America’s Favorite Cities from Travel & Leisure and CNN

60,000 people chose their favorite towns from 25 choices across the U.S., and the list is in. The results are divided into 9 categories and 14 subcategories, including Shopping, Food and Dining, Culture, and After Dark. The winners are to be expected: New York won a first-place favorite for diversity, ethnic food, and classical music. Also consistently near the top were Washington D.C., Chicago, and San Francisco. No surprises there.

Missing? Philadelphia didn’t get too many votes — one third place win for its Farmer’s Markets. Miami didn’t fare too well either with no top-three wins, and same goes for Orlando and Dallas.

What’s your least favorite city? (I think that’s a much more interesting question than asking about favorites.)

Check out the results at CNN, and get more info on methodology at Travel & Leisure.

The World’s Best Places to Live

Finland was recently named the best place in the world to live, thanks largely to great air and water quality, low rates of infant diseases, and protection from water pollution and natural disasters. What else is great about Finland? Well, for starters, Finland …

Plus, it’s gorgeous.
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Iceland also made the list of the world’s best places to live. Despite it’s name, Iceland is not made entirely of ice. In fact, Iceland offers:

Iceland has all this, plus … it’s stunningly beautiful.
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Norway made the cut, too. Despite it’s reputation as being expensive, Norway has:

Don’t believe us? Check out this amazing gallery.
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Ahhhh … Sweden. There are so many reasons to love this nation:

Yup … it wouldn’t be hard to live here.
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Austria rounds out the list of the five most liveable countries. However, just because it came in at number five — and just because it has controversial urinals — don’t dismiss this nation. Austria is the proud home of:

Of course, the nation is lovely to look at, too.
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Don’t feel like living outside the U.S.? Be sure to check out Money’s list of the best places to live in America!

New Website Customizes Vacations Based On Your Personality

Home & Abroad; Matching People to Places is a rather cool website that will help build your vacation itinerary based upon your personality and likes.

Here’s how it works. Pick from one of the nearly 100 locations featured and then plug in the dates of your trip and the number of days you will be traveling. Then choose an appropriate theme (Action/Adventure, Adult Escape, Artsy, Cupid, Family Time, Connoisseur, History Buff, Inner-Einstein, Local Culture, Musical Journey, Must See, On The Town, Outdoorsy, Take it Easy, Shop till you Drop, Sports Enthusiast, Where the Expert Goes, and World Scholar).

As a test, I settled on Berlin combined with the History Buff category. The site then provided me with 12 pages of places to visit and admission costs for each. After I picked the ones I was interested in, the site created an itinerary based upon average time spent at each location and their proximity to each other. The coolest thing is that each location was nicely plotted on a Google map as well. Unfortunately, the site does not provide information on transport to get there and estimated travel time between sites.

The final page is where the site makes its money. This is where one can order hotels, flights, car rentals, and other travel necessities.

Overall, I was rather impressed with the concept and site. The themes are varied enough to cover most travel desires and personalities and the final recommendations were robust enough to fill up most any schedule. Perhaps what I will use this most often for, however, is finding things to do in my own hometown depending upon the mood I’m in–be it cultural, musical, artsy, adventure or whatever else strikes my fancy.

10-Day Sausage Fest in Texas

New Braunfels, Texas, has been holding “Wurstfest — The 10-day salute to sausage” for 46 years. While the rest of the world celebrates Oktoberfest, New Braunfels’ residents wait a bit longer in the fall to honor another German favorite besides beer: sausage.

The fest kicks off with the traditional “biting of the sausage” (see photo) and continues with plenty of accordion music, and the chance to sample different types of wurst. There’s bratwurst, of course, but also apple wurst, jalapeno wurst and more.

This year 125,000 visitors are expected.

[via Msnbc]

Looking for some more Oktoberfest fun? Check out Gadling’s coverage of the festival!

Finland Named Best Place to Live

Mexico may be the best place to retire, but a Reader’s Digest study claims that Finland is the best place to live.

So, what makes Finland so special? Among other things, the Scandinavian country boasts great air and water quality, low rates of infant diseases, and protection from water pollution and natural disasters. Although it wasn’t mentioned in the article, universal health care is always important to me, and Finland, like all Scandinavian countries, takes care of its citizens’ health.


Hey! Don’t miss Gadling’s coverage of the world’s best places to live!

Following Finland on the list were Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Austria. The U.S. ranks 23rd, Britain was 25th, and China 84th.

The study was conducted by U.S. environmental economist Matthew Kahn, who looked at issues such as quality of drinking water and greenhouse gas emissions as well as factors such as education and income.

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Don’t want to live overseas? Be sure to check out Money’s list of the best places to live in America!

[via Reuters]