P is for...

So normally I talk about a city that it isn't (but by most best of city lists, it probably should be), then curveball at the end to spring in a city that has some personal meaning for me. 

So in this case, the obvious one is Paris; the curveball is probably gonna be Philadelphia, right? Philly cheese sandwiches trumping the Eiffel Tower? Nah. 

P is for Phnom Penh. I have a lot of time for Cambodia and whilst most Cambodia's tend to focus around Siem Reap, for me it was PP all the way. Insect eating, stray elephants and the most crazy introduction to any city so far (no offence Cologne, you came close). Yes, the sites in Paris are bigger and better. Yes, it's easier and you know what's happening. But the smell of Phnom Penh just makes me happier. 

P is for Phnom Penh. 

Q is for...

Have you ever been Quebec, loading timbers on the deck...

I know I rushed Quebec, so maybe I just didn't do it justice but, it just never, you know... 

Quito on the other hand. That's a city that grabs you. I guess it's forever tied up for me as the end of a big adventure, so I have a fondness that it's overgrown and slightly shady aura doesn't necessarily deserve. But still. Mountain tops, karaoke and one of the best meals I've eaten - even without a large dollop of sentiment it beats Quebec. 

Q is for Quito and South America has its second city on the list. 

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. 

T is for...

I liked Tirana a lot. I know I shouldn't, but I did. The biggest sword in the world. A decrepit pyramid. Utilitarian buildings painted in patterns. Bomb shelters. Buses that made no sense. The kind of street vendors that you get in Asia, but in Europe. What's not to like? 

But to take Tirana over Tokyo is just contrary for contrary sake. The sheer mindmelt of Tokyo was something else. I generally didn't know what I was eating at any time, often I didn't know for sure whether it was animal or vegetable (I guess I'm fortunate that I'm not too fussy, finding out that you have just ordered a plate of raw horse may be a bit distracting for some people). 

And that's just the food, that's not even the places: Shinjuku, Harajuku, Tsukiji fish market, temples and monorails. Juxtapositions a-go-go. 

T is for Tokyo

U is for...

I really want U to be for Ulaanbaatar. I do. It's a capital city, so it deserves a mention but, well, no-one goes to Mongolia for a city break. Mongolia is about snow and mountains and plains and yurts. And Ulaanbaatar is largely incidental to that.

Utrecht on the other hand. Now that's a city you can city break too. It's bursting with Dutch character, somehow seeming way more Dutch than Rotterdam, and way more exciting than The Hague (as an aside, I always feel a bit daft calling it The Hague - Den Haag seems far more Right - but let's stick with the British names for the purposes of this distraction, otherwise madness lies: W for Vienna, K for Cologne, and etc).

Maybe I'm biased, I had a chum live in Utrecht for a bit, so I know it a fair bit better than Ulaanbaatar, but the whole (un)point of this is bias. So there.

U is for Utrecht.

V is for...

So Europe and Asia, neck and neck on two cities. Vienna and Varanasi are on the table, which one will take the lead?

Will it be the city that I visited at the end of backpacking round Eastern Europe, where I spent more in two days than I had in the previous two weeks? Well no. You left a bad taste in my mouth, Vienna. I appreciate that that was my fault and not yours. If I visited you now I would probably think you were ace. But I didn't. I visited you in my early twenties and thought you were expensive. And a bit dull.

Varanasi on the other hand... monkeys on the roof and burning bodies on the river banks. Great food, great lassi, loads of weird. One of my favourite cities in India. But it was busy. Unpleasantly busy. 

Oh hello Valparaiso. Look at you with your Chilean charm. With your culture and your poetry amd your funicular railways. I did like exploring you. Okay, you can stay. Looks like a new continent has entered the game.

V is for Valparaiso.

I should mention Vancouver, but I've not been, so it's not in the list.