I was born and raised in Chesapeake, Virginia, a city that movoto.com deems the third most boring city in America. Little did they know, there’s actually tons to do here.

• You could go see the Great Dismal Swamp, because who doesn’t love a good ‘ol swamp? It catches on fire every couple of years, but when it’s not smoky you can marvel at the acres of trees growing out of swamp water like the rest of us locals.
• You could sit and watch the boats go through the Intracoastal Waterway. Make sure you bring both a heavy jacket, and a tank top with sunscreen. Oh, and a sturdy umbrella, because as we all know, Virginia weather is unpredictable.
• You could visit the Planetarium. On Thursday nights it’s free to the public! In Elementary school the yearly Planetarium visit was the only field trip I ever fell asleep during, but I’m sure it’d be more interesting now.
• You could go to the Chesapeake Arboretum. It’s listed first under the “Attractions” tab on the Chesapeake Tourism Advisory Board website. You would not only help out with “landscape maintenance”, but you’d also meet people who know how to correctly spell and pronounce “arboretum”.
• We have lots of parks throughout the city that are truly a fun time. You could fish, or go canoeing, or bird watch, or “hike” (it’s flat ground). It may be similar to other parks throughout the country, but ours are different because we have no waterfalls, or geysers, or grand canyons.

When I first saw that my hometown, a town I know so well, was labeled as boring, I felt bad for it, but the more I thought about it, the more perfectly boring it seemed. Sure, we may have to travel a little ways to the zoo, or an amusement park, or the beach, but at the end of the day we have our quiet, little, boring home to come back to.