What is Your Favorite?

People often ask us, “In all your travels, what is your favorite?”  That question stops us in our tracks.  What could possibly be the answer?  There is no one favorite; there are many.  We answer, “What would you like to know?  Our favorite adventure?  That’s African Safari on the Serengeti.  Our favorite landscape? Ireland and New Zealand.   A place with unfamiliar but delicious food?  Vietnam.  Nicest, friendliest people?  The Balinese.    Our favorite city?  Hmmm, there are a few we think are exceptional cities.” 

Stan and I have traveled internationally regularly since 2005.  It all started when our daughter, CODY, first traveled to Europe following her graduation from college.  She inspired us.  Since then, we made many multi-week and even multi-month trips each year, except during the pandemic.  Feeling that we lost valuable travel opportunities during the Covid outbreak while borders were closed, we committed ourselves in 2021 to seeing the world again.  At that time, we took a big step and began a life with no encumbrances, no home to return to and no heirlooms to dust;  we sold our home, the beach house and almost everything else.  September will mark our fourth year of fulltime world travel.  We still are excited about it and find joy in almost every day.  We have visited over 70 countries since 2005 and will add several new ones to that list this year. 

We have a framed map of the world stored in Cody’s basement.  Each of the world’s countries is outlined in black on a brown surface.  When we visit a country, we open the frame and scratch the country to reveal a bright color.  Even with having visited 70 countries, the map still is predominantly brown.  We continue to be astounded at the size and diversity of our mighty grand and magnificent planet. 

When thinking about our favorite cities, the very cosmopolitan city, Cape Town, comes to mind.  It is nestled in a nook with Victoria and Albert’s Harbor as the gate to the deeply-southern Atlantic Ocean.  Flat-topped Table Mountain reigns in the background.  The city is a sophisticated, and a proudly multicultural metropolis, but just outside its boundaries wild African animals roam Kruger National Park and its 2 million hectares (that’s 4,942,000 acres) of pure nature. 

Sydney is nothing less than legendarily beautiful too as it sits on the ocean front as well.  Who does not recognize the splendid Syndey Opera House?  But Sydney’s Darling Harbor and the Harbor Bridge there are iconic as well.  Just off shore is Robson Island where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years seeking an end to apartheid. 

In Europe, England’s London is regal, rich, and though a bit stuffy the city makes one yearn to be a Londoner, striding down a street as if always in a hurry.  But how fun it might be to sip tea, have a hearty Sunday roast, keep up with the Royal family’s goings on, and be familiar with the lovely well-groomed parks there.  For one, I’d love to be a local there and ask a visitor, as Londoners often offer, “May I help you?”   

Rome, oh Rome!  The art, the sculptures, the one-of-a-kind magnificent spewing Trevi Fountain, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, the ancient Roman Coliseum, Saint Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, the Spanish Steps, and the Italian food!  Oh, for God’s sake!  What is not to love about Rome? 

No doubt, Spain’s Barcelona and Madrid are wonderful cities.  Stan and I could easily live in either one.  Some of the best places are not cities at all; they are the smaller almost hidden historic towns in Spain like Bilbao, San Sebastian, or Granada, set in magical settings with great plazas, ancient churches, and quaint inns where a Spanish stew is brewing.  Some have remnants of city walls and castles and some like Ronda, have time-worn stone bridges built across a river or deep cervices on this earth’s crust ensuring a way for people to cross to go to market but more so that armies could cross the impenetrable divide to battle an enemy or conquer yet another adversary. These are the ancient towns spoken of in children’s tales. 

And here is another city not on most people’s list.  Tokyo, the largest city in the world, is the cleanest, most well-organized home to the classiest, most polite group of 37 million residents on this planet. 

It is impossible to say which is our favorite.   

Like saying home is the best place in the world when you are at home, we are in Paris, and as for this moment, Paris may be our favorite.  Without a doubt, this city is mesmerizing, magical and awe inspiring.  It may be the most beautiful, most enchanting city in the world.   

No other has its circular city-plan crisscrossed with many broad Chestnut or Sycamore lined boulevards that intersect in a star-like fashion meeting in a huge roundabout.  No other city has as many artful monuments regally adorning the streets, and world renown art collections and exhibits in museums whose buildings constitute works of art themselves, the Grand and Petit Palais, for example.  The city is graced by the wide river Seine, that races through its heart and under Paris’s 37 bridges connecting the Left Bank to the Right.   

What about the parcs and amazing green spaces in Paris?  There are so many, and they are just right for a stroll through a heavenly garden, and for viewing flowers and fountains. Some parks feature great round ponds perfect for sailing a toy boat.  Paris parks are best used by lovers, old or young, occupying a bench and sharing a bottle of wine, a French baguette and a sliver of French cheese.  Maybe they are holding hands.  How civilized. 

On a simpler note, the notable classicism architecture here is distinct and immediately recognizable as none other than the grand city of Paris.  The black roofs, with dormers over white stone meticulously detailed buildings are classic.  Mmmmm. 

We came here to get a peek into what it might be like to live like locals here. We are learning that even locals live like tourists. They tell us they can never see it all and like us, they feel its magic and are amazed and in awe of their incredibly inviting city. As a French lady told me, “As I go about my business, I take time to look at my city through the eyes of a tourist. There is nothing else like it.”

One cannot help but fall in love with place, this magical City of Lights . . .  Or as some say, City of Love.  Paris, the world’s most visited city, just may be the best in the world.