R is for...

Well Rio de Janeiro, obviously, the biggest party in the world. Copacabana. Ipanema. Maracana. Christ the Redeemer. Sugarloaf Mountain. So many world renowned things in one city, plus who wouldn't want to be sipping Caipirhinas on the beach right in the city centre. 

Oh hello Rome. Whats that? Two thousand years of history? The Forum. The Colosseum. The Spanish Steps. The Trevi Fountain. The (never mentioned but utterly spectacular) Tomb for the Unknown Soldier. Yeah you may have a point. Plus you have a whole country inside you? Well that's just showing off. 

Rio or Rome? Rome or Rio? Two unarguably world class cities. Which will it be? R is for...

Riga? Really? 

Yes. This is my list. And I had an amazing time in Riga. I know I went before the stag do boom. I've heard it's hideous now. But when I went it was brilliant. It doesn't have the world class sites of Rio or Rome. But I preferred it. Don't know why, but I did. So there. 

R is for Riga. 

S is for...

So here's where it gets difficult. There are a lot of very cool cities beginning with S. 

Singapore, Seville, Santiago, Sydney, all cities that I would head - and indeed have headed - back to. And I really liked Skopje. And Shanghai. And St Petersburg. Plus I've never been to San Diego and a lot of people rave about that. What about Seoul? And Samarkand has been on my to do list for years...

But it's going to come down to two: 

San Francisco was one of my first city explores so would probably get a mention for fondness' sake even if it was, erm, Surabaya. It's not. It's ace. It has towers. It has neighbourhoods. It has Alcatraz. It has that bridge. It has sealions. I sort of wanted to dislike it (it was first US city at a time when I was rebelling against things rather than the cog in the capitalist wheel that I am nowadays) but it was great. 

Stockholm blew my mind. It's one city. On seventeen islands. How does that work? Who thought that would be a good idea? It makes it seem super airy - the airiest city I've been too. Maybe the one where water was the most dominant too. A proper wallet-busting capital city but completely in tune with nature. 

It's a tough call. But. S is for S... 

Hang on one cotton pickin' minute. Neither of those cities explode your world view in the way Sarajevo does. A city in a city in a bomb-ravaged carcass of a city. It's a place like nowhere else. That tunnel, those roses; and still it has heart. 

S is for Sarajevo and it's not even close.