Toledo is an industrial city of about 270,000 people on the Maumee River in northwest Ohio, at the western end of Lake Erie. It has an honest rust-belt character that doesn't pretend to be something it isn't — and it has one genuinely excellent reason to visit. The Toledo Museum of Art holds one of the most comprehensive art collections in the United States, particularly strong in glass art (Toledo has a long history of glass manufacturing), ancient Greek and Roman works, and European painting. The museum's Glass Pavilion, a stunning contemporary building designed by SANAA, is worth the trip on its own.
The Toledo Mud Hens, the minor league baseball team whose name became famous through MAS*H, play here at Fifth Third Field, a pleasant downtown ballpark. The Toledo Zoo is well regarded, particularly for its hippopotamus exhibit (the "hippo experience" is apparently a big draw). The city's position on Lake Erie means there's decent fishing, and the Erie islands — including Put-in-Bay — are accessible by ferry not far to the east.
For a city this size, Toledo punches well above its weight on quirky one-room museums: the Blair Museum of Lithophanes is the most obsessive, the National Museum of the Great Lakes the most useful. The city's signature meal is a Hungarian hot dog at Tony Packo's, the East Toledo institution whose celebrity-signed buns came to national notice through MAS*H.
Toledo sits at the corner of Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, and is a practical stop if you're driving between Cleveland or Columbus and Detroit or Chicago.