Must-visit U.S. cities

Durango is a cool town in a great region. Plus, I have family there, so lodging for me is quite reasonable ...

 

I was saying Denver is the one I do like among that group. The others all suck.

 

I was kind of disappointed in Denver. Of course, that was two years before pot became legal.
Baseball game was alright, but I expected more from the art museum.

 

Ferguson, Missouri and East St. Louis, Illinois are nice.

 

Too close.

 

We're close enough to New Orleans for day and weekend trips. Best part is always the food. Just wandering around the Quarter, finding a menu that strikes your fancy, and stopping in for dinner or filing it away for the next meal is great fun. If you've never had the banana cream pie at Emeril's, you're missing out. The wife and I will usually eat dinner somewhere else, then go there for dessert.

Key West is a lot like that, too. Awesome just to walk up and down Duval Street and people watch. The wife and I have decided that Key West is New Orleans without the menace.
We flew from NOLA to Key West earlier this year, and spent the night in the former before flying out. We were in the hotel by 9. I've been to New Orleans plenty of times, but that was the first time I'd ever felt truly uneasy there. Maybe it was just a bad day, but we walked past seven or eight people who made me glad we encountered them at 5 p.m. instead of 10 p.m.
Got to Key West the next day and it was like night and day. Same party, anything-goes vibe without the fear of being stabbed by a methed-out gutter punk.

And, bringing it back around to food and fun, we found this place on our last trip to Key West. Serves nothing but dessert dishes, in a dining room so dark they lead you to your table with a flashlight. Awesome place if you're trying to get laid.
http://www.betterthansexkeywest.com

 

One trip, flying from New Orleans to Key West. You do know how to do it right.

 

It was more necessity than anything else. That was right before Southwest pulled out of Key West, so the flight that was about $1,500 per person from our home airport cost about $600 for two people -- even with an overnight stay -- out of New Orleans.
The whole time we were in NOLA, we were calling it "Christmas Eve." We really just wanted to go to Key West and felt like we were killing time until we get there.
We'll probably do it again next year, though. Pick the right days and flights, and you can not only fly from New Orleans to Fort Lauderdale for $270 round-trip, but be in Key West for dinner.

 

Philly may not be must-visit, but we had a really fun time walking around Center City...from the Italian Market to Fabric Row, Independence Hall and into Chinatown. It was a surprisingly fun time.

 

Weird to see the love for Key West, one of the few places I've been that I absolutely would not go back to.

I had as high as expectation for there as I've ever had and it was crushing for it to be as lousy as it was.