As the old song goes, for Thanksgiving, you’re supposed to go “over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house,”… but maybe there are other destinations you should be checking out (and Grandma can join you there)! Key metrics used by personal finance website WalletHub to form its list of the 10 best places to go for Thanksgiving include the cost of the traditional dinner ingredients, the occurrence of delayed flights from this destination, what the weather will be like and the abundance of restaurants in case you’re going to relax and let someone else do the cooking.
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Given all this, San Diego wins out as the best place to spend your Thanksgiving this year. That’s thanks to a ton of restaurants and holiday decoration shops. Interestingly, San Diego residents performed online searches about Thanksgiving more than folks in most other cities, so you know you’ll be around people who are already thinking about the holiday. San Diego has the 11th most charities per capita, so if giving back is in your plans, this is a good city to do it. Finally: very little precipitation.
Atlanta is in second place, also with restaurants, décor shops and charities. It's got a good record of on-time flights, so you can rely on getting out or in with ease. San Francisco’s in third place with affordable hotels (as low as $60 for a three-star hotel room, the report says, which is frankly...not what we thought hotel rooms in San Francisco went for) along with great restaurants and decoration shops.
Along with the city rankings, WalletHub also included some interesting facts for the holiday. Shockingly, the average American male would have to spent 10 hours on a treadmill to burn off the 4,500 calories consumed at the typical Thanksgiving meal (but what about the average American female? Which leads us to the next fact: 61 percent of people sitting down to Thanksgiving try to avoid talking about politics.) Men will consume 3.1 drinks that day, while women will down 2.4 drinks. The average host spends $361 to host and 9.6 hours preparing. Finally, keep an eye on that stove and know where your fire extinguisher is, because four times as many cooking fires happen on Thanksgiving as on a regular day.
Here are the top 10 American cities for celebrating Thanksgiving in 2024:
1. San Diego, CA
2. Atlanta, GA
3. San Francisco, CA
4. San Jose, CA
5. Dallas, TX
6. Lexington-Fayette, KY
7. San Antonio, TX
8. Las Vegas, NV
9. Louisville, KY
10. Orlando, FL