Ha that's exactly what I thought. I live in one of those places (#27, Brno) and there are a number of bars listed by name which are already a little tricky to get seated in. Luckily there's still not many tourists, the really good bars are slightly out of the centre and aren't usually listed.
I would be interested to see some statistics at the end of 2016, to see if the article had a measurable impact. Actually they did one in 2015 too, so it should be possible to check that now. But I would be leaning towards no, I don't think this article will cause any significant increase in tourism.
Having visited a number of cities in the US, I have to say I agree with Washington DC here - I found it to have the most touristy things to do, be a great place for exploring on foot and home to good bars and restaurants. Not a place many people from across the pond have as their first choice (usually NYC, Vegas, San Francisco or LA) but my favourite city of the lot. And seeing all the monuments lit up at night is just amazing.
I'm always surprised DC isn't higher on the list for tourists. The museums alone make it worth the trip.
If you're already in NYC, it's a pretty short train ride (by American standards at least) to DC. I think it's about 3 hours by Amtrak, just a bit longer than the Eurostar from London to Paris.
Having grown up in North Dakota, I am deeply confused why tourists would want to visit any part of it (#5). I'm shocked it shares a list with Barcelona and Carribean islands.
Given this is the nyt it is my cynical guess that the nd tourist board paid for their listing as a way to try and buffer the state from the fracking downturn.
I'm interpreting the list as "52 places you might not have considered" because in each of their categories (national park, metro, attractions, etc.) many obvious - and IMO better - choices are avoided, at least for the US.
Agreed - it would likely be trivial to come up with a list of 52 tourist meccas that everyone's heard of. Washington, DC, London, Moscow, etc - I mean you could probably visit the 52 largest national capitals and have a great tourist experience.
It's nice to see a list with places I never would have considered, even if it is odd to see ND and St. John on the same list.
Haven't been to North Dakota, but a few years ago I went to Montana (parts look very similar to the picture they included). It was almost by chance I went, didn't really have a hand in planning the trip but-
It was absolutely breath-taking, and I won't forget how it felt to stand in those hilly fields for a long time. Being at the exact same spot as the Battle of Little Big Horn, walking in quiet with no cell phone signal... It was all wonderful.
Oh yeah, Montana is absolutely beautiful. When I moved to California for school I drove through and was absolutely amazed. Western ND is like eastern Montana, which is much different than western Montana. Then ND gets incredibly flat like the picture in the article as you go east. Most people from Montana really don't like eastern Montana.
The national parks are beautiful in ND. It would be like me saying I'm confused why the Caribbean is on the list because I grew up on the ocean. I'm in and around the ocean almost everyday still, so taking a vacation to see more ocean isn't that exciting.
It always amuses me that that it's "Turin, Italy" but "Providence, Rhode Island". I guess they assume an American audience but it's still strange that they don't mention the country for places in the US of A.
It's also "Kansai, Japan", which is kind of like declaring that "East Coast, USA" is now hip. Kansai, if the name doesn't ring a bell, being the broad region that contains 7 Japanese prefectures (~states), the cities of Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe, and a total of around 22 million people.
Have you read the New York times? As someone who lives ~5 hours away from New York, it is still occasionally hyper-local to where I don't recognize the names of places it mentions.
I have no idea why an American newspaper, NYT or otherwise, would be writing for anything other than an American audience.
One thing that's weird for a lot of Europeans is that the US has exactly one national newspaper, USA Today. All the other papers are local: NYC, Chicago, LA, Baltimore, etc. The NY Times is a great paper but go past above the fold and is local stories.
Living in Providence, I find it amusing their picture is from Watch Hill, which is as far away from Providence as you can get and still technically be in Rhode Island.
Italy is about the same size as New Mexico. Perhaps it is reasonable to expect, if people know Italy is in Europe, that they might also know Rhode Island is in the United States?
Number 3 on the list is Malta, and I just have to add that one of the best books I have ever read is "The Great Siege: Malta 1565" [1]. It's quite short, but absolutely fascinating. I wrote this in my Amazon review of it:
The story of the siege of Malta in 1565 is absolutely riveting. The Knights of St John, with Grand Master de la Valette, and the Maltese population are attacked and besieged by the numerically superior Turks for the entire summer of 1565. Ernle Bradford does a remarkable job of describing the events in such a way that it almost feels like you are there. Along the way, you also learn a lot about life, war and politics in the 16th century
I wonder how those specific places (bars, restaurants) got there. I live in one of those place and I didn't know about one half (really expensive restaurants, so my fault I guess) of those and the other half (bars) wasn't particularly special. Not a bad selection.. just very arbitrary.
This is a beautiful page, but my god, is it heavy. I'm counting 171 separate requests totaling 31 Mb - excluding the videos. I've not even loaded all videos, and my total is at over 400 Mb now.... Is this acceptable now?
I was really blown away by how much care went into making it perfect on mobile view for both orientations. Each photo is positioned differently to ensure best composition.
But it does feel a but clunky and that size is rather shocking.
Yeah, they've done an impressive job on mobile as well. The numbers I posted are on a desktop machine. I've checked, and it seems to weigh in at only 1.1 Mb on mobile. Pretty neat.
I hate the cruft on simple news articles, but I am completely fine in this case for a special feature like this. The images/videos were beautiful and all served a purpose, and it was mostly lazy-loaded. Yes some initial load time, but a very good user experience.
Just wait until you walk into the family room in 5 years and each person is on his own headset doing his own thing. I love the immersion, but you need to retain a sense of shared experience that we have already lost with time shifting/binge watching.
Followed by a comment saying web browsing in a Virtual Desktop style environment on the Rift isn't very good, and can't be due to screen resolution limitations.
While 31 megs is quite a lot indeed, there is also good amount of content on the page too. I find it far more offensive when pages use couple megs for some short news article with maybe two small pictures.
Very short reviews of the places on the list that I've already seen:
* Brno, Czech Republic - I stayed there just a few days, but even though pretty, the city wasn't very exciting. It's quite cheap and less touristic than Prague, so if you're looking for something less crowded than the capital, it might be a good choice to experience Czech culture
* Barcelona, Spain - one of the most touristic places in Europe, but it totally deserves it. It's not only beautiful and lively, but even if you want to avoid crowded areas, you can book a room a few stations from the center and enjoy the fantastic local culture. I stayed there for a month and as long as you stay away from La Rambla, it's very relaxing place
* Vietnam - I haven't been to Dalat yet, but recently I've visited Ho Chi Minh City and Mui Ne and both are wonderful places. Vietnamese cuisine and coffee, as well as cheerful and very friendly people, make it a perfect place for a low-cost trip.
* Malaga, Spain - way different from Barcelona, with the influence of African culture, it's a good place to spend a few days, but also perfect base for short trips around - from Malaga you can easily get to Gibraltar, Granada, Jerez and Seville
* Phnom Penh, Cambodia - I think that other places in Cambodia like Battambang or Siem Reap are better to visit. Capital of the country is rather crowded and polluted. There's plenty of things to see, however, especially if you know a bit about history of Cambodia, you can constantly feel demons of the past being present in the city.
* Sydney, Australia - I spent 1 week in Melbourne and then 1 week in Sydney, when I was in Australia. I must say I strongly prefer Melbourne as it is more a place to live, while Sydney seems more a business city. Having said that, I highly recommend to visit them both, they're expensive, but wonderful.
Funny, the Phnom Penh photo shows the royal palace but is captioned as "The Independence Monument", which is a radically different-looking structure. Doesn't matter though, I guess. Phnom Penh used to have a lovely sleepy backwater-town feel just a few years ago, but it has kept "developing" and crowding up like crazy, to join the ranks of other South-East Asian capital cities in terms of smog, perma traffic jams, corporate skyscrapers, generic investor/developer-style condominiums etc. Still an awesome city in the region though.
I was indeed going to ask why Jerez?
I've been there a few times for the F1 tests and never really saw much more than that but now I feel that I probably missed something.
Malaga during the 3rd week of August is crazy, during the Feria de Malaga. I confirm that it's a good place to stay for short trips around. If someone likes nice beaches without a lot of people I recommend to go to some beaches in the Cabo de Gata-Níjar natural park.
I went to Cesky Krumlov while I was in the Czech Republic, and driving from Budapest to Prague. It's a cute little town worth staying a night, but the best part was simply driving around the countryside. It's a beautiful area.
Can bring good, yes. But mostly that just means money, which may drive clean up, may make some locals wealthy and others poor and/or displaced. It also brings, unfortunately, cultural imperialism and well, Starbucks.
It can, but more often than not it destroys the thing it is all about.
See: turtles in Greece, quiet beaches and so on.
Nothing like a thundering herd of humans with power gadgets coming in by plane to package holidays centered around hastily constructed hotels and other infrastructure (airports, for instance).
It's interesting to see St Helena on the list. I hadn't realised the airport was actually being built, and is scheduled to open later this year.
I used to work with someone from St Helena. She was just 20 years old, and — understandably — didn't see much future for herself on the island. Perhaps the airport will change that, or at least mean she no longer needs to take two weeks holiday to visit her family by ship.
Haha, they missed us this year? Nepal seems to have a permanent stranglehold on lists like these. It's not surprising, with the earthquake and the ('not a') blockade, they might have wanted to skip this year.
Love Nepal. Running my startup out of Kathmandu....although we face 14 hours of power shortages, a crazy political blockade, shortages in every item imaginable including medicine, silly government taxes and restrictions...the Nepalese people are some of the best I have ever met. To sum up, come and visit, you won't regret it...
Great job! I had had the good fortune to talk to Ravi dai (of OLE Nepal) and pick his brains a couple of times. And then we had a few things planned with OLE (and later OLPC) guys, but they sort of petered out. And since then, everyone has been in haste to get out of there, so I don't have many contacts in Nepal anymore. If you know someone still interested in rural-tech stuff, let me know: I know a few people (myself included) willing to put in a little bit of money each as business investments. : )
If you go to St. Louis, make sure to visit the City Museum (http://www.citymuseum.org/). It is an incredible, unique playground to explore for children and adults alike. It is hard to explain what it is and explanations don't do it justice. To this day it is our fondest memory from the trip to St. Louis.
And take off any fancy shoes before going down a slide! (Or even better, don't wear fancy shoes.) My wife's shoes got ruined by friction in the heel area. Still glad we went, it's an awesome place. :)
Mexico City as #1? Really? Having been there recently, my main objective was to get the hell out of the teeming city and its pool of horrible smog without being killed by the crazy drivers. The rest of Mexico is quite nice, but stay out of the cities.
I had the opposite experience. Such a beautiful city with rich history and culture. Driving was pretty sane. There is indeed air pollution but its been getting lower as the years go along. It is not a perfect city but one of my favorite cities to go visit.
I'm surprised by parent and gp. Mexico City is beautiful and interesting and full of things to do, but driving a car there is a nightmare. My first fifteen minutes behind the wheel there changed my view of traffic and laws forever.
I suggest visiting without a car. If you need one to get to places outside the city, rent only when you're leaving and ask for exact advice about the easiest way out of town.
If we want to be specific about driving, I would not unless its unavoidable. It never even popped in my mind that the complaint about drivers was in reflection of having driven there. If thats the case, agreed. It is so easy and cheap to take a radio taxi I would never even think of taking a taxi. Plus for $100 you can usually get a private car for the day with a driver.
I was there to hike up the nearby volcanos, so taxis weren't practical. I gather there are some amazing museums and churches, but the city's main outdoor features seemed to be smog, litter, and protruding rebar.
Mexico is a great outdoor city. The parks and bike routes are great and abundant and mountains surround the city. Weather is good year-round. Lots of day hikes around the city are easy to get to without a car. Popo or Izta or La Malinche or Nevado de Toluca might require a car ride but you can climb Cerro de San Miguel (14000') or El Águila (14000') from a bus stop. (Popo (18000') is closed anyway because it's an active smoking volcano and Izta (17000') requires a carload of mountaineering gear even if you can find a ride.)
A lot of people here are saying "This list seems extremely arbitrary", and I was of that mindset as well until I got five places into the list and found Teddy Roosevelt NP. The national parks of North Dakota are amazing, and it's hard to describe exactly why you should go. I could say "grand views, few people, and towns that make me laugh" but that doesn't summarize it well at all.
Some of these places should be more and less generalized, however. "Skane, Sweden" ought to be changed to "a less populated region of the Norwegian or Swedish coast, somewhere with a historic lighthouse". I've spent some time on the coast of Norway, and I think it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. Additionally, naming "Kansai, Japan" is ridiculous, it encompasses 22 million people and three major cities (Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe); this is especially ridiculous given that there's also a place on the list with a population of 113.
Grand Rapids, MI? Really? (I lived there for 5 years...not.going.back.) I mean...Meyer Garden is cool and all, but NOTHING compared to Butchart Garden on Vancouver Island.
140 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadIf you're already in NYC, it's a pretty short train ride (by American standards at least) to DC. I think it's about 3 hours by Amtrak, just a bit longer than the Eurostar from London to Paris.
It's nice to see a list with places I never would have considered, even if it is odd to see ND and St. John on the same list.
It was absolutely breath-taking, and I won't forget how it felt to stand in those hilly fields for a long time. Being at the exact same spot as the Battle of Little Big Horn, walking in quiet with no cell phone signal... It was all wonderful.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/nyregion/new-york-today-in...
I have no idea why an American newspaper, NYT or otherwise, would be writing for anything other than an American audience.
The story of the siege of Malta in 1565 is absolutely riveting. The Knights of St John, with Grand Master de la Valette, and the Maltese population are attacked and besieged by the numerically superior Turks for the entire summer of 1565. Ernle Bradford does a remarkable job of describing the events in such a way that it almost feels like you are there. Along the way, you also learn a lot about life, war and politics in the 16th century
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Great-Siege-Malta-1565/dp/1497637864/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Malta_%28World_War_II...
Edit: The entire population of Malta was awarded the George Cross (UK highest gallantry award for civilians) for their actions in WWW2:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Award_of_the_George_Cross_to_M...
700,000 square miles? Of Dockland? In Bordeaux? And each apartment gets 140 square miles of land? :-)
But it does feel a but clunky and that size is rather shocking.
I'm already looking forward to the Oculus Rift version :)
It would sure beat the crap out of my current desktop backdrop, which is mostly covered by windows anyway :)
Followed by a comment saying web browsing in a Virtual Desktop style environment on the Rift isn't very good, and can't be due to screen resolution limitations.
http://pastebin.com/raw/A8T4MRGD (without text blurb)
http://pastebin.com/raw/t0CG2tzg (with text blurb)
http://pastebin.com/raw/Ud4Vc2hp (python code used to extract this)
bugs (won't fix):
- text blurb is not printed for items without g-secondary-name
- character encoding is wrong
To be fair, I've had to spend some time training my adblock to handle nytimes
* Brno, Czech Republic - I stayed there just a few days, but even though pretty, the city wasn't very exciting. It's quite cheap and less touristic than Prague, so if you're looking for something less crowded than the capital, it might be a good choice to experience Czech culture
* Barcelona, Spain - one of the most touristic places in Europe, but it totally deserves it. It's not only beautiful and lively, but even if you want to avoid crowded areas, you can book a room a few stations from the center and enjoy the fantastic local culture. I stayed there for a month and as long as you stay away from La Rambla, it's very relaxing place
* Vietnam - I haven't been to Dalat yet, but recently I've visited Ho Chi Minh City and Mui Ne and both are wonderful places. Vietnamese cuisine and coffee, as well as cheerful and very friendly people, make it a perfect place for a low-cost trip.
* Malaga, Spain - way different from Barcelona, with the influence of African culture, it's a good place to spend a few days, but also perfect base for short trips around - from Malaga you can easily get to Gibraltar, Granada, Jerez and Seville
* Phnom Penh, Cambodia - I think that other places in Cambodia like Battambang or Siem Reap are better to visit. Capital of the country is rather crowded and polluted. There's plenty of things to see, however, especially if you know a bit about history of Cambodia, you can constantly feel demons of the past being present in the city.
* Sydney, Australia - I spent 1 week in Melbourne and then 1 week in Sydney, when I was in Australia. I must say I strongly prefer Melbourne as it is more a place to live, while Sydney seems more a business city. Having said that, I highly recommend to visit them both, they're expensive, but wonderful.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerez_de_la_Frontera
See: turtles in Greece, quiet beaches and so on.
Nothing like a thundering herd of humans with power gadgets coming in by plane to package holidays centered around hastily constructed hotels and other infrastructure (airports, for instance).
I used to work with someone from St Helena. She was just 20 years old, and — understandably — didn't see much future for herself on the island. Perhaps the airport will change that, or at least mean she no longer needs to take two weeks holiday to visit her family by ship.
Sadly, Nepal has made zero political progress since I arrived there in 2006 :(
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2015/11/10/places-...
You can even pair it with a visit to the Strangeloop tech conference (http://www.thestrangeloop.com).
I suggest visiting without a car. If you need one to get to places outside the city, rent only when you're leaving and ask for exact advice about the easiest way out of town.
Having just hiked it, this is not true during the dry season. You do cross a small glacier, but all you need for that is YakTrax, if anything.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/travel/faq-52-places-to-go...
Some of these places should be more and less generalized, however. "Skane, Sweden" ought to be changed to "a less populated region of the Norwegian or Swedish coast, somewhere with a historic lighthouse". I've spent some time on the coast of Norway, and I think it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. Additionally, naming "Kansai, Japan" is ridiculous, it encompasses 22 million people and three major cities (Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe); this is especially ridiculous given that there's also a place on the list with a population of 113.