Top 5 US Cities I Want to Visit

I’ve never really been much of a traveller. When I was a kid, we’d drive up from southwestern Connecticut to Massachusetts every summer to visit my aunt and cousin. Occasionally we’d take a trip to Mystic, CT, or we’d go down to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania. PA was really the farthest we went away from the Northeast.

Now that I’m working for Automattic, I’m doing a lot more traveling. In the past seven months, I’ve spent an entire month traveling. I’ve visited Chicago, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Las Vegas, and Rome. Suddenly, I’ve started thinking about all of these different cities I want to visit. Here’s my top 5 in the US:

1. Austin, Texas: Being a staunch New Englander, the idea that I want to visit Texas is pretty surprising to me. It’s honestly never held much appeal. However, I’ve been hearing more and more about Austin as a great place for food, music, and tech. I also have a bunch of coworkers there.
2. Honolulu, Hawaii: I mean, come on. Hawaii. It’s the typical American vacation dream. In the dead of New England winter, I long for beautiful beaches and gorgeous weather. I have a team of coworkers doing a meetup in Hawaii right now, and I’m definitely a little jealous.
3. New Orleans, Louisiana: New Orleans is an iconic American city with a tremendous amount of culture and history. I want to check out what all the fuss is about. Not to mention — the food!
4. Portland, Oregon: Portland is my dream city in a lot of ways — great coffee and coffee shops, craft beer, and gorgeous scenery. Everything I hear about it reminds me a lot of Northampton, MA, where I lived for over six years. I’ve thought about moving to Portland sometime in the future, but I figure I should probably visit it first.
5. Seattle, Washington: Seattle holds a lot of the same appeal to me as Portland, but with a more pronounced tech scene. As luck would have it, I’ll be heading to Seattle at the end of March for An Event Apart Seattle. Looking forward to crossing this one off my list.