New York City

 
You profess to hate it, but inside you love it.
Paris attracts more tourists than New York. So does London, which handily beat out NYC for this summer’s Olympic bid. And Busan, South Korea now has a bigger department store than the (formerly biggest) Macy’s in Manhattan.

Does New York care a lick? No. Why not?

Because no city is as supremely oblivious to the mere notion of also-ran status as New York -- the world’s third most-visited city on the planet according to the World Tourism Organization and the only city on the planet according to itself. 

Times Square and Central Park remain the most-visited tourist sites in the world (by far) in a Travel + Leisure tally. Then there’s Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Yankee Stadium and all those acronymed neighborhoods (DUMBO -- huh?) and landmark buildings.

New York has a natural history museum where (we’ve heard) dinosaurs and Neanderthals secretly come to life at sundown. But whatever.

The point is, any city where just riding the subway, talking to a grumpy cop or window shopping at 3 a.m. offers a more singular experience for visitors than the best thing going in Minneapolis or practically anywhere else possesses a certain irresistible cockiness that even draws in folks who hate New York.