Picking on Paris and other "overrated" cities

— By John Rambow

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Courtesy octal/Flickr
Dubai's marina

In a move so shameless I wish I'd thought of it myself, professional traveler/TV host Leon Logothetis fought against the post-Thanksgiving doldrums of the Los Angeles Times with a "special package" listing five cities he found particularly overrated. Athens, Paris, Prague, Dubai, and Moscow all get slammed—often for their residents' poor social skills. And rain. Seriously.

Predictably, the comments are as cranky and funny and anecdotal and unfair as the article itself. Here's a sample:

  • "[Honolulu is a] thin veneer of beachfront overdevelopment fronting a slum with wretched roads"

  • …that "city where the cab driver ripped you off—are you sure that wasn't Bangkok?"

  • "[Venice,] often thought of as a beautiful and romantic city, has become a smelling tourist trap."

  • "We went to a rain forest [in Costa Rica] and saw no animals except small monkeys. We saw no flowers, only many trees."

    • What places would you put on your own shortlist of the overrated? And (just as important) which do you think aren't overrated at all?

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