Also, while I was in the Soviet Union, I visited several cities that were SSR capitals, and are now national capitals: Tashkent, Tbilisi, & Tallin. I was also in Bratislava when it was still part of Czechoslovakia, but now it’s the capital of independent Slovakia.
More:
Prague
Warsaw
Budapest
Vienna
Copenhagen
Paris
London
Cardiff
Washington, DC
Also, going to a cousin’s wedding in Athens in a few months.
States:
Albany
Augusta
Harrisburg
Richmond
Columbus
Frankfort
Indianapolis
Madison
Topeka
Oklahoma City
Little Rock
Austin
Phoenix
I may have been to Sacramento when I was three, and my family took an extensive trip through the west, and all over California over a summer, but I’m not sure. I mainly remember Disney Land, and the Redwood Forest.
coughSeattle not the capital of Washington Statecough
Seattle is the largest city in Washington state, but Alas! it is not the capital. That distinction goes to Olympia, which is not far from Seattle, so perhaps you did go there too?
Now, counting drive-throughs, I could add Wilmington, as we took the train from Washington DC to Penn Station in NYC and passed through the Delaware capital. I can’t remember if we passed through Baltimore; would we have? I think we also passed through Trenton, if not that time, then when we took the train from New Haven, Connecticut to Philadelphia.
Counting a change of planes, the wife could add Denver to that herself, the time we flew from San Francisco to West Texas. (I’ve visited Denver for real myself, thus its inclusion in my OP.)
Another plane change locale is Taipei. In 1995, we had to stay overnight at the airport hotel there after the onward leg of our flight to Los Angeles was canceled until the next day. At airline expense. They wouldn’t let us leave the hotel, which was in the airport at that time, since we weren’t officially in Taiwan. Then two years ago as part of our Bangkok-NYC ticket, an overnight stay at the airport hotel in Taipei was scheduled and included (it was China Airlines for both these flights), but they’d built a new hotel since 1995, now just a few blocks from the airport. So for that one, we had to be officially stamped into Taiwan, and the wife, being a Thai citizen, had to fill out a form to request a visa. (Americans such as myself get an automatic visa on arrival.) But the plane to Taipei was late, so once we got to the hotel some blocks away, we ended up having to check out and return to the airport just three hours after we checked in! So while we have Taiwanese visas stamped in our passports, I don’t really consider that we’ve visited Taiwan or Taipei. We’ve also changed planes in Taipei at least a couple of times between Bangkok and Honolulu.
Continuing on the theme of drive-throughs, I forgot that truck driver who picked me up while hitchhiking in Europe and drove me through Luxembourg City. And my train ride from Zurich-Vienna that passed through Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein.
Hmm, I think this covers it for **National **Capitals:
Edinburgh (Scotland)
Cardiff (Wales)
London (England and UK)
Paris (France)
Den Haag (political capital of Netherlands)
Brussels (Belgium)
Rome (Italy)
Madrid (Spain)
Lisbon (Portugal)
Olso (Norway)
Copenhagen (Denmark)
Berlin (Germany)
Budapest (Hungary)
Damascus (Syria)
Tunis (Tunisia)
Luanda (Angola)
Muscat (Oman)
Cape Town (legislative capital South Africa)
Windhoek (Namibia)
Gaborone (Botswana)
Bandar Seri Begawan (Brunei)
Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)
Singapore (Singapore)
Bangkok (Thailand)
Dakka (Bangladesh)
Canberra (Australia)
Wellington (New Zealand)
USA
Sacramento (CA)
Austin (TX)
If US state capitals are listed I don’t know why other component Federal state capitals are not but I won’t bother going there (applies to Australia, Malaysia and probably others).
Interesting that DrumBum and I have both been involved in Oil & Gas (I was a petroleum geologist) hence some of the odd but identical places we have been.
Several of my entries are the result of being an Army brat and following my parents around the world. This set the stage for working for an O&G company.
Europe
Belfast
Edinburgh
London
Cardiff
Dublin
Paris
Berlin
Amsterdam (?)
Prague
Sofia
Budapest
Reykjavik
Moscow
Rest of World
Havana
Mexico City
Suva
Buenos Aires
Santiago
Kathmandu
New Delhi
Gaborone
Harare
Pretoria (?)
Kuala Lumpur / Kota Kinabalu
Amman
A bit disappointing; I’ve been to almost all countries in Europe, lots of them many times, many in north Africa and lots of others in North, South and central America and SE Asia, but rarely to the capitals cities, for whatever reason. I think I’m the first to list Cuba though, so that’s something… (not sure what).
Inside the US:
Columbia
Atlanta
Raleigh
Harrisburg (90% sure)
St. Paul[sup]1[/sup]
Phoenix
Washington DC
Richmond[sup]2[/sup]
Austin
Indianapolis[sup]2[/sup]
[sup]1[/sup] The airport
[sup]2[/sup] Drove through it
State capitals I have really spent significant time in (10): Hartford, Providence, Boston, Atlanta, Augusta, St. Paul, Concord, Albany, Columbus, Charleston
State capitals I have driven through (9): Indianapolis, Des Moines, Lincoln, Montpelier, Bismarck, Harrisburg, Richmond, Madison, Cheyenne
Wash DC
Mexico DF
Tegucigalpa Honduras,
Guatemala Guatemala,
San Salvador El Salvador,
San Jose Costa Roca,
Panama City Panama
Managua Nicaragua
All on one solo motorcycle trip, except for Wash DC
Add Bogota Colombia and
Santo Domingo
Dominican Republic as well as Ottawa and that about complete’s my list of capitals of countries.
Forgot to add Reykjavik Iceland.
And I’ll add Edinburgh Scotland because a couple of other people did. I wasn’t thinking of it as a capital because it’s not the capital of the UK, but I will take any stats I can get.
London (lived there for a while, loads of trips for business and pleasure)
Edinburgh (messed about on a holiday)
Cardiff (conference)
Paris (shopping; school field trip)
Berlin (messed about there on an extended holiday)
If former capitals count, I go to Winchester several times a week.
Inside the US:
Dover, DE (home state)
Atlanta (for a concert once)
Annapolis (multiple times)
Boston (multiple times, couple of concerts and conferences)
St Paul (lived in Minneapolis for a while)
Jackson, MS
Lincoln, NE (for a conference)
Columbus, OH (concert)
Harrisburg, PA (long plane stopover; left the airport, so I hope it counts!)
Richmond, VA (my Mini’s dealership was there, and a couple of concerts)
Washington, DC (many times for holiday and business)
I’ve been to many more states than this, but very few of their capitals.
Is this a form of Gaudere’s Law? Or is Siam Sam just joking? After pointing out that Seattle isn’t the capital of Washington, he then lists several other cities, and only one is actually a capital.
BTW, I had to learn all the state capitals, how to spell the states, and how to label a US map (we got a blank map, and had to fill in the states’ names) in the 5th grade. I was under the impression that this was part of school curriculum pretty much all over the country, but apparently not, I’ve found out over the years. How many people (US) were required to learn this at some point in school?
Oddly, we were required to learn European capitals in the 6th grade, but not the capitals of any other continent.
Then I get to count Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City and Kingston, which all served as functional capitals of a unified Canada before Ottawa was created in 1866. And Petra, Jordan.
