Venice of the North? Join the queue

Clicking some news links I somehow ended up with a story about the floods in Australia: 'Rocky the Venice of the North'. Overlooking the fact that Rockhampton would surely be the Venice of the South, they need to get in the queue. I've lost count of the cities I've visited that make that claim, but I've yet to see Venice reciprocate, and boast of being the Birmingham of the South. Or Stockholm. Or Amsterdam. Or Bruges.

15 minutes with Google I'll never get back, and here's a list of other contenders.

• Aalborg: Paris of the North
• Abidjan, Paris of West Africa
• Amsterdam: Venice of the North
• Asheville, North Carolina: Paris of the South
• Belfast: Athens of the North? (to be fair, this course at Queens University, Belfast, comes with a question mark)
• Bogotá: Athens of South America
• Boston: Athens of America
• Bourton-on-the-Water: Venice of the Cotswolds
• Buenos Aires: Paris of South America
• Coimbatore, Manchester of South India
• Edinburgh: Athens of the North
• Fort Lauderdale: Venice of America
• Freetown: Athens of West Africa
• Manchester: Venice of North
• Philadelphia: Athens of America.

So we all want to be Athens, Paris or Venice. Except that Coimbatore is keen to be the Manchester of South India. Given Manchester is the Venice of the North... well, you can see where this is heading.