Cincinnati

Because I grew up there, I will always have a bias against Cincinnati. But really, the small, often overlooked city has a lot of quirky, fun and sometimes downright sexy things about it. With it's urban revival, Cincinnati has seen the growth of jazz and salsa clubs, dark and slinky bars, loads of ethnic or otherwise wonderfully bizarre restaurants. Quiz nights geared toward upper-middle-class adults, late-night pizza and burgers, a thriving downtown scene that continues well into the night. A world-class zoo, art galleries and museums, antique stores, quirky stuff stores, old brick buildings fashioned into retro eateries and modern, hip condos. Greek food, Chinese food, crepes, French-Moroccan cafes, hole-in-the-wall, romantic Italian places, food stands, a restaurant fashioned after a retro laundromat. Spices and scents and whisky and a mechanical bull and wooden roads and farmers' markets and organic shops and fresh butchers. Plenty of professional sports to go around (even if they rarely manage to win a game). For such a small, mid-Western city, it has a lot of potential...