Love it or hate it, we now have an all-Romanian Final Four with Sibiu facing Alba Iulia, which narrowly escaped elimination with a tie-break. For those of you who are upset or think the tournament is broken because of Romania’s strong showing, here are my thoughts and response to the haters [NSFW: language]. With that out of the way, let’s see this civil war of cities heat up and whether or not Sibiu can take one more step toward becoming the first repeat champion of The Best City To Visit Travel Tournament.

Voting in the Final Four is open until Sunday, March 30th 6pm US EST to determine the two finalists in this year’s contest. Those of you reading through email and RSS will have to click-through to this page to vote.

The Romanians cities are in full force for the Elite 8, having knocked off strong competition in the Sweet 16 last week. Now, Buenos Aires and Seville stand in the way of a Romanian Final Four. These 8 cities have all made it this far and each one is only a few steps from becoming The Best City to Visit of 2014; but if there’s one predictable thing about this tournament it’s that it is usually unpredictable.

You have until this Saturday, March 22nd at 12pm US EST to pick your favorite 4 cities. Results will begin posting later in the week. Those of you reading through email and RSS will have to click-through to this page to vote.

Good luck everyone and remember, the Final Four round begins next Tuesday, March 25th!

This is one of the most interesting group of Sweet 16 cities I can remember in The Best City To Visit Travel Tournament. Over the next few days we’ll lose one more Romanian city between Cluj-Napoca versus Brasov and as the competition heats up, all of the entries can boost their support using these winning strategies from previous years. For the third round in a row I used my tie-breaking privilege to bump Havana over London while Paris jumped two entries, Budapest and Ljubjana in the Second Round’s modified match-ups. On the other side of the bracket, Istanbul has a good chance to knock off Alba Iulia and Cape Town could again quietly advance another round.

Whatever happens though it will be all based on your votes! You have until this Sunday, March 16th at 12pm US EST to pick your favorite 8 cities. Best of luck to everyone! Those of you reading through email and RSS will have to click-through to this page to vote.

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Good luck everyone and remember, the Elite 8 round begins next Tuesday, March 18th!

Before voting, let me remind you what the VPN service Hotspot Shield, official contest sponsors, can provide for travelers like you. Aside from protecting your online privacy, both their free and paid services eliminate the “uploader has not made this video available in your country” message from YouTube and similar sites, so you can watch anything online over a free Internet. [What is this?]

As has been the case in past Best City to Visit Tournaments, the First Round of voting produced some very close contests with a tie between Cape Town, South Africa and Surce, Boliva which I broke in favor of The Tavern of the Seas. All of the Romanian entries advanced but I won’t be able to say that at the start of the Sweet 16 on Thursday as Bucharest and Brasov face off today. Also, a number of you voiced your displeasure with having to enter a password in addition to the CAPTCHA on each poll so I’ve removed the first requirement – for now. I might have to reinstate it but in the meantime hopefully it’s less of a pain to vote.

EDIT: It was bound to happen, I made a mistake in putting together the initial round and neglected to place Budapest in the Preliminary voting. To remedy the situation, I’m placing Budapest with a seed of the average votes in the Preliminaries, placing it in a 3-way race between Paris and Ljubljana. I apologize for the mistake – an unfortunate by-product of being human.

Remember, this Second Round of 32 cities ends tomorrow, March 12th at 6pm US EST. Results won’t appear until the round closes, when there will be only 16 cities left. Those of you reading through email and RSS will have to click-through to this page to vote.

Good luck everyone and remember, the Sweet 16 round begins this Thursday, March 13th!