I first visited Salzburg 25 years ago. I went back around 5 years ago and it was a completely different city, with over half the population Turkish or Syrian. I've heard that Florence is now teeming with Third World immigrants.
I tend to like the big, but not, capital cities in Asia - e.g. Osaka in Japan, Busan in Korea. They have pretty much everything you get in 1st cities but are much more fun.
@Hdheuehdgdh I thought I was the only person on this MB that knew about Pienza! I’ve been 2x. About 10 years apart. A little gem for sure! Views off the walls looking out over the hills are amazing.
I've been a lot of places (somewhere near 40 countries) but strangely I couldn't really come up with even 5 cities. I tend not to spend a lot of time in cities. When I go somewhere for tourism it's usually in nature (so I'd recommend Rangiroa in Tahiti but there are only about 100 people there so that's not a city, or Whistler BC, which is a town). Punta Cana was nice but I never left the resort so that doesn't count.
The best places are off the beaten path; I was heading to Vienna from southern Hungary once but we got a late start and ended up going through some small Hungarian town with a weird large hill in it. There was a castle at the top of the hill. We decided, fck it, lets skip Vienna and just go up to see the castle. They had a crazy medieval show up there and it cost about 50 cents, we had a nice day and then just went back home, a unique experience I'll never forget.
This is similar to the problem I had when answering the question. Almost all of the places I've loved to visit have been either towns, settlements or the countryside. Or very small places near here people won't have heard of. I haven't been to as many countries as you and a lot of it isn't recent as well, but I did use to really enjoy travelling. I don't tend to spend a lot of time in cities either because I don't like crowds. I'd probably have a much nicer time in Rangiroa than NYC. But wow, is it going to be there for much longer?
Bigger cities, aside from Reykavík which is not that big but I'll put it in this list because it's the capital and biggest city in that area and has plenty of international recognition: Amsterdam Reykjavík Vancouver Washington DC Glasgow/Edinburgh (if the cities are < 1 hour from each other Im' going to cheat and add both)
Smaller cities/towns, these were cool to visit but definitely have some tourist trap areas, besides maybe Seydisfjordur because it's just so small: Killarney Seydisfjordur Rothenburg ob der Tauber Flagstaff Bruges/Ghent (cheating and adding both as they're < 1 hour from each other)
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