I’ve been to Badlands of South Dakota and Mount Rushmore and the scenery is breathtaking for like five minutes and then it’s pretty boring.
So I would describe it at “A nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”
I would also describe Atlanta like that. It just seems like a sprawling mess to me. (I’m sure a lot of Atlantans would disagree).
In your opinon, what places, cities, countries etc have you actually been to that you would describe as nice to visit, but you’d never want to live there.
Oddly enough, I considered Hawaii a “nice place to visit”. Actually, I thought it was gorgeous, but I could never live there. I just kept thinking about Pearl Harbor and 9-11 when I was there. (I was there during Pearl Harbor Day, I’ll have to admit.) I couldn’t help but realize that, on an island, there was only so far you could run before the ocean just sort of gets in your way.
Any major city - for me, especially London. I love visiting the place. I think the underground is brilliant (just being able to zip around the city on the tube is quite an adventure for me), It’s an exciting, bustling, vibrant place, but I’d hate to live there.
I am not made for the urban habitat.
New York city. Tons of fun stuff to see and do, transportation is fantastic, but the cost is so truly insane that anything other than a visit would be interminable. Any humongous city by that approximation.
Palm Beach. Also fun, great beaches, great weather (not in the summer of course) but the cost of living is insane and the people are all really old.
Paris. I’ve been there four times, and I could go there every year and never get tired of it. But if I lived there, all the daily chores of living would get in the way of enjoying the place. I have some cousins who had lived there, and they all came back; one common complaint was the taxes they had to pay. And also . . . I lived in NYC for 25 years, and I would never again want to live in a city that’s overrun by tourists.
Yes, the cost is insane, but salaries are much higher. My last apartment in NYC (in Chelsea) was around $2,500/month, and I actually had money left over for some luxuries. I could never afford to pay that much in most other locations.
Bed-and-breakfast inns. Every time we have stayed in one, Mrs. Napier has become enchanted with the idea of owning and running one. I think she is confusing the pleasure of being hosted in one with the realities of working a service job while worrying about keeping a vulnerable little business going.
Having lived in many great locations, some of the places I could have gone to live, but didn’t:
San Francisco - very pretty, quite nice for a Gay guy like myself, but the city seems somehow claustrophobic for me. Odd, since I lived in NYC (Manhattan) and in Berlin during the Wall, but SF just made me feel like wanting to leave as soon as possible.
Honolulu - again, really beautiful, but I think I would get “island fever” really quickly, although once again, Berlin was about as “island” as you could get when the Wall was up, but West Berlin was far larger (the size of all the boroughs of NYC put together) and didn’t feel like you were closed in.
London - great fun, lots of things to do, but the combo of crappy weather and mediocre food, along with overpriced flats and cost of living, made it less than interesting to want to ever live there. I used to go there every year for about a week or so and looked forward to the trip, but was always happy to leave as well.
Zurich - very pretty, lots of things to do and see, but somewhat sterile and the the people are a bit “cool” in every respect. Much better places to live in Switzerland (Lugano, for instance).
But I could be proven wrong in any of the above. My list where I have lived (Chicago, NYC, Berlin, Los Angeles and Las Vegas) is probably high on the lists of places other people would never want to live - and I loved all those places and would go back to any of them without hesitation.
It is true that salaries are higher and I suppose if you don’t own a car it’s a lot more economical. Seems like anyone I know can’t find a steady job and has to live in Brooklyn, which is a sacrifice no matter how many Times articles are dedicated to it not being so :p.
ETA: Bed & Breakfasts, if run by the family, seem like a horrible deal for them. I hate staying in them. Feels like you’re always bothering someone.
If it feels like you’re bothering them, they aren’t doing it right.
As for me, I always like visiting cities, but I know better than to think I could live in one. I’ve tried it before, and always end up feeling claustrophobic. I need my towns to have an edge or two that backs up into wilderness, preferably big, scary wilderness of some sort.
I lived in Hawaii for a year or so, and you’re absolutely right. You get claustrophobic after a month or so, the economy is in the toilet, and everyone is on tourist time. The only place I was in a bigger hurry to leave was Fort Campbell, KY. There are cool things about it, but I like Boston much more. Much, much more.
And thanks to growing up in rural areas, I will never ever live in a farm town again. I could be fleeing down some street in Tokyo with a giant lizard incinerating what used to be my home and family while some huge moth flying overhead toppled skyscrapers into my path, and I would be thinking “Yeah, this sucks, but at least it doesn’t smell like shit two months out of the year! And there are bookstores everywhere . . . or there were, at least!”
Not to take issue with your premise, but: The Black Hills were boring? It’s one of my favorite places: perfect altitude, pine trees, wildlife. Mount Rushmore is only a piece of that big puzzle. I spent a week in the Badlands, and while it’s too hot for me much of the time, the hiking opportunities are pretty much limitless. To each his own, however.
San Antonio is a nice place to visit, but if I had to live there I’d slit my wrists.
Ditto for Minneapolis.
Actually, it applies to most of the US except for the PNW.
I would say that Southeast Asia IANPTVBIWWTLT, but it’s not even a nice place to visit, so that’s out.