Paris | Rome | London |  Cusco |  Las Vegas | Barcelona | Prague

Paris Town Hall strange grass ball in summertime, France

We’d like to be clear that the list is completely subjective and focuses on cities that visually excited us and offered endless photo opportunities.
Furthermore, these are cities where extraordinary sights are so prevalent and packed into the city centre that no form of transport was necessary, barring the occasional short journey by boat, bus or tube.
In other words these are walking cities – start walking after breakfast, boggle the eyes and stop only to shoot, visit a museum/art gallery/shop or refuel the exhausted body. Repeat the next day, and the next.
We love Kyoto but it’s not listed because the city centre is a modern mess and the incredible temples are scattered around the edges, requiring bus connections.
We know that Washington DC is a great tourist destination but we haven’t been there so no listing.
Shanghai is too much of the same thing – temples, tea houses and mega-modern.
Rio de Janeiro‘s coastal strip is gorgeous but away from it is little but muggers.
Seville is lovely but limited.
Same goes for San Francisco, with added fog.
New York City is stunning but doesn’t offer must-shoot views around every corner. And so on.
To be clear, the list is not about the cost of living, quality of museums, variety of dining experiences or activities available.
Constantly changing and dramatic visual stimuli are our best cities raison d’être. Inevitably the list mainly contains ancient cities that have been accumulating incredible architecture and street artefacts for a thousand years, so Europe features highly.

Paul Theroux:

Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travellers don’t know where they’re going.

The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown.

Thomas Fuller:

He who travels much knows much.

George Bernard Shaw: 

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

Sam Ewing:

Vacation: Two weeks on the sunny sands – and the rest of the year on the financial rocks.