What are your 10 favorite cities in the world? - Page 3

As far as timeliness - Trains every five minutes on the dot, except for rush hour, then they come every two minutes. The subway runs late SO INFREQUENTLY, that if you are one minute late, there will be a rail officer at the exit to give you a note telling your employer the subway was behind - otherwise nobody believes you. I heard somewhere that there are on average perhaps three to five trains a year that were over one minute late, and most of them because of an earthquake. As far as price goes - yeah, its a bit more expensive, than some places, but it all depends on how far you are going. Its still 10 times cheaper than a cab in ANY large city. It is possible to get from one end of the city to the other in 15-20 minutes, for $12. A small price to pay for such an amazing feat. There is very little vandalism, and there are no police officers or security in the stations. There is no crime in the subway. Plus - I can't think of another subway system with as many stations... Tokyo Subway map   Plus its only really crowded from about 6am-8am and from 5-7pm... other than that, most lines are actually reasonable. Oh and perhaps the Tokyo Subway system seems crowded because - there are 30 million people who live in the metropolitan areas of Tokyo.

Here is an interesting PAGE that shows the difference between the relative size and complexity of subway lines worldwide... Now Boston and Moscow may be cheaper, but due to their design are probably less efficient. Plus the cost of living is totally different in Moscow, Boston, and Tokyo. What costs $12 in Tokyo would cost $5 in the states, and about $1 in Moscow. BUT then again, you make higher wages in Tokyo for cost of living. There aren't a whole lot of connecting trains on the Boston and Moscow maps and when you get out into one of the "arms" if you want to move laterally, you have to go all the way back to the center. PLUS - there are really only three cities in the world who possess a subway system so good that it literally makes no sense to own a car. Tokyo, NYC, and Paris. In Tokyo 85% of the metro area is less than 500m away from a subway station. In NYC, only 70% of the metro area is less than 500m away. Then again, I might be biased, seeing as how I practically live on the Tokyo subways while I'm there...

OK... so the card I was looking at and basing my $15 estimate on was actually a pre-paid card for multiple uses. My bad. Thats probably good for about 10 trips at $1.50 BTW...

In no particular order. Travels with Stu: 1. Havana: Great cigars, great mojitos, great women. Shitty food though, you're lucky to even find a restaurant that's open. And the TV is crap, CubaTV broadcasts in German and English, and these clean-cut CNN looking broadcasters say things like this with a straight face: "Today the Ethiopian rice farmers union issued a strong denunciation of the criminal Yankqui blockade against Cuba." And the poilce state tactics can be annoying. True story: July 1993, the annual speech by Fidel to commemorate the attack on the Moncada barracks, which started the whole revolution. The bastards at the hotel piped the speech over some hidden speaker into my room and I couldn't turn it off. I went down to the pool bar and the band had quit playing and they were playing the bearded one's speech over the sound equipment. I go inside to the bar in search of a cold Hatuey beer and, you got it, Fidel. The disco? Fidel. It was really annoying to listen to socialist drivel for 5 hours. 2. Toronto: Great restaurants, and it just amazes me how such a large city could be so clean and well-run and orderly and civilized. 3. San Juan: See item 1, exchange rum for cigars, and with a bunch of great restaurants and weather. The women are so beautiful I married one of them. 4. LA: Something about the place I just find intriguing. It's like the city of dreams, where so many people have gone seeking fame and fortune. Their restless souls just hang over the valley. 5. Caracas: Great South American city, excellent Subway, great ethnic pockets of Italians who fled Musolini, Germans who fled Hitler (or perhaps Nazis who fled the Allies) and Spaniards who fled Franco. Go to the Sabana Grande on a Sunday morning and all the Italian delis will be open, with Italian League football on, and wonderful pasta and espresso. 6. Chicago: Wonderful ethnic working class city with an attitude. It's not particulary beautiful, but I love the history of this city. 7. Miami: Food, sun, culture -- the capital of Latin America. Things are just more intense there. 8. San Jose, Costa Rica -- Safe, at least when I lived there, cheap -- a Heineken draft ran about 76 colones, the equivalent at that time of about 23 cents. A decent apartment was about $56 a month. A great Latin American city to have a good time. 9. Lousiville. Yeah, it's true. A neat Antebellum city where the gentlemen sip bourbon. It's got a feel of the old time south -- the gateway to Dixie. 10. I'm leaving this blank, because I have never visited Milan, Rome, San Francisco, Boston, New York -- for any length of time -- or London, and I'm sure one of them would fit in here.

Amman and Beriut are two places I would really like to go to.

I have a feeling it might be a little like Berlin, in that it was also rebuilt after a war.

I was in Berlin quite a bit in the years following the wall coming down (starting from about a week after the first hole in the wall). that was very very cool - now the construction is mostly over and it actually seems a little deader than I would have expected. The area around the Brandengerg gate, which was the hottest spot in the world in the early ninties is dead. I am still not sure how great Beruit is - I haven't been and I am not planning on going (I have this thing about being chaided to a radiator), but I have heard it has some pretty good clubs and some pretty good resteraunts. I think that when people talk about how great it is, they are comparing it to the total hellhole that it was for 3 decades, not so much comparing it to Amsterdam, for instance. Amman is a favorite of mine - not because it is a fantastic city, but because of personnal memories and its quirky nature. Not that it is a bad city, it has its pretty parts, and some nice places to eat and hand out, and the people are very, very nice. I was there for almost a year, before and after the peace process with Israel started, and helped set up representation of a few multinational companies there, while helping some jordanian companies export to israel. at teh time, the city had 3 chinese resteraunts, one run by an ex-red chinese military pilot who had come to teach jordanian pilots and defected to jordan to run a resteraunt, and the otehr 2 run by people he had hired and then had left him. there were no bars, except in teh US embassy and a few hotels, so if you wanted to drink you needed to buy a bottle from a little kiosk owned by a christian and then drink at home (or hand out with the ex-pats in the embassy bar). the other social activitiy was sitting in a cafe and smoking a water pipe (tabacco) and drinking tea. I had some very good friends and great memories of that time.

I am now settled down for the afternoon, so I will eleborate London love the "city" (the business district) love the activity, some of my favorite chinese food, great beer, great pub culture, love the way men dress, love the public transport, love the shopping, love the airport (the one that counts, heathrow)and the trains Budapest great archetecture, good food, good enough beer, love the baths, excellent soul. good airport. I used to hub through here a lot and pop into the city for a day at the baths with a massage. Prague one of those cities where you are always surrounded by beuty. also, a place where people will drink beer for breakfast and toast with brandy at 10 am, without seeing anything weird. also, you can never hae too much bread dumpling now, can you? Vienna beuty every where, the opera, the museuams, the coffee shops. Dussledorf personnal favorite - great beer( a specific kind of ale that is only found there. much imitated, never very well) , great city, great river, great museums, an aqarium with lively and happy penguins Bankok temples, massage, food, river travel Mumbai just a wild and crazy city - I once counted 18 different species of animals I saw in one day, some of the best food in the world, some pretty good clubs. and just a lot of wierd shit - slums next to high rise office buildings, cows, pigs, monkeys, the occasional elephant and/or naked holy man on the street. Also, I build my career here, met some very very tough people, lived in some of the best hotels in the world for 3 years, had a blast in general and have some good friends. Tel Aviv my old stomping ground - history built in to a modern city, a city I watched grow up, from having a single tall building to having a fantastic skyline, and city that you can go from beachfront cafe to airport business lounge (after check in) in less than 30 minutes. Paris best food, best museums, and, with all the evils af the french, I still have some effection for those frog eating buggers. Palermo beutiful, great food, no tourists, great opera. honorable mention - bratislava just a very pretty city sofia a pretty city, no tourists, great flea market, fantasticly beutiful women (I am sorry that I never made it there single) Amman vancuver beutiful, coffee culture, mix of outdoors and city philidelphia berlin great city, large but well set up, international, fast moving, good food and coffee, great museums, great culture. stuttgart - city with a great soul. its personna is much like I would like to be - masculine, tough, cultured - a well educated brawler in a nice suit. largest percentage of city is devoted to public culture of any city in germany, great museums, but also several factories and people from stuttgart have reputation in germany as tough guys. cartagena - simple the most beutifull city I have ever seen, fantastic beaches, great fruit, an old world fortress in the new world.

Funny you say that, because from what I have heard, Lebanon is a far more welcoming and accepting culture than Jordan. Although of course you are speaking from first hand experince, whereas I am speaking from what I have heard from Arabs in Dubai and London. Also, the only places I have seen in the Arab world are Dubai, Bahrain and Kuwait, and I have never been to the western arab countries. I would assume they are somewhat different?? However, it seems that most of the people you meet in Dubai, both socialy and for business are Lebanese, Jordinian or Indian/Pakistani, with the exception of the odd Emarati when you go to the top level in firms, the Lebanese always rave about the party scene in Beirut, and how it is better than London or Dubai. So these are the main reasons why I wish to visit the area. EDIT: I take it, from what you said that Amman is quite dead in terms of nightlife then? Or has much changed?

I agree, the Prague Castle is incredible, but the thing about Prague that makes everything nice to me is the people...we happened to be there during the first few days after the floods in '02, and the people were caring and thoughtful toward tourist, even though thier lives were in a shambles....to bad they joined the EU and all of the prices are going so high.