if you’re into that sort of thing.
From the looks of things it won’t be on much longer.
I question the Ghanian fighter’s strategy of trying to break the American’s hands with his jaw, but I can’t say it’s not working in the short-term.
Long-term I suspect there may be some drawbacks.
Balls there is a reason we get along.
The top 4 are brilliant and number 5 is bucket list.
Melbourne would be there for me.
Bucket list is Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Helsinki and Tehran.
I’d also like to see Tehran, but as a white, middle-aged American who sort of looks like a cop I’m pretty sure my stay would be extended beyond my anticipated date of departure.
I’m just gonna wear a lot of red and white and say ‘eh’ a lot.
Some day I will make my way to Melbourne and catch a Footy game at the MCG.
Say when and I’m there.
I’m not much of an international traveler, (South Africa and St. John, VI, wraps up the list, and I managed to avoid cities in both), but in the US I would say New Orleans, Chicago, Key West, Kansas City, (fuck you, I had a great time), and New York, New York, the town so nice they named it twice.
My favorite city right now is the basketball capital of the world, Storrs, CT.
My god what an absolute beatdown.
Texas is fucking over the Big 12 the same as Da U did to the Big East 20 years ago, so murderdeathkill either.
Texas is not an easy opponent at al. AT ALL. UConn-Texas, (I’m assuming Texas will roll Miami), is going to be the real national championship.
If UConn plays Creighton, (who are something like 7-1 against Hurley), it’ll be the game to decide the best Big East team to lose to Xavier in the Big East tournament.
The bargaining stage already.
Final Four banners are for real, though.
In the NFL, eh, not so much.
I will admit, however, that earlier in the year I was talking to some friends and said that a finish in the Elite 8 and the Big East finals, (the latter did not happen), would be a success, and now that they’re in the Final Four if they don’t win the whole thing I am prepared to be a HUGE hypocrite.
Three consecutive head coaches have been to Final Fours, but Cousinfuckers were always a hemorriod in Calhoun’s bony ass.
What the hell happened with Ollie? That thing kind of disappeared.
Oh the Ollie thing has all sort of twists and turns. He had a bad record and they were losing a ton of money, but Ollie wasn’t the one who decided to go to the AAC and replace Big East rivalries with Tulsa, Tulane, and East Carolina. Allegedly he wasn’t much of a recruiter, but who can gets recruits in Storrs, CT to play games in Houston and wherever SMU is? I do think he had checked out at the end, and he probably deserved to be fired, but UConn tried to fire him on bad conduct grounds (rumors about hanging out in strip joints, which were almost certainly bullshit; some recruiting violations that may or may not have been true, but it’s not like he was Sean Miller or Bruce Pearl), so they could get out of paying his contract, instead of just saying he wasn’t doing a good job.
Ollie sued, (using an employment attorney who is a legend in CT), and got $11 million from the State, with an arbitrator basically saying that the State was full of shit and had fired him for being a bad coach, (which he was), and not because of any moral/legal failing, (which there was no real proof of.
tl;dr. The State tried to fire him and weasel out of paying the contract, Ollie sued and they had to pay him.
Also Ollie’s national championship was with players recruited and coached by Calhoun. On his own Ollie never did anything of note, but was probably crippled by UConn;s decision to leave the Big East. No win situation.
I haven’t done much international travel YET apart from Mexico and Jamaica. Ocho Rios was fun so I’ll go domestic.
New Orleans
Chicago
New York
Austin
Pittsburgh
I’m changing this list starting in September.
I’ve not been to Lisbon yet but have been to Porto. I expect a full report-ugal
Oh you’ll get one. Yes indeed.
I drove past Pittsburgh once. I do want to get out to that gorgeous baseball stadium though.
It’s number one hands down and I’ve been to more than 20 stadiums.
Also I feel remiss for leaving San Francisco off the list. Wonderful town. I basically lived there for 2 months on a couple of work assignments. It’s, shall we say, changed.
I’d like to see the Trop once, just to experience the dumpiness.
I saw a WVU-Temple game at the old Vet in Philly. It was such a beautiful disaster of a dump. Between the Vet’s Vet-ness and Temple foobawl, it was performance art.
A Dirt Stillers-Dirt Bucs game at the Trop would be a worthy spiritual successor to that.
Horatios JV hoops is essentially the one non-detestable Northeast sprots team that exists. The Whalers should be the other.
You’re my favorite WCS, don’t tell the others.
BAWHSTAHN CAWLEDGE has all the storied history of the pre-2001 Patriots with the fandom of 80 For Brady. It’s weird and kind of gross.
You mean Chestnut Hill College, and it’s an absolute joke athletically these days. They took an absolute poisoned pill to join the ACC. Fuck ’em.
/UConn joins ACC in two years because FOO’BALL, HURR DURR!!!
Yes, well, nevertheless
I’d rather have UCONN in the Big 12 than BYU. I just don’t see the Mormon thing fitting in the Big 12. UCONN is a better academic prestige, too. Hell, they’d walk right into the conference lead in that regard.
If UConn goes anywhere it’s going to be the ACC, assuming that the ACC doesn’t also implode from the pressure of football. And I’ll fucking hate it. Connecticut, and the northeast in general, doesn’t have the need for football that the SEC, Big-12, Big 10 does. The basketball in the Big East is sensational, and I’m afraid that they’ll fuck it up again just for a chance to get violated by the likes of FSU and Clemson twice a year.
Catholics are good at staying together and turning anything profitable. The Big East figured it out twice. Vatican still going strong, despite well… everything.
Does UConn really need foobawl that much to stay at the D-I level? Drop there, but move back to the Big East for all other sprots that make sense geographically and logistically. The ACC is going to die by the end of this decade. Football is going to kill it, so stay out.
I’m starting to think history will look foundly at WVU (and TCU) joining the Big 12 when they did.
Gonzaga may be down at the end of the 2nd quarter, but just you watch them come back in the 3rd.
Fightin’ Horatios Semi-Finalist Banner that means something!
The Dwarf needs to start stretching…
I’m seeing a lot of Quebec on the comments. DFOCon: Canadian edition in 2023?
Summer or Winter?
Either. Though I will be in Montreal in November for Bruce Springsteen
Shit, I should have included Montreal on my list.
-Benedict Arnold
Montreal is also good, but had to give a slight edge to Quebec
I was thinking of going to Winter Carnival this year, but a new kitchen got in the way. I would very much like to see Quebec again, considering the last time I was 3-years-old and apparently did nothing but throw up all over everything.
I’m laying a bet on Gonzaga to win right now. Dude tells me the fix is in.
That was a damn fine hawkey game between one decaying franchise and one zombified one.
Taking a page from Gumbygirl, no specific order but–
Edinburgh
Santander and/or other parts of the North of Spain, eg Rioja
Ljubljana
London
Copenhagen
Ljubljana is beautiful. Did you get to visit Maribor? I liked it better.
Only one night in Ljubljana, can’t wait to go again and explore the country more.
one night in Ljubljana sounds like Murray Head workshopping a follow up
Both are superb.
My five cities:
-Portland, Maine
-Nice, France (you can take the 40-minute train ride to Monte Carlo)
-Toronto
-Cardiff, Wales
-Big Sky, Montana
I’ve done much less travel, especially since college. However:
Nashville
London
Edinburgh
Quebec
Shanghai
Yeah, a good portion of it was college visits.
Astana, Kazakhstan
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan
Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station
Fermont, Quebec
Cork, Ireland
This list demands stories and explanations.
The unique weirdness of all of them. I’m a Geography professor. Learning about faraway places like Rand McNally is fun. Each of my list are distinct in their individual cultures.
I don’t want tourist; I want whatever bizarre means.
I heard amazing things about Quebec City, and when I lived in Montreal I regret I never went there.
Speaking of Montreal, that’s a great town once you get to know it, unless you’re English Canadian, in which case they hate you.
I feel like we’ll have to cover Exploding Whale week for this team.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/25/sport/eugene-exploding-whales-baseball-intl-spt/index.html
Mine’s:
1) Vancouver
2) Quebec City
3) San Diego
4) Pittsburgh
5) Baltimore
Five I really didn’t like:
1) NYC
2) Montreal
3) Miami
4) Washington
5) Youngstown
Fuck yeah, Youngstown!
What about London Ontario?
Hahahaha
Neutral, eh?
THIS GONZAGA TEAM, I CALL THEM JANUARY 6TH INSURRECTIONISTS BECAUSE THEY’RE THROWING BRICKS AND NOT ACCOMPLISHING ANYTHING AT ALL.
This just in, Ashlii Babbit is still dead.
Can confirm – Vancouver is awesome, even for the introvert.
I don’t usually enjoy visiting cities – crowds are not my thing. These are the exception (so far):
Barcelona
Rome
Sorrento
London
The first 3 the Lady LemonJello and I visited last November and we want to go back.
On the list to explore:
Dublin
Edinburgh
Sydney
I also want to go to Belleau Wood in France.
We stayed a few days at a beautiful hotel in Sorrento. The view from our room was jaw dropping, and the whole town smelled like lemons. Magic.
In no particular order
London
Paris
Montreal
Jacksonville *
Toronto **
*My uncle has a duplex about a 10 minute walk from Jacksonville Beach, so gets a bump. Not sure about anything else there
**live an hour drive away, so also gets a bump and has Sooooo much to do
Love that you lumped Jacksonville and London together! Makes sense, doesn’t it?
– S. Khan
You are god damned right!
I’d love to take 6 months and fuck off to Europe and tour a bunch of places.
If you pay for it, I’ll join you
Same.
I call little spoon
Snuggle up, buttercup. Let’s go.
That’s my retirement program but instead of 6 months it’ll be infinitum.
Superb Owls in the Final Four
Witchita
Witchita
Witchita
Witchita
Witchita
-P. King
The Five Burroughs of my VERY OWN NYC!
1.a. Acela Quiet Car MAYBE
I have indusrty meetings in Cancun this fall. I’m on a full-on blitzkrieg so we’ll see how well MEX autborities handle THIS.
Dude! That’s great!
No particular order
London
Dublin
Rome
Vancouver
Edinburgh
I wish I had spent more time in Edinburgh. It’s beautiful and I love the Scots!
Edinburgh (and Scotland generally) is way up on my list. Will be pondering the full one while I go to a friend’s rec league hockey game to heckle him.
Scotland is for sure on the list
You say you want Baltimora? Ok….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r0n9Dv6XnY
My top:
1) London
2) Sydney
3) Paris
4) Grand Case
5) Quebec City
Don’t think I would put Cancun and Vancouver on my top five, but I agree with the others. Not sure what else I’d put in my top five, but some pleasant surprises for me were Cape Town and Singapore. Also love New Orleans and Montreal and Melbourne.
I had one of my best travel experiences in Tokyo. It was my last night there, was heading off the next morning to a small town whose name I’ve forgotten before moving on to Kyoto. Anyway, I went to a sushi bar near where I was staying and was seated next to this older couple. It was late winter, so I was wearing my fleece zip-up from the Laphroaig distillery, and hanged it on the back of my chair. The gentleman next to me noticed it and asked me about it because he was a whisky fan.
They spoke a modest amount of English, and of course I knew about ten words of Japanese plus whatever my guidebook listed. (This was before Google Translate.) When my beer glass was running low, he poured me a refill from his bottle and said “Japanese tradition.” (Which is apparently true — you’re not supposed to refill your own glass.) When his ran low, I refilled it from mine and said “Canadian tradition.”
So we chatted and ate and drank, and then as we were all finishing, he turns to me and says “we go to bar, drink whiskey?”
Well, dear readers, that is not an invitation I am likely to refuse. So I said of course, and his wife said goodnight and he led me to this hole-in-the-wall place in the neighborhood that had an incredible supply of whiskies from around the world. As you would expect, it was full of whisky afficionados, so I chatted with the bartender, a finance bro sitting near us, and various other folks, as well as my friend from the sushi bar.
The one unfortunate thing was that, as I said, I was leaving Tokyo in the morning, so I had to decline his offer to show me around the next day. But we had a great time drinking some fine malts for the next couple of hours. Eventually he excused himself and we said goodnight. Later I discovered that he had discretely paid the entire bill himself before leaving, the sly bastard.
Anyway, they say to never follow someone to a second location, but I think “we go to bar, drink whisky” is a good exception.
That’s an awesome story!
I agree with all of Balls choices, and I’ve even lived and worked in Vancouver. But the city I most want to visit is:
Hanoi
I’ve been to Ho Chi Minh City but they has all the western business accommodations you could want. But Hanoi is a different animal, and I want to see it before it changes. They the Old Quarter is still authentically in another century, and is like what Hong Kong and Singapore used to be before they became glass skyscrapers.
When I was in Hong Kong, there was still a little left of the old world, but it was quickly disappearing. There was nothing of it left in Singapore.
That’s not to say I didn’t like those cities. If you’re going to Asia, they’re the most accessible to English speakers.
Well, Hong Kong used to be…. Not sure now…