Major cities that are weirdly overlooked and nobody seems to care about
 

Ok, starting a thread on major cities, NA or international, that are strangely overlooked and not darlings of the media or general consciousness despite having incredible features.

Here's one that comes to mind...Santiago, Chile. I've never been, but I've heard a lot of people who visit and are blown away, and don't get why it's not more famous.

It seems super clean, relatively safe, full of exquisite historic architecture and charm. For some reason, it's rare I hear the city reported on in travel vlogs/media/mags etc. I wonder why this is? Seems like one of the better major cities in all of Latin America.

What are some other ones that come to mind?

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Santiago is in a beautiful natural setting and the city has a good quality of life for Latin America, but it has lots of things preventing it from becoming popular, including;

-Isolated. It's not near much, even within South America it's pretty isolated and very far from tourist producing countries like the US and countries in Europe.

-Chileans in general are a very closed minded group. I would say aside from Bolivia and Paraguay, Chileans are the most conservative and xenophobic bunch in all of South America. The culture is very mild and not very marked like other countries in the continent. Argentinians are known as being unfriendly but my experience is that Chileans are worse in that regard. The picture of the rainbow flag is nice, but Chile must be one of the most homophobic countries in Latin America, unfortunately.

This isn't to bash Santiago, because it's nice, but I don't think it deserves to be much more famous than it is, IMO.

If we're going South America I think Lima, Medellin and Salvador are worthy of more attention than they currently receive.

I don't know about you guys, but I went there twice last year.

Where are you going?

I'm going to say Taipei. Excellent food and nightlife, very urban and walkable, modern transportation, excellent healthcare, and extremely scenic. Unfortunately it gets overshadowed by the other major Asian cities like HK, Shanghai, Singapore, Seoul, and Tokyo.

My photos
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Found photo
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Honorable mention: Guangzhou

My photos

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Quito. It's a little rough, but has a erfect climate, beautiful mountains, really nice old town, gorgeous cathedrals, delicious food and Mariscal has a great vibe.

My pictures:

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I guess it depends on the person and their personal experience, but some that come to my mind...

Osaka
Chongqing
Birmingham, England
Algiers
Tehran
Calcutta
Jakarta
Bogota
Tel Aviv
St. Petersburg

I have been to both Taipei and Quito actually, and I agree, both cities are AMAZING! I was on my way to Thailand and had a stopover in TPI, figured I knew nothing about it and stayed there for 3 days. Totally wish I had stayed a week--I ended up falling in love with it.

Interesting comment on Quito being "rough"--I thought all the warnings about it were exaggerated...it was very developed in comparison to what I was expecting. Could've been the area I stayed in though.

Yeah, the central areas and old town are perfectly fine, but if you take the tourist train south (like I did, of course), it passes through some areas that seem a lot less nice. My sister also lived in Quito for a while and had her purse stolen many many times. I personally did not experience any safety issues other than some perhaps less than perfectly honest taxi drivers.

Tehran seems super awesome, but it's kind of hard to visit isn't it?

Great: another thread where Jacksonville can star.

I was locked into the Taipei airport once when my plane to Okinawa was diverted there due to a typhoon. They wouldn’t let us out of the airport since we didn’t have Taiwan visas. Does that count?

That must have been a long time ago because I'm pretty sure Americans don't need visas to visit Taiwan (outside of COVID) anymore.

Lyon

Beirut, Teheran and Istanbul i've heard nice things about (also bad things of course, but those are usually not related to tourist experience).

I’ve commented before, but I think Naples is the most overlooked city in the world. 4 million people, one of largest historic centers of Europe, distinct culture, beautiful surroundings. Barcelona is hyped to extreme while Naples are forgotten.

It was: 1973.

But come to think of it, Naha may belong on this list.

In S. Am., Montevideo supposed to be very nice, with a lot of old buildings. Fortaleza in Brazil is supposed to be nice. Guadalajara MX. How about Vladivostok? Sofia? Alexandria? Oslo? Helsinki? Valencia? Seville? Oporto? Perth, Australia?

My wife went to middle and high school in Santiago, and I've been there once.

IMO it isn't a particularly interesting city, and Chilean urban culture isn't that different from more tourist-heavy South American cities like Buenos Aires. The food is the standard South American meat-heavy with European influences (though practically no indigenous influences) and the people are famously standoffish and hostile to outsiders, probably as a legacy of the Pinochet years

Also it was relatively poor and small until recently, so practically no colonial-era architecture of note. And quite isolated, of course. Most of the action is in urban but autocentric mall- and modern-highrise-heavy districts that are ubiquitous throughout Latin America. IMO it's no comparison to BA, Rio or Bogota (from a pure visitor perspective - it feels quite broadly prosperous).

Prettier than the similarly-sized Belgrade, but much less lively and avant-garde.

Baku, Azerbaijan looks very interesting and is in a very overlooked part of the world.