So – let’s review – 50 cities – I’ve been to 28 of them. That’s 56%. Hope I do better on the next 25…

50. Dallas – Great start – I’ve been there several times. I’ve also been to Fort Worth, and most importantly – to Plano! Plano is actually a lovely suburb of the vast and massively tall buildings of Dallas. We once made the mistake of thinking that downtown Dallas might be worth a visit – on Saturday. Boy, were we wrong. Like many US downtowns – it’s a city of office buildings – alive during the day, dead at night. Really really dead on weekends. Unlike Montreal, with it’s bustle day and night – Dallas looked and felt dead that day. We left and went to the Science Center in Fort Worth (great place). But hey – things change and it’`

49. Atlanta – I was raised in Atlanta. Lived there from 1951-1966. My fondest young memory is feeding the ducks bread from our table at a lake (pond?) near our home. My memories of growing up aren’t all that wonderful generally – but I did love our yard. We lived on an acre of land – mostly woods with a creek running through it – and we had a gardener. One time a rattle snake came into the grassy part of the yard – and he had to kill it with a hoe. Very memorable. I also remember playing for hours and hours and hours in the woods. Basically by myself – but sometimes with some of the neighborhood kids – all of them boys. I was very glad to leave Atlanta when I graduated high school. At that time – 1966 – 50% of the girls in my HUGE graduating class got married within 2 weeks of graduation. I was a square peg in a round hole. I was the ONLY kid in my class who applied to college across the Mason Dixon Line. My favorite high school class – math of course. But I loved science as well. My senior year we had a science fair – and for my project – I learned to program a computer. The very first IBM 360 – it was in a AC room with a raised floor for all the cables. And the guys running it were amazed that a 16 year old GIRL (it was the GIRL that amazed them) was interested. I wanted to be an engineer. But in those days – Girls didn’t become engineers. So I settled on Math and Physics. Up hill battle even so. None of this described Atlanta however. Last time I visited it was a lot like Dallas. Huge downtown with towering office buildings and not many folks actually living there. Vibrant suburbs – still segregated to this day. Oh well.

48. Orlando. Another easy one. I love Disney anything.. I’m a Disney nut. I’d have worn Disney clothing with princesses if it came in boy stylings. I’ve taken my kids, I’ve gone with my sister Carrie (we rode King Kong at Universal so many times they allowed us to just sit in the front rather than run thru the maze). I’ve taken my grand-kids. I think that Disney blew it big time when they lost out to Universal on Harry Potter – but I love Harry Potter lands to death. I adore the Star Wars section of Disney Hollywood – and I’m a true believer in the Avatar lands. Memories of Orlando are many – although I think my favorite was when we took Sophie (about 3 at the time). She was up up up – then asleep. She slept thru every dinner, thru meeting Belle, thru truly expensive Princess dinner parties. But her highlight – having a short conversation with Rapanzel over how to wash hair…

47. Calgary – Wow – if this list sticks to North America – I’m golden. Ok- Calgary – definitely a yes. We took all 3 of my kids on a trip to Banff and the National Parks and started in Calgary. Huge empty streets except for the street walkers. My oldest son – Robert (12 at the time) – wanted to know what these ladies were doing. They would hang around the nearby all night convenience store because it had a pay phone. We’d go to the place to grab a treat before bed. Paths crossed. Questions were answered… maybe.

46. Copenhagen – well – I’m not surprised this city made the list, it’s cool. I’ve been to Copenhagen, but I was really young (like 20), I saw the Mermaid, I caught a ferry back to England. All I remember.

45. Tel-Aviv – Check that guy off too! After the war in 1976 we got really concerned about the long range life span of Israel, and felt we had to visit while there was still an Israel to visit. Went with my oldest (only at that time) son – who was just 18 months old. We camped our way around most of Israel, visited the Sinai (at that time part of Israel), and even went snorkeling in Elat. I managed to leave my passport at the cable car station at Masada, ended up driving back to get and went to the wrong side of the mountain! With an 18 month old kid and a stroller. And weather over 100 degrees. The Israel army took pity on me – and a solider went to the Cable car base, got my passport – took the cable car up the mountain and then RAN down the Roman road to where I was sitting in the shade with Robert. He gave me my passport and than RAN back up the Roman road. These guys are fit.

44. San-Paulo. Knew it wasn’t going to last. On my short list. Oh well.

43. Frankfurt – Been there. Got bumped off an airplane and had to spend the night. Toured the city. The sidewalks were covered in dog poop. In those days – they didn’t have ‘clean up after your pet’ laws – so folks just let the dogs poop as needed. Horrid. You couldn’t look up to admire the architecture or even straight ahead to watch for traffic lights. If you didn’t watch your feet – you walked in it!

42. Hong-Kong – Been There. Sadly. Unfortunately for Hong-Kong – we had to leave Kyoto to fly to Hong-Kong. I really didn’t want to leave Kyoto – and arriving in Hong-Kong was literally a flight into hell. The airplane had to dip between two mountain peaks on the way in – and the belly of the plane scraped the tops of buildings on the descent. The streets were packed – and folks walked around/over/ignored the millions of beggars in the streets. I’m not good with places where there are really really wealthy people living on top of really really poor people. And there are really really poor people in Hong-Kong living on boats with no proper water or toilets, living in slums, living on the streets. Our hosts did their level best to impress us – but I left thinking – never coming back.

41. Montreal – I live here! Wow – I live in one of the World’s Best Cities. But I knew that. I adore my city, it has everything except perfect weather… Outside of say February and March – when only the insane lie here – it’s great. Our version of a heat wave is when it get’s above 90 – and even then, it doesn’t last long. Our spring is too short (we go from covered in Snow to covered in flowers in under 30 days – often with a snow storm thrown in to make sure we’re paying attention). We have great theatre (read my blog if you don’t believe me), we have great Festivals – Fringe is just one – but there’s the Laugh Fest, The Jazz Fest, Formula 1, The Graffiti Fest, Movie Fest after Movie Fest – it’s a never ending cycle of things to do and see. Well – not during Covid of course. During Covid we’ve gotten to respect our multitude of fabulous parks, walking paths, bike lines and out door markets. Our restaurants have rediscovered the delights of having a veranda – and out door dinning – even out door FINE dinning is the newest in thing. No – we’re not perfect – but we’re close. I’m super glad I live here. And I dearly wish I didn’t have to stay in February and March like I did this year.

Ok – I’m Pausing again. Of these 10 cities – I’ve been to 9 of them. So out of 60 cities I’m up to 37 – or 61.666%… That’s pretty decent.

Stay tuned to find out who made the top 40 cities of the world… You might want to start making your own lists actually.

Signing off for now – but promising to finish the list some time this summer… (that gives me a lot of space, eh?)

The Soup Lady!