Worst 'tourist' places you've visited

[ThunderOnlyHappens]

A little inspired by the school trips thread but I have been thinking about the worst places I've visited in pursuit of leisure. Disclaimer-sorry if you live there/love it. These are not anything other than my experience on that day/time.

There was the time I took a group of patients for a nice country stroll, which turned out to be a lay-by off an A-Road.

Or going on holiday to a small town near Gainsborough and realising that there was nothing to do, at all. We were there for a week!

i forgot abut rome-tourist overload yes i know the irony-unless youre heavily religio9us dont bother

the locals are rude and all the car drivers are mental

dublin-boring i went once with my dh 2 days was to long

I've heard racism here on the north island. Unfortunately only from Brits who moved here in the 50s and 60s and brought their prejudices with them and haven't moved with the times due to living in tiny communities that perpetuate the status quo
They are thankfully few and far between and racism is generally considered totally unacceptable. I've lived here for 3 years and previously lived in Brixton so I'm acutely aware of it if it happens and I've seen it once (a drunk elderly Scottish man shouting obscenities at an Indian supermarket worker who was roundly lambasted by several shoppers who heard him).

There's a genuine tension in NZ with immigration. Maori and Paheka can both often voice opinions against Asian immigration. The current labour govt are pro limited, skilled only immigration to protect Kiwis on low incomes and in rural communities which I admit can manifest in unwelcome opinions in tiny communities in the SI.

Ahem 'pakeha'. (New kiwi - poor grasp of Te Reo)

Cyprus 2009, even though there was nothing specific that went wrong I just didn’t like it as a whole.

Granted, there is so much to do in London that is free. It is a wonderful city for that.

(Good job too because some people here seem to be in denial about the costs of public transportation in London. The bus is good but as for the rest...!
Seriously, you need to compare it to the public transportation in other cities in Europe. Not with other places in the UK. Then you might realise just how poor value for money the tube is in particular.)

Has anyone actually enjoyed Venice?
I was very split about it. As my original post says, I found it impossible to get anything nice to eat (olives out of tins; stuff microwaved; miserable sandwiches) and found a lot of the people impatient and unfriendly (although I was there in early Sept, probably still high season and very busy, so I guess they'd had enough of the idiot tourists by then).

BUT as I also say, it is shatteringly beautiful and there isn't really anywhere else like it. I was there for the art Biennale and as an event that was wonderful. I'd go again, to the Biennale again or maybe in winter for Don't Look Now vibes.

If anyone has any tips for genuinely nice cafes or restaurants in Venice then I'm all ears because honestly, that was the biggest downside for me.

I agree with LaurieFairyCake about London. If you go only to Leicester Square/Covent Garden/Oxford St/the Eye etc then yes, you'll see rude miserable people, but they'll largely be other tourists all miserable because they're not seeing 'real' London and feel ripped off.

Step literally one street off the main drag in busy areas, or venture out to other neighbourhoods and zones, and it's a different story.

I also find people here friendly in general, usually even in central, busy cafes and museums etc but definitely in more local places; it doesn't take long for you to become a 'regular' in shops and things and to get a warm welcome.
And at bus stops and on the street and tube etc, yes, people tend to keep to themselves and assume that you want to as well; but ask for help or strike up a chat and, IME, most people will be more than willing to talk.

Has anyone actually enjoyed Venice?

Me! I went in winter, for the mardi gras festival, it was busy but a wonderful atmosphere, no heat meant none of the sewage smells I had heard about, and it was incredibly beautiful in the main tourist areas, some of the side streets are grubby and graffiti covered, but so is London so who am I to judge.

It was incredibly expensive, and the food mediocre to be honest, but as an experience, I loved it, visited the peggy guggenheim museum, doges palace etc.

Egypt however, was a whole other story. Absolute shit hole, men incredibly letchy and disrespectful towards women, hygiene even in the hotels was lax, we all got upset stomachs despite being very careful about what we ate, and the food was actually dire. Went to visit the pyramids and they are surrounding by rubbish, dirty nappies, food waste and all sorts. I wouldn't go back.

Munich (OH wanted to go and someone he works with recommended the Munich markets) - Overpriced, dirty (which surprised me), nothing to really do apart from drink sh*te warm wine and buy wooden Christmas decorations and I just didn't feel safe there (lots of groups of people outside the hotel begging at all hours). The only part of the week I spent there that I kind of enjoyed was going to Neuschwanstein Castle which was beautiful.
We did research it before we booked it, and thought that there was so much more to do, but to do anything moderately touristy or educational, you had to pay through the nose via a tour operator.

Scarborough and Whitby - I was told repeatedly that they are lovely seaside towns. Attempted both of them twice (on separate occasions) and really just didn't like them. I don't know whether it was because we tend to holiday out of season, or are they just crap towns (in my opinion)

**I live in a craphole town, which isn't the best of places - so I'm not being snobby

Eden Project - Not for me either, extortionately priced, lasted about an hour and gave up and went to an otter sanctuary (which was really good).

Who goes on holiday 'to Leicester Square'?

Thanks for the Prague reassurance, DontCallMeCharlotte! Fortunately I love big hunks of meat and dumplings!

Margate.

I'm not sure it qualifies as a tourist destination because hardly anyone goes there, but it is a seaside town. It's the most depressing and weird place I've ever been. Weird in a bad way. Most of the locals talk to pigeons.

Nakedavenger74 the thread title doesn't specify holidays. It says tourist places you've visited. That's why people have been talking about cities, towns, individual attractions or parts of towns etc.

Auckland was unbelievably dull. Like a small provincial town on a particularly sleepy Sunday.

I do think cities are often hard to get a handle on. I was underwhelmed by NY on my first visit but loved it on subsequent trips when I didn't do tourist stuff but just shopped, wandered, ate and drank.

London is definitely the worlds best city though. It's got everything going for it - there is something interesting around every corner.

Lands End -they wanted to charge us something like £10 just to take a photo of the sign with our own camera phone and it was so foggy that you could only see about 20 feet in front of you. Nothing there apart from the sign and a few grubby tourist shops. Horrible tourist tat at its worst. Never again.

Even the touristy areas in London are nice if you walk it and don't go in the summer when all the foreign tourists pile in. Go in May/early June and walk from Buckingham Palace through St. James Park to Parliament Square, up past Whitehall to Trafalgar Square, do the National Gallery, then either go on to Covent Garden and the British Museum or cross the bridge and walk along South Bank, visit the Globe and the Tate Modern. All walking distance, all worthy places to visit.

And that's just a tiny handful of the things to visit/do there.

I don't think London is the best city. I prefer Barcelona, Bangkok, Paris, Brighton to name a few.

I much prefer London to Barcelona, Berlin, Amsterdam, Prague, Brighton and, especially, Paris

I don't think London is the best city. I prefer Barcelona, Bangkok, Paris, Brighton to name a few

Not saying I think London is the best but I’d love to hear your reasoning. Especially for Brighton. Only time I went there I had to walk through streets of vomit still left from prior night’s revelries to get to the hostel I was staying in and seagulls attacked me. I grew up in a seaside town so I know the evils of seagulls but these ones were on another level.

Putting Brighton in a list with Paris, London and Barcelona is a bit of a joke, I presume!

Amsterdam is a strange one. I like it, and it is very pretty, there's lots to do and generally has a nice vibe.. but I won't go back again. I've been twice and the first time was with my friend and her brother. We ended up in a "cafe" where my friend was groped by two weird dudes, her bro gave them what for and we quickly left.. except these guys followed us back to our hotel! Thankfully nothing happened and they disappeared.. maybe it was a coincidence and they just happened to be heading in the same direction. But I do sometimes wonder what sort of a pickle we might've ended up in hadn't her brother been there.
Returned last year with DP. Shouted at by aggressive cyclists, offered drugs (not just weed) at 11am one morning. My sister visited a few weeks prior and said her friend got punched in the head by an angry cyclist.
Would love to see the rest of the Netherlands.

However I came to say Sunny Beach Bulgaria, 2000. Got off the flight busting for the loo only to be advised by some folks up the passport queue to not use the airport toilet.
Someone said downthread about houses without roofs, I'm sure we ate at a restaurant that didn't have a roof....
Lots of kids begging, pawing and pulling at your clothes for money.
We had a bus strip one day to Sofia which was lovely, but by gosh we witnessed some awful shanty town neighbourhoods en route. It saddened me. This was my first holiday and it was eye opening!
What I also found eye opening was the fact that outside the hotel there were no flushing toilets and you had to put your used tissue in a bin next to the loo. (Not the country's fault tho)
We visited Nessebar which was cute but the day was ruined by me and my then boyfriends mum having a major argument, and a group of locals following us and taunting/laughing at me, for reasons I still don't quite understand. Being a self conscious 17 year old girl I was confused and upset. This happened AGAIN at the airport on the way back, having my passport and bags checked, local guys taunting, pointing at me, speaking in their own language and laughing. I couldn't wait to get on the plane at that point.
What got me the most about this holiday was one evening we decided to watch some tv and to my horror hardcore porn was broadcast straight after the lottery draw! It was so utterly grim that it did make me evaluate the Bulgarian's view on women in general, and probably explains the taunting I received being a small, young girl.

I'm not a fan of Brighton. It has always had a seedy air, as marvellously depicted in Brighton Rock, and I don't really care for seedy!

What a shame how mass tourism has killed so many places. I would have loved to have visited Rome, but now when I see it on tv etc it looks absolutely rammed . I was reading about Cambridge last week, and the complaint that there are too many Chinese tourists. It was particularly the Chinese that were drawing complaints because they arrive in groups of 100, two coaches at a time, all go round en masse, not spending anything, and then head off.

I would add school parties to this, who clog up streets in tourist areas, only talking to each other or on their phones and look neither right nor left. They could be anywhere.

Knittink, have pmed you. I love Prague.

Lands End was a big let down though, I do agree.

I bloody love London I do !
Go for a long weekend every year even though I live in the best city in the world ( Manchester)

I loved some of the places mentioned here like Venice, Florence, Lake Garda and Bruges.

Not many holidays that I haven't enjoyed that I can think of. Didn't like the Champagne region of France that much but that might've been more to do with having a baby/toddler that didn't sleep all holiday and us not booking v baby friendly accommodation! Bath doesn't seem as nice as it used to years ago either so I would agree with that one - though I think Bristol is amazing and much better.