Who Paid to Get Us on National Geographic’s List of Best Spring Trips?

Photos: Great Barrier Reef by Richard Ling (license); Fish Tank Guy image via Google Street View

What do the Coral Sea, home of the Great Barrier Reef, and Philadelphia, home of the Fish Tank Guy on 5th Street, have in common? They’re both on this National Geographic list of Best Spring Trips for 2017.

Yes, Philadelphia and the Great Barrier Reef, together at last! National Geographic has a list of “some destinations that will help you welcome the season’s nicer weather,” and Philly is on there.

Obviously we here at Philadelphia magazine think you should visit Philadelphia. But it is incredibly amusing to find Philly alongside a cape-to-cape drive in South Africa, the largest city in Nepal, Japan’s remote Aogashima Island and Suzhou, China’s silk city. Come to think of it, we have a Silk City, too!

National Geographic calls out the city’s restaurant scene as the reason to visit. There are “956 food establishments in the Center City District alone,” though half the ones mentioned in the blurb are at Reading Terminal Market. Rooster Soup Co. also gets a shout-out, as do these Philly food tours.

Anyway, don’t take it from us, take it from National Geographic: Philadelphia is a great place to visit this spring, at least as good as Los Glaciares National Park and Wisconsin’s annual balloon festival.