Falling in love with cities

There is a love-hate relationship for many of the cities I lived. I love and hated Hong Kong. It is a nice place to live but terrible in terms of jobs that I wanted. It has changed a lot since i moved away. Same with New York, Chicago, etc.

I love NY, my hometown.
I also love Hong Kong and Las Vegas
and Phoenix, Arizona and New Orleans (GOOD FOOD!!!)





David

I have ofen taken the advice of cab drivers
qua the best places to go, in a city that is new to me
(e.g., the best hotels and the best restaurants, the best entertainments, etc.

Hotel concierges r good for that too.





David

I have no experience of or ability to intellectualize falling in love with a person, place or thing.

For me, it always just feels like recognition - a sense of well-being and belonging that I cannot begin to explain or quantify.
In terms of how long it takes- I don't keep track of stuff like that. One minute I'm not feeling it and then suddenly I am.

I never really felt at peace with where I lived growing up. I loved my life and the people around me, but I never felt a sense of 'this is where I belong' - in a suburban development right off exit nine of the New Jersey Turnpike.
I always wanted to live somewhere more beautiful.

I did feel an immediate sense of recognition and spiritual 'at-homeness' when I moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Even driving toward them in the distance, I felt a sense of well-being - a sort of benevolence engulfing me. And I was very happy there.

I felt the same way in Maine. I felt the same way in upstate New York. I feel the same way here (Somerset, England).

My favorite cities are New York and Athens. I usually love the countryside more than cities, but I am in love with those two cities.
And it was overwhelming and immediate. They didn't have to grow on me.

I also have just rediscovered San Antonio, Texas - the city of my birth. I love its vibrancy and 'flavor'.

Still waiting to fall in love with Calgary

Hmmm. First of all, I mostly like cities and have every since I can remember. There is only one I took an instant distaste to, Ivrea, which is north of Turin, and I was only there a day and a half at best, scooting right out of there. I think I was tired, that had been a long trip, people were rude-ish, there was a lot of graffiti all over the place, and, mostly, I couldn't find any place to stay for quite a while. Aggravating, but in time I might have come to like it. I've two associations with it re friends, but to call on their relatives would have aggravated me more at the time. (One family virtually took over my cousins' trip to Italy, over which they whined about at length later.)
To make up for Ivrea, I loved Lucca, and enjoyed Cremona; most other italian cities I got to.

There are a couple of cities I've instantly loved - San Francisco when I first saw it at 15; Rome, when I walked out of the subway station hauling ridiculous luggage and saw it for the first time, when I was 47. I don't know how long it took me to love New York - we moved there when I was eight and moved away again at age nine, me memorizing the underside of an overpass as we left our apartment for the last time to go to the train station. Los Angeles: I remember when we lived in the Chicago area (9-13), and I was very happy there, but that I felt I belonged somehow in California, where I was born, had gone to kindergarten, first and second grades, and visited in the next years for a family funeral and some work my father was doing. I loved both places, still do, but Los Angeles more. Eventually the years in LA added up to 47. (Years run on by.)

I loved Mexico City, have been there several times including visiting a dental student friend there who showed myself and boyfriend some local non tourist places for about a week. I was excited to be there, but I guess I loved it as a visitor, whereas my love of New York, Chicago, LA are in part from living there. I've never lived in SF, but I've been there countless times and still have pals in the area.
My love of Rome is wacko. I would live there half of the year if I were from a different financial planet.

There are many cities that I'm fond of, but love is not quite the right word.

On Albuquerque, I like it. But my own choices have made getting to love it, past liking, hard. I should have picked the more urban - not that it's very urban at all - part of town for many reasons and almost did. This affects my tooling around making discoveries of some sort or another, since I'm no longer driving a lot and the bus system sucks. However, re PQ's first take on Hong Kong, I don't feel all that different from people here, pretty much get along fine. And there is much beauty.

'Sense of well-being' is good terminology.

I truly love my hometown--New York City. I can't imagine living anywhere else. I've done a lot of traveling, and there were two cities that I instantly fell in love with.

The first was London. I got a strong feeling of citiness, and I do need that in a city. I liked its age. I liked the feel of walking down streets. It's a walking town, not a car town. Another prerequite for me to enjoy a city. And I liked the size of the population. I can't view a city as a city if it doesn't have enough people.

The second was Boston. I was instantly in love with that place. It felt a bit like home. The streets had a good feel. The age was important to me. The history too.

I don't think it's an accident that both cities have English as the primary language--although I didn't understand everything that was said to me in London. I think that I was able to feel at home because I could speak and hear English. I studied and spoke other languages. But I still think that it was a bit of a barrier to my being totally at ease.

There is no question that I am an oiban goil.

I heart NY. Great city, great people. I would go back in NY minute.
I really liked Bangkok, easy to get around while walking and the people are so sweet.
Mexico city has some great architecture, parks and some really cool areas to get lost in.
Belfast has the most amazing Victorian architecture and it's safe now!!
New Orleans was awesome. Really liked the atmosphere and while I found the food a wee bit rich the music was great.
Vancouver is high on my list too, beautiful mountains, the ocean and climate. Skiing and hikers paradise, and you can go to the beach on the same day and not miss a beat. However... I don't like the traffic and the size. It's too big, area wise, hard to get around without a car.
If I had my druthers, I would move to Vancouver island. A slower pace in an idyllic almost magical surroundings.
I'll get back to you when I've traveled more. I can't wait to see more of this gorgeous world.
I hated Dehli and Belize city, dumps. Perhaps I should have given them more of a try, but a girl can only stand so much.

I Love India

India isn't a city.