Holiday destinations that were unexpectedly lovely OR awful.

Thought I'd hate Orlando, love it (you do have to suspend your cynicism though)

I was hugely disappointed by Florence. A city completely overwhelmed by tourism and devoid of actual life of its own. And because it's in a bit of a natural bowl and the streets are full of badly tuned Vespas, the air is pretty much unbreathable (this was a while ago, they may have improved it). However I grant you that I'm biassed by the fact that I was 5 months pg so a full-on sightseeing and walking city break was perhaps a bit over-optimistic and left me knackered.

Santorini - awful place full of black gritty sand, donkey shit and steep hills.

St Stephano in Corfu. Always thought Corfu was naff and some of it is.

Two weeks in Fowey as a cancellation - divine.

The Languedoc. I thought it would be dull. It's divine.

I am so glad you said Torremolinos, I'm going there on holiday this year!
Went to Florida, did tourist things as well as local and loved it,

Copenhagen - awful.

Scary bottleneck at the arrivals exit at the airport. It took us literally an hour to walk about 10 metres. It got so hot I thought I would faint.

Had to wait almost an hour (tickets expire after an hour) for trains that were supposed to come every 5 mins. Station filled with smoke, smoking was allowed.

Foreign credit or debit cards were not accepted.

The heavily advertised bike hire point wasn't actually available until weeks later - some mix up with the dates apparently In the cycling capital of the world we were unable to hire a bike because bike hire places close on a Saturday at midday.

In fact everything closes at Saturday at midday INCLUDING THE CENTRAL TOURIST OFFICE. Everyone goes off and they don't go back to work until Monday afternoon. So it's not a great weekend destination.

People drinking from the morning so by midday the town had groups of half naked drunken young men yelling.

Huge sex shop adverts all over the place (buses, banners on the street).

Rough town centre in general, saw police chases and people smoking crack at midday sitting on their doorsteps, quite openly. Have not seen this anywhere else, I come from a pretty rough background.

Not impressed! People were beautifully welcoming and polite but I won't come back in a hurry.

I loved LasVegas. Was only there fur a few days but it was great!

Can't think of anywhere that turned out shit!

We were underwhelmed by Bali as well. It wasn't awful, but it is heavily populated and the roads have a lot of ribbon development. Also, being pestered by hawkers all the time was very irritating.

The holiday was redeemed by a mini cruise that included a visit to Komodo which was amazing.

I didn't like Australia at all either. I'm always baffled by people who love it so much they want to emigrate.

Oh I loved Barcelona !

Dublin....dull as fuck

Kefalonia absolutely beautiful
Barcelona absolutely hated it. Could not walk 2 steps without being harassed by beggars

Our coach did a drop off in Sidari last time we went to Corfu and I was pleased we weren't staying there.

We stayed in Arillas which was lovely.

When we went to Crete the village we stayed in was only a few miles along the coast from Malia and we were a bit concerned, but it was low key and quiet, and the hotel was fabulous.

Torremolinos... I enjoyed it. Had a lovely holiday (pre kids) at a hotel right on the beach. We would sunbathe for a couple of hours in the morning then have a long, sangria filled lunch at one of the beach bars. Then back onto the beach about 4pm to sleep off the sangria. Happy memories.

Montesquieu des Alberes, south of France

We had booked an absolutely amazing looking villa, cos 3 grand for the week (were sharing with friends) ...looked forward to it for months. It sounded and looked amazing

But the villa was filthy just absolutely filthy. and the air con was broken and the owners were in England and didn't give a fuck anyway. And There was ants everywhere and mosquitoes, I got bitten to fuck

It was 36-38 degrees even in the middle of the night

There was sod all to do absolutely sod all. And we didn't even go to the beach cos was too hot

Bali.... a complete shit hole

Ibiza.....I have been about 10 times now and I love the place

Sidari in Corfu was horrendous. We went on the recommendation of a friend who'd been about 10 years before and said it was a nice small resort. Had been quite developed since then and just marketed at the most horrendous vile, rough people. And that isn't snobbyness, I don't mind a bucket and spade resort, this was at a level where the locals were telling us that the tourists averaged one or two arson attacks a week and stabbings and domestic violence were common. They also treated the locals like shit and expected them basically to their personal slaves, clicking fingers at them and ordering them around.

Australia- hated it.

Bangkok i loved, but had friends out there do got the local experience, hugely different from being a tourist.