America’s Favorite Cities 2008, from Travel + Leisure
The 2008 rankings for America’s Favorite Cities are in, and I spent some time poking through the results. Here’s the deal - Travel + Leisure teamed up CNN Headline News to grade 25 major Amercian cities in 45 different categories, ranging from food and shopping to people, culture, nightlife and lots more.
New York, not unsurprisingly, aced the scores, with 11 top rankings including theater, stylishness, skyline and views, people watching, art galleries, and local and luxury boutiques. NYC also earned the dubious honor of coming in last for affordability and peace & quiet.
Miami topped the list for the most attractive people (as in hot babes and studs), followed by San Diego and Austin. Los Angeles and San Francisco came in 6th and 7th place in the beauty contest and New York trailed at 9th place. The ugly duckling award went to Philadelphia which came in last in the ‘attractive people’ category.
On the friendliness meter, Los Angeles came a cropper with 25th place, with NYC just ahead at 24th place and Washington D.C. in 22nd place. Oh, and Philadelphia in 23rd place. Apparently people in Philadelphia are not only unattractive, they’re also unfriendly. There’s a saying that if you need a friend in Washington, get a dog. Well, you can now add LA, NYC and Philly to that list. Be interesting to find out how many people in these cities actually own a dog…
Anyway, you can have fun browsing the cities and categories here - www.travelandleisure.com/afc/2008/. Photo copyrights - American Express Publishing Corporation.
Posted on September 16th, 2008 by Thomas
Filed under: News
When you get know us, you’ll love us! Come to Philadelphia and you’ll see… we have beautiful things to do and beautiful people too!
(…for the record, I’m in a one-cat household. No dogs for me!)
-Caroline in the Philadelphia tourism office
Caroline, if you’re an example of what Philadelphia has to offer, then those nitwits at travel + Leisure are completely wrong, and I hereby declare Philadelphia and its people as the most beautiful in the nation.
P.S. - In case people think I’m just being nice, perish the thought. I poked around and found Ms. Caroline’s photo online, along with some of her co-workers, and let me assure you, they’re all hot babes at the GPTMC.