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!

Tenerife - DF, DM, DSis and I all got a D&V bug. Remember throwing up one night head in the toilet and a cockroach crawled passed me.

Pisa - surrounded by a dodgy looking market a complete waste of time.

Paris - DH and I must have looked like tourists as we were plagued by people begging for money and trying to trick us out of money using things like the 'gold' ring trick. We knew it was dodgy but couldn't work out why and googled it when we got back to the hotel.

Ha Long bay. It diddnt help that it was so foggy we couldn't see a thing but the water was filthy and at night all you could see was hundreds of other boats.

@HildaZelda I may well appreciate it a bit more 20 years on.
But as a teenager in the late 90s it was absolutely awful!
I even googled activities in the ring of Kerry last week, as I was discussing how awful it was, and a lot of the activities are rambling or hill climbing.

Blackpool is a hole, and I'm from down the road! Grim is the best word to describe it.

Jamaica is amazing. Montego Bay is horrid. Basically the Grimsby of Jamaica. Glad we travelled over the whole island and saw more than that!

Florence. Dirty. Packed. Smells funny. Beautiful but I wouldn't go back without much better research.

Ibiza. Had a truly awful week there in my late teens. Why I got persuaded that was a good idea I have no clue. So not my idea of a good holiday. I hated it.

Eden project is fab though! We spent two whole days there, there's so much to see if you're a nature lover.

Waltzing Waters Isle of Wight. We took DS as a baby as we thought it would be a sensory experience for him. It was dire, a room that smelt of wet carpet, some fountains with lights that weren't in time to the music and we were the youngest in there by about 60 years! 😂

Key West - a hideous tourist toy town rather than a Hemingway-esque frontier.

Science museum was underwhelming. Walked round thinking "is this it?" But maybe that was after NHM and the V&A, where I could happily lose days of my life.

Naples - have travelled lots as a single female and never have I felt as unsafe as I did when I arrived in Naples. Just a really horrible undercurrent, can’t even explain it. It’s strange as I’m pretty hardy - I was mugged at a cash point in Rome but still love Rome!

I LOVED Hong Kong (even though I got terrible, terrible food poisoning from some street food - my own bloody fault).

Interesting that Lake Garda has been mentioned so often as a hated location! I have so many happy memories from family holidays around Garda when I was young.

Agree with Mombasa - we went quite a while ago, and it wasn't as unnerving then, but a friend has. He said never again.

Bath. Just what is all the fuss about?

Cambridge. Ditto.

Weston Super Mare (or as we called it on that holiday, Weston Super Donkey Dung). I have never seen so much shit on a beach in my whole life.

Boulogne was pretty grim when I went there on a coach trip once. Cold, windy, most things were shut and the French were on strike about something so we had to leave early to catch the ferry before they shut the port. Blessing in disguise it was.

Kanoni in Corfu. Beautiful and iconic image of the monastery on all the postcards. What they don't tell you is that not only is it practically at the end of the runway of the nearby airport. but it is also on the edge of a huge and whiffy brackish lagoon used as a mosquito breeding ground.

Blackpool & Santa Ponsa in Majorca, neither I want to remember let alone return too!

Kennedy Space Center.

It was a long time ago that I visited but it was really very dull and old fashioned.

Pisa! Street sellers accosting you before you have stepped off the coach. Plus once you have seen the tower there isn't much else there bar the tacky stalls on the way in to the town.

Second Morocco and especially the cities: got verbal abuse and lots of leery men shouting, staring and following us. We were/ are a multicultural group and we were subjected to racial abuse too, friend of Indian heritage was constantly poked or shoved by men or just man handled as they assumed that she was a local (?). Black friend was constantly called a whore. And they joked about a white wedding. We had gone there as we all spoke French and so we understood them.They repeatedly called us prostitutes even in marketplaces or at historical sites in the daytime.

It was HORRIBLE and no one ever came to our help which taught me a bloody lot about life as a woman over there.

Chicago. I don't know if we just picked badly but out of the hotel at night and it was scary.

During the day - lovely!

We had driven across from Vegas on Route 66, and the rest was gorgeous.

Puerto Rico in Gran Canaria. Absolutely overrun with cockroaches to the point they were crawling over us in bed and dropping onto us as we ate outside restaurants.

Our hotel was directly opposite the shopping centre that had clearly been modelled on an NCP multi storey. Pride of place was a McDonalds with a giant inflatable Ronald McDonald atop that stared at me from across the way.

It was also the holiday that my partner decided to propose to me on...suffice to say we are now divorced.

I forgot Chicago! Hated it

TattooUndo : "Paris. The permeating stink of piss does not make it a romantic destination."

SinkGirl : "🙄 Paris doesn’t smell of piss."

I was just finishing reading the thread before posting agreement with Tattoo. When we visited Paris it was in springtime (late 90s) and large areas of the city reeked like the gents toilets in a particularly dodgy student bar.

Very scenic and cultural, for sure, but the overwhelming piss aroma (and we're talking major, open, tourist areas - not down back alleyways) was really grim and spoiled the trip.

Paris is awful! So smelly and dirty. We saw bushes actually shaking as they were so full of rats and there is dog poop everywhere. Romantic?! Absolutely not. Art galleries are super though.

Tenerife - dirty streets, bars full of fat Brits smoking and drinking. I was sick and had an upset tummy no matter what I ate or drank. Constantly being hassled by waiters or looky looky men. I wouldn’t even go back for free. The snob in me is well and truly out

Chicago is amazing! Spent a month there years back with work and I loved it.

Quebec - on arrival be sure to set your watch to about 40 years behind Greenwich Mean Time

Bangkok and Phuket. We fell for the people are lovely, beaches are beautiful marlarky.
Mopeds and motorbikes everywhere with no thought for safety. All whizzing past you, so you couldn't relax when walking around.
We seen two moped accidents within a few hours of getting there.
As soon as you left the hotel, you were surrounded by people trying to sell you something, then if you did want to buy anything you had to be wary of getting ripped off.
We booked a trip with the travel company which also took us to all his mates shops.
If you were on the beach it would be constant hassle from hawkers.
The entire trip felt like one big project to take you for as much money as possible.
Tbf it made the 11 hour peaceful journey back the most enjoyable bit of the holiday.

Bali. It was like Benidorm but with Australian chavs instead of Brits. And we were ill the whole time.

In the uk...Bridlington...sorry but it looked so run down
In France...maubuisson..two streets big at the side of a lake..bored witless
Funny that a lot of the places mentioned I’ve no desire to go to
Morocco, Tunisia, Dubai,
Was surprised to see lake Garda mentioned...my cousin goes every year loves it
No desire to go to Caribbean islands...went to Cuba..that was enough
Someone mentioned Boulogne ...a lot of the ferry ports felt quite menacing when we arrived late at night in spring . Calais 😱
St malo was the best
Ostend was pretty grim
Monaco..hot, crowded, couldn’t park, spent an hour in a rock tunnel queuing to get in . One of the most terrifying times of my life...if there’d have been a fire ...😱

Keep them coming.
My dh loves a thread like this.
The more places I can cross off my wish list ...the happier he is

He loved Oban in the rain 😡

I don't know why people are so down on Amsterdam. Thought it was wonderful. Went in my early twenties and then again a few years ago with kids and thought it was magic both times - very different experiences. I love my condom shop window photos! Happy to post a link.

I came on to say Cheddar Gorge/Western Super Mare flissfloss65 and BeaTrewts bloody awful and it pissed down the whole time and we only had a teeny tiny and very leaky tent. We drank a LOT of cider!

chilledteacher you are COMPLETELY wrong about the Waltzing Waters (although everything you say in your post is 100% accurate). It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I absolutely pissed myself laughing the whole way through. In fact, even seeing the words in your post made me start laughing again so much i nearly fell of my chair. DH asked why I was laughing and when I said "waltzing waters" he started giggling too. I'd DEF go back, and I totally recommend everyone googles it. It's hysterical. And they're so SERIOUS about it. (I'm laughing again!). They had names for the different sized jets and everything.

And, btw the tortoise sanctuary somewhere in Cornwall also takes a lot of beating. It was run by two people who were both clearly gradually turning into tortoises (a vision aided by their matching woolly bobble hats). Oh god, I can't stop laughing now I've started! DD was about 2 and totally bemused about what her parents found so funny. Actually, she was the same at the waltzing waters, although she was older then. These hysterical places you take your kids to because you think they'll enjoy them!