I’ve been in Europe for the past few weeks, which is why I haven’t posted here lately, but I’m finally back home, nice and jet lagged. The pic above is one I took when I spent a few days in a small town in rural Sicily.
On this trip, I was able to cross off five more cities/regions on my list of travel cities. Years ago I made a list of cities, all over the world, that I wanted to visit. When I say “visit,” I don’t mean go there, look around for a day, and vanish off to the next city. I actually want to spend a decent amount of time in a city when I visit it. An entire week is ideal, five days is okay, and three days is minimally acceptable only if I have no other choice.
I started out with something like 110-120 cities on my list. Today I’m down to 68 left I haven’t visited yet. I think it’s best to set travel goals in terms of cities instead of countries, since setting a goal to “visit X number of countries” doesn’t make any sense to me. If you visit New York and that’s it, have you really visited the USA? If you visit Shanghai and that’s it, have you really visited China? If you visit Sydney and that’s it, have you really visited Australia?
In all cases the answer is no. So I strongly suggest that you set your travel goals/plans around cities, or at least small regions (like islands), rather than countries. Just my opinion. If you were curious as to which cities are still on my travel list, they are listed below. These are cities I have not visited yet but plan to at some point. They’re broken out by three priority levels, listed alphabetically.
High Priority Cities – These are cities I’m very excited to visit and will visit very soon, well before the rest.
Abu Dhabi
Ascuncion
Beijing
Buenos Aires
Cabo San Lucas
Chengdu
Dubai
Maui
Milan
Monaco
Montreal
Oxford
Rio de Janerio
Santiago
Scottish Highlands
Seoul
Venice
Mid Priority Cities – These are cities I excited about visiting but not quite as much as the ones listed above.
Athens
Auckland
Bengaluru (Bangalore)
Berlin
Bogota
Bora Bora
Boston
Brunei
Bucharest
Cairo (pyramids at Giza)
Cayman Islands
Glasgow or Edinburgh
Hangzhou (near Shanghai)
Havana
Istanbul
Jerusalem
Johannesburg
Kiev
Kuala Lumpur
Manchester NH
Mexico City
Moscow
New Delhi (Taj Mahal)
New Orleans
Osaka
Prague
Qingdao
Reykjavik
St. Petersburg
Stockholm
Suzhou (near Shanghai)
Taipei
Tasmania (Hobart)
Tianjin (near Beijing)
Toronto
Vienna
Xi’an
Zurich
Lower Priority Cities – I want to visit these, but these are more “when I get around to it” cities that are not high on the list
Andorra
Bangkok
Dalian
Denver
Guangzhou
Ho Chi Minh City
Houston
Oslo
Panama City
Philadelphia
Shenzen
Tallinn
Tangier
Warsaw
If a city is not listed on any of these lists, that means I have no plans to ever go there. That doesn’t mean I won’t ever go there; I’m just not planning on it at the moment.
Scheduling this stuff out is difficult, since in addition to these cities, I also will be re-visiting my favorite cities regularly (Like Shanghai, Las Vegas, Hong Kong, etc). My current plan (subject to change) for 2017 will be to re-visit China and Paris, and visit Dubai. Starting in 2018, my South American “find a city to move to” adventure begins, and I will be visiting cities in southern South America from 2018 – 2020 to find one I like enough to live in.
Can’t wait!
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Eddie
Posted at 04:02 pm, 20th October 2016Brilliant idea… I was one of those who just listed countries and islands… now I’m inspired to follow your format. I’ll get on it this weekend.
I live in Vegas, let me know next time you’re in town..I’ll buy you a drink.
By the way, will you release a list of the cities you have been to. Happy to see Rio in the top category but in my humble opinion, you should move Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Havana and Bora Bora and New Orleans up to High Priority…I guarantee you will have the time of your life.
Wow, I see you have no love for Hawaii, the Philippines or Indonesia (absolutely three wonderful places to visit, but then again maybe you’ve already been there).
Caleb Jones
Posted at 06:31 pm, 20th October 2016Nope. Hawaii isn’t any better than places like Fiji or the Bahamas, where I’ve already been. Filipino women are ugly, and if I want to visit a third world country there are better places than the Philippines in my opinion (like Thailand). Indonesia doesn’t compel me.
Everyone has wildly different opinions about this stuff. I’m just giving you mine.
Mario
Posted at 09:05 am, 21st October 2016What do you thing of Lima ?
Mario
Posted at 09:06 am, 21st October 2016Think sorry for the typo
Caleb Jones
Posted at 09:15 am, 21st October 2016I have no interest in visiting Peru.
Tom S
Posted at 12:44 pm, 21st October 2016I’d be curious to know what cities were on the list that you’ve been to and which of those lived up to the hype (ie, you’d recommend going) and which did not. Perhaps you’ve blogged that before? If so, I’ll search for it.
Qlue
Posted at 01:14 pm, 21st October 2016I’ve traveled to many places of the world from the middle east, all over europe, north america, and latin america. I’d like to visit some of the Islands owned by the british monarchy, which haven’t become independent, such as Guernsey. The good thing about monarchies is that there are no democracies, or very little democracy, to fuck things up. Democracies eventually result in socialism. Monarchies can be a good security measure for when shit hits the fan and roll things back. Would love to see the Queen give the boot to all those EU globalists and Islamists trying to destroy the UK.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 10:33 am, 22nd October 2016Interesting question. I had to think about it. Most cities I’ve been to lived up to the hype (Hong Kong, etc), and the ones that weren’t that great didn’t have much hype to begin with (like Dallas, for example) so it’s rare I’ve been “disappointed.”
The only cities that didn’t quite live up to the hype for me were European cities, but that’s not an objective statement, just my opinion. Europe is cool, but it just doesn’t turn me on like it does a lot of other people. I’m an Asia guy. So it’s really about personal preference.
I partially agree with you, since “democratic” societies have become so bad. But the UK is not a monarchy (in name only).
Never going to happen. Because the UK isn’t a monarchy.
If you want a monarchy, go to Monaco. (And even that’s not a complete monarchy, but a constitutional one.)
Michal Lobos
Posted at 09:56 am, 25th October 2016If you want history and culture swotch Warsaw for Krakow. Warsaw was completly destroyed during WW2 and rebuildes after. Krakow is oryginal and almost untached by war. Also area around Krakow is more interesting if you like hiking.
Regards,
Michal
Caleb Jones
Posted at 12:52 pm, 25th October 2016Interesting. Noted.
Brian Mark
Posted at 10:06 pm, 3rd November 2016What do the cities on your list have in common? What make a tier one, a tier two , or tier three?
Joseph
Posted at 06:05 am, 4th November 2016I’m in total agreement about Europe in general. Everybody seems to talk about it like the cities are something special. To me, the cities all seem to be a variation the same thing and I find myself bored after a couple days. I’m partial to the areas around the Mediterranean myself. I adore the Greek islands, Croatia, and the Amalfi coast in Italy. My first experience in Asia was a little bit of a strikeout, but I need to take a couple more shots at it to have any real accurate assessment of that part of the world.
-Joe
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:41 am, 4th November 2016Most of the cities on my tier one list are places I would consider moving to someday, or places with traits such a city should have in my opinion, so I need to check them out for research purposes. As for the rest, it’s mostly it’s just my subjective opinion.
Europe is something special, at least in my opinion.
I’m just saying it’s collapsing before our very eyes, so you probably shouldn’t live there for the long-term. But it’s still something special.
Stefanos
Posted at 11:43 pm, 8th November 2018I’m happy both of my cities are on the list(constantinople, toronto) It would be amazing to meet the dragon in one of them 🙂
Daniel Moreno
Posted at 12:22 am, 11th April 2020I have heard that Singapore is the City of the future.