San Francisco was voted the top U.S. city to visit by the readers of travel magazine Conde Nast Traveler.

The California city earned the honors for the 17th year in a row in the publication's annual survey of its readers. San Francisco finished second worldwide to only Sydney, Australia, for the best cities to visit in the world.

Sydney has claimed top honors among all cities for eight straight years.

Charleston, S.C., finished second, with Santa Fe, N.M., New York City and Chicago rounding out the top five U.S. cities. The list of eight U.S. cities was rounded out by Honolulu, Carmel, Calif., and Savannah, Ga.

The cities were rated on atmosphere/ambience, culture/sites, friendliness, lodging, restaurants and shopping.

Other top regional cities included Ubud, Bali; Vancouver, Canada; Cape Town, South Africa; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Florence, Italy.

The complete results of the poll will appear in the November issue of the magazine, which goes on newsstands on Oct. 20. The results are also on the magazine's Web site at www.cntraveler.com/readerschoice.