At Least It's Not Detroit: The 8 Cities More Unpleasant Than Sochi

Barry Kaufman
by Barry Kaufman
Last updated: 1:00 PM ET, Wed February 19, 2014

PHOTO: Western part of the abandoned Packard Automotive Plant in Detroit, Michigan. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Let's face it; the Olympics haven't been kind to the reputation of poor Sochi.

It started with the images, Tweeted by visiting journalists, of the bizarre conditions in the Russian city, from half-finished hotel rooms to mysteriously discolored water.

To be clear, many of these Tweets were fabricated. That communal room of toilets for athletes was not at Sochi. The toilet that was half-built into a wall had been circling the web for months before the Olympics. But the photos of that famously yellow water? Real.

The Wi-Fi routers dangling from open panels in hotel walls? The genuine article.

The stone face of Vladamir Putin greeting guests in the lobby? Da.

And that's not to even mention what happened to Bob Costas. Poor guy looked like he was on track to join the X-Men.

But despite the pallid color it's been painted by the media, Sochi can't be all bad, can it? It's not like it's the worst place on earth.

Well according to misstravel.com, it's not. But it could still be in the top 10, as they have presented their list of the eight most unpleasant cities rivaling Sochi.

Top 8 Most Unpleasant Cities Rivaling Sochi:

1. Dhaka, Bangladesh

2. New Delhi, India

3. Algiers, Algeria

4. Detroit, Michigan

5. Youngstown, Ohio

6. Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

7. Guadalajara, México

8. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Having grown up in Detroit and shared a college dorm room with natives of Youngstown, we can confirm both cities' place on this list has been well earned.

Rio comes as a surprise, however, especially with Carnival coming up Feb. 28. Maybe the members of travelmiss.com just aren't soccer fans.

According to its website, misstravel.com is designed to, "match generous travelers who hate to travel alone with attractive travelers who would love the opportunity to travel the world for free." So if you're my wife, please know I was only looking at this site for work.

More than 3,000 misstravel.com members took the survey, basing their ranking on factors such as lodging, amenities, cleanliness, and customer service.


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Barry Kaufman

Barry Kaufman

TravelPulse contributor Barry Kaufman has been a writer and editor for 15 years and a travel junkie since birth. He lives by...

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