Apparently there’s this German guy who visits the same city in Britishland each year for his vacation, and has done so for the past several years. (My Brit Readers can be excused for going “Huh?” when they discover which city has so enthralled our Frequent Visitor.)
Which leads me to ask the question:
Is there any city in the world that you would re-visit for two weeks exclusively each year for the next, say, decade?
(I’m going to assume long lives for the Olde Pharttes among us, bless ’em, who could always just substitute “…for the rest of my life” if they so choose.)
Give reasons, in Comments. It could be a furrin city or a Murkin/NorMurkin one, your choice. In the spirit of the thing, it has to be a city, not a region or a resort. Play the game.
My choice is below the fold:
Unlike a small town like Hull (our German friend’s choice), I’d have to go to a large city so I wouldn’t get bored (more on this further down the page).
Most probably, it would be Paris. Considering that I once considered moving there for good, it’s a relatively easy decision for me, because there’s just something about the City Of Lights which gets to me, every time I go there. as for the time of year: probably October, when the humid summer heat has gone, but the winter hasn’t set in yet.
The nice thing about Paris is that I could stay in different arrondissements each time (that’s not cheating: the food, way of life and such are pretty much the same wherever you are) but if forced to pick just one, I’d probably go with the area around the Luxembourg Gardens:
…because in the unlikely event that I were to get sick of the many bistros around the place:
…then I could just find a bench somewhere in the Lux and dream the day away while people-watching.
…yes, that’s the Luxembourg Gardens for you.
Okay, okay: let’s assume that I’d have to pick a small town or city like Hull, where the locals become the reason I’d go there rather than having a jillion different things to do or see.
That, paradoxically, is an easy one: Devizes, in Wiltshire.
The problem with Devizes is not that I’d love to go back there each year; it’s that (like Paris) I could easily see myself living there pretty much for the rest of my life. The time of year, in this place, is actually irrelevant, although if forced to, I’d pick summer because there’s club cricket to be watched on the many fields around the town. Or October, for that matter, like Paris.
So… those are my choices. Yours are…?
My first thought was Paris, but I wound up with Venice.
Spent time in a lot of large cities on 5 different continents ( not Oz ) including a fair amount of time in Paris where my father-law-lived. I can’t think of a reason to go back and spend any time in any of them. Been there – done that – don’t need to go back. No space – too many people – too much traffic and congestion – everything is expensive, dirty or dangerous. and I’ve already seen the major attractions.
There is a place in a very small town that we return to every year for 2 weeks or so and have for most of the past 60 years, but since we own a home there, does that count?
Of course it does. What is it?
Waterfront property in a small fishing village down east Maine near a national park is as specific as I’m going to get.
I could do that too. Just south of Portland is my favorite area.
I despise big cities, so none of those.
We spent a month in Progreso, Mexico, on the northern tip of the Yucatan peninsula. Small beach town that has a cruise port. Loved the vibe and the people who weren’t tourists. We almost bought a retirement home there, but didn’t want the hassle of maintaining it when we weren’t in residence. I could certainly go back each year, in February when it’s coldest here, to get a refill of sun and sand.
At the risk of being labeled a ‘stain, and if the times now were as they were about 50 years ago, I’d like to spend 2 weeks in Washington DC.
After all, I’ve bought a big bunch of it. Say, the Smithsonian, as one example. I’d marvel at the architecture of the capitol – all the little details.
And, and foreign place any where in the world with 2 weeks worth of architecture and art to experience.
Not a big fan of cities, although I do like my home town, Cincinnati. Having just come back from a visit to SE Michigan (Detroit, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and suburbs), I must say there’s very little about any city that appeals to me. However, I could easily spend two weeks a year in Gatlinburg, TN. Not for the town itself, but for the avail of the surrounding countryside. And here lately, SWMBO and I have taken to a little burg in Western Ohio, Celina, at the west end of Grand Lake. I suppose, if I were to regularly spend a decades-long string of fortnights there, I’d have to get a boat and acquire a lake cottage.
I try to spend a couple of weeks every year in Key West
Paris, if it were 1978. It’s a shithole now and getting worse.
The Fetching Dr. Topcat and I have gone to Portugal twice in the past 24 months and I could easily return there every year, especially to Lisbon. We are going to the Azores in May, then split 10-14 days in Lisbon and Porto, and many points in between. I am unencumbered by employment these days, so most of my time is spent coordinating GME/CEUs for my wife, ideally in sunny, warm places in Europe (never again, Cartagena).
London.
We have a cottage deep in rural British Columbia where we spend a few months total every year and that’s bloody enough rustication for me, it’s off to the big city.
London has lots and lots of entertainment from west end musicals and dramas, thousands of fabulous pubs, night spots, dance bars you name it. There are many big museums and galleries and a hundred or two quirky small ones. Museum of the Canals and Charles Dickens’ former house for example. Castles, forts, mansions, history galore.
London English is accented but easy to follow so I and the locals don’t have to suffer through my appalling French and marginally better German or non-existent others.
The food is great, good English fare and food from every corner of the earth.
There are plenty of parks and green spaces and walking paths all over. A walk along both banks of the the Thames can take a week or more in greater London alone. Public transportation is very efficient and cheap.
London, especially accommodation in hotels is hugely expensive but Air B’nB and Booking.com can usually find us something close to reasonable. I’d rather spend it travelling than leave it to my kids, who don’t need it anyway.
Any city at all in Spain is #2. The Spanish do so-so food, the wine is fantastic and the cities are the most architecturally beautiful in the world. The Spanish don’t to ugly well.
I really like the Texas Hill Country. Yeah I know that Fredericksburg can be a tourist trap at certain times of the year, but there are plenty of small towns in the area that are full of friendly people who aren’t after your last dollar. I have friends in Kerrville, just south of Fredericksburg and its a laid back place. I know that I’m talking about an area rather than a specific place, but this old man is done with big cities. I would be very comfortable with a yearly (or even more often) stay in Fredericksburg. My interest isn’t so much in seeing or doing things as relaxing and enjoying the years I’ve got left.
Bordeaux is where I could be satisfied with. The food is great, the wine better, and it is not too far from Paris. The French there are not snobs and it’s not overrun with tourists .
I’ll second Kim’s preference for Paris. I’ve only spent two and a half weeks of my life there and not seen even half of the places and things I want to see. Only medical issues, and French strikes and “uprisings” have kept me away. Dammit.
The small town I’d pick right now would be either Titusville or Cocoa Beach, Florida. I’m a space nut, and it would only be a short drive to see a rocket launch or two from the Kennedy Space Center.
Find a place near Space View Park in Titusville. Being a chair and a cooler and watch every launch. We took the kids to KSC last year, then watched a launch from the park right at sundown. It was magnificent.
Many choices here for me. Paris for sure is in the top-5, as is Munich (Bavaria in general rather than just Munich proper), Dingle in Ireland. But for practical reasons, for me it would be Ouray, Colorado. As a Jeep enthusiast I could spend the rest of my days exploring new trails, abandoned mines and mining roads, ghost towns, camping in the San Juans, whitewater rafting, zip lining–once–and then taking side-trips to Moab. Yessir, Ouray would be it.
I’m with GT3Ted. There’s a place in mid-Michigan with a family house on a small lake and about a mile from a Great Lake. I think we’re going to move there when I retire.
Wonderful golf in the summer, great trails in the Huron Nat’l Forest, and it’s pretty affordable.
The downside is the lack of cultural amenities that big cities boast. But there’s also a lack of seriously criminal elements running around.
Big city overseas – Stockholm, Sweden in June. Venice of the North. Most all locals I’ve met speak good English, are friendly and proud of their heritage, the place is squeaky clean, not poisoned by modern architecture, and not yet overrun by sand people. Lots of good food, especially seafood, lots of entertainment and culture, gorgeous parks and waterways with hundred year old water taxis to ride about, and delightful weather.
Small town (if overseas is a requirement) – Varengeville, Normandy, France. Quaint, great food, nice people, easy pace of life right on the Channel, lots of history nearby, and a short drive to Paris if you need big city for a day.
Until I am too old or too broke (or both), I will spend at least 2 weeks in August in Scotland. I absolutely love Fringe in Edinburgh, and I could spend a week at a time on Mull and Iona. (I’m a MacLean sept, so I suspect it’s genetic call home.)
Interestingly, I would probably live in Glasgow, but I think my 2 week stay the first time was too long, and I’m a bit burned out on it as a tourist. The dirty little secret of Glasgow is that it was first built on tobacco money, so very little there is older than the equivalents in the US. The few things that are are neat, but the only thing better about Glasgow than Cambridge MA is the trains to the rest of Scotland.
It’s funny, when you said Glasgow was built on tobacco money, it made me think you might be referring to Glasgow, KY.
Spent a wonderous and wonderful dozen years in Europe in the 80’s & early 90’s courtesy of Uncle Sam’s Traveling Air Circus. I lived in Felixstowe and Orford, Suffolk in the UK & near Kaiserslautern, Germany. I’d go back to Woodbridge, Suffolk if I had to choose a city-ish place, but Orford would be my first choice. Old smuggling town of around 700 folks; the pub has been there since the 13th century, the castle & church are from the 10th. 2 weeks a year, every year? Yes, please! (Only 2??)
I’m in my early 80s so declining orthopedic health has dampened my lust for travel. Let me make some comments from experience of my world travel.
1) Victoria, BC, Canada during the 1980s was a delight, picturesque, marvelous cuisine (French, German, Greek, British, Canadian, even Swiss). Safe & Friendly. Accessible from USA three different Ferries each with a marvelous route and there were two ships that did a Seattle to Victoria round trip for a few years and also a Jet boat or ground effect bot that for all I know may still be operating. The decline in Victoria was evident in the 90’s and we stopped going there before the 2000’s.
2) Maui. Vacationed there circa thirty five times. Never tired of the island. There always were marvelous sights, places to visit, things to do, and great food either to prepare one’s self or eat out. Met a Frenchman one year and during my daily early morning beach walk in Waialea remember him saying that there were two locations on the earth with the most clement climate that he had experienced and they were the lee shore of Maui and some locations in Chile.
Dan Kurt
Osaka, Japan for the food and the sights, whenever the tourist boom dies down. In Namba, (a big eating and drinking district) I swear more than half the people were foreigners. You’ve got plenty of obvious ones like me, but a lot of Chinese and Koreans too. The cultural differences are obvious. I could easily spend two weeks and eat something different every day. I cannot imagine running out of sights to see, but if I did, Kyoto is close.
For a small city, Hiroshima. It’s got good food, and Miyajima is worth the short trip by train or street car and the ferry.
For some reason, it seemed half of Germany was in Japan earlier this month. I kept meeting German tourists in hotel elevators and on the trains.
I’m not a city person. I can do a night or two in a city and that’s about it. They’re too loud and too crowded.
I have returned to Louisville several times but it’s a rather dirty city with a lot of homelessness. I’ve been to Western Michigan a number of times. Western Michigan is beautiful but a few days is enough.
JQ
You’ve GOT to get out more.
I’m living in Grand Rapids, Michigan now. Nice place to live, but unless you’re one heck of a Gerald For or Amway fan, I can’t imagine a reason for visiting it.
Without a doubt, St. Petersburg, Russia, from May 15 through May 30, which is the period they call White Nights, where it never gets truly dark and the weather is temperate. Aside from the fact that some of the most beautiful woman in the world inhabit the city, I enjoy Russian history, culture, cuisine.
Firenze. End of story.
When I was a boy, there was a man at church who traveled a lot. I asked if had ever been to Germany, someplace I wanted to go. . He said yes, and I asked him what it’s was like. He replied that he didn’t know as he never landed there.
He was a navigator in a B-24. I still have the large eagle pin off his 50-mission crush he gave me.