Travel advice: Don't go there

I'm an Ohioan and am surprised at all the love for Cleveland. It's dirty, the lake smells, and outside sports and HOF, there's little to do. I actually prefer Cincinnati.

The best city in the state to visit IMO is Columbus. Very underrated. German Village is awesome. If you like football, you owe it to yourself to see Ohio Stadium (even if you don't like OSU). Crew and Blue Jackets are fun. Clippers are too. COSI is a great museum. I could go on.

On topic, skip Toledo, Akron, Youngstown and Dayton.

 

Well, I agree with Columbus, particularly German Village, but man, DAYTON. The U.S. Air Force Museum is better than the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in terms of its overall collection. NASM has most of the firsts of this and that, but Dayton has a lot of everything, including a lot of devopmental planes. A good example is the only surviving supersonic XB-70 Valkyrie.

 

One little vacation I'd like to take is to do the Kentucky Bourbon Trail then drive up to Cincy for a for a ballgame. Sounds like the museum in Dayton might be worth hitting too.

 

With this discussion in mind last night, I asked a friend what places he'd avoid.

His response (while drinking his third beer of the evening): "Anywhere my wife can go on a shopping spree."

 

Pacific Northwest division: The Tri-Cities (Pasco, Richland, Kennewick) in Washington.

Hotter and drier than hell. Strip mall-tastic. And when the best tourist attraction is a nuclear waste Superfund site, well ...

 

Bendix? Mergers, acquisitions, the usual. Heard plenty of folks talk about it, but pre-dates me a bit. I'm just impressed (?) you remember Mishawaka.

Was the Icehouse part of a larger complex? An old brewery? If so, it's been through a lot of different "lives", including a comedy club, art house / revival movie theatre & (for a while ) a start up church. Lately, just a good place to get your ass kicked....

 

Syracuse sucked when I went there. So did Rochester and Buffalo. Basically any of the big cities in upstate NY.

 

As others have said, Houston isn't exactly a touristy spot, but if you're there anyway (and I have tons of family there, so I spend a lot of time in the Houston area), there's a lot to do. The Hermann Park Zoo s one of the better zoos I've been to, there are some really good museums that bring in top-line shows and the Kemah Boardwalk is a real good place to spend a day. Also, Galveston is worth a visit, although the beach isn't much to speak of.

As far as the topic goes, I can think of a few cities I've be through that I'd avoid; Shreveport, La., Jackson, Miss., Montgomery, Ala.

 

Well, Buffalo has Duffs' so there's that.

 

Never had a bad time in Buffalo. Great drinking town, and the wings and beef on weck are damn good too.

 

I always did like Champaign-Urbana as a young reporter, when I'd occasionally cover U of I games and the state boys' basketball tournaments there. Had friends who were still in school there (this was when I was 23 or 24), and I'd save my employer a few bucks and stay with them. We'd hit the bars or go to parties after I was done writing.

So Decatur still smells? I remember passing through there a few times (this was more than 30 years ago), and there was a distinct beer fart-like stench -- not too much different from something you'd smell near a paper mill. Friends from central Illinois told me it was from the grain-processing plants there.