I've been wanting to start doing some of these weekly blog memes, and this topic seemed like a good place to start! I doubt I'll do it every week, but I'm sure at least some of the topics will strike my fancy. :-)
So here are ten of my favorite cities, in no particular order.
1) Bath, England - I lived here for five months while studying abroad in the fall of 1999. I loved every minute of it, and should the opportunity ever arise to take a job there, somehow or another, you'd better believe I would jump at it. It's a beautiful, elegant city in a lovely part of the country.
2) London, England - London is about 1.5 hours from Bath by train, and I spent a decent amount of time there during my semester abroad. Normally huge cities don't really appeal to me (you'll note the exclusion of New York City from this list of mine) but London somehow felt welcoming and homey to me in a way that New York and Chicago, to name two other big cities, never have and never will. There is so much history and culture there. It's a city I could never, ever be bored in.
3) Washington, DC - Jim and I lived in the DC suburbs for a few years after college. While the suburbs themselves didn't really do it for us, we LOVED the city. It's another place I could never be bored - and as a bonus, there are so many great things to do there that are totally and utterly FREE.
4) Portland, OR - I fell in love with Portland the minute we drove over the river from Washington, and I immediately felt comfortable and right at home. Portland has awesome restaurants, a great transit system, Powell's, beautiful gardens, a view of Mount Hood, proximity to the Columbia River Gorge (which has to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth), and a gazillion yarn stores. What more would one need?
5) San Francisco, CA - I think the topography alone is enough to put San Francisco on this list. Living in a place as I do, where hills are blasted out with regularity so that we can flatten the roads, I find the fact that San Francisco even EXISTS to be fascinating. ;-) And oh, the views.
6) Seattle, WA - More than anything else, I loved Seattle's location, with all of the water on one side and the mountains on the other. As with San Francisco, the scenery is to die for. And they have an awesome public library building. :-)
7) Boston, MA - Even though I don't go there nearly as often as I'd like, as a New Englander I think of Boston as "my" city!
8) Burlington, VT - We went to Burlington for the first time a couple of years ago and just adored it. It's a small city, yet has plenty to do, and it has a real West Coast vibe somehow, despite being here in New England.
9) Paris, France - I probably don't even need to expand on this one. On a more personal note, though, I visited Paris all by myself, without speaking a word of French, and lived to tell the tale. It sounds like such a small thing, but it was one of the most valuable experiences of my life and I am so glad I did it.
10) Montreal, Quebec - I can't go to Paris often, but I CAN go to Montreal, which is, as far as I'm concerned, the next best thing. No, it's not quite the same, but the cliche -- that Montreal feels like a little bit of Europe right here in North America -- is absolutely true.