I forgot Athens and deliberately left out Mexico because I was thinking of the country, not city. With Syracuse I always think of the NY one first (for other readers, Syracuse is a city in eastern Sicily founded by Greeks 2700 years ago)
Athens is directly west of Hudson, my closest access to the river, and there's a good brewer and a summer ferry over so it's on my mind occasionally. This part of the valley is a carnival for unusual names and offbeat pronunciations (like my favorite, Valatie, which somehow becomes vuh-LAY-shuh).