What famous places have disappointed you?

[mouldyhousemouldylife]

Or a landmark, artwork etc.

I guess mine is Plitvice Lakes in Croatia and Lake Bled in Slovenia. I've wanted to go for years as they both looked unbelievable and magical on photos, but going there just felt pretty ordinary. Very nice looking but I wasn't blown away.

Anyone else been to either? What did you think?

i lived in France and have not once really enjoyed staying in Paris. yes it has some beautiful sights but id not visit by choice again.

Kernobhead My DH has Thai parents, so we’ve been over a few times and I totally agree with you re: Bangkok
To get to where the family live in rural, Northern Thailand, we usually have to do Heathrow to Dubai, Dubai to Bangkok, a 24 hr layover in Bangkok and then a small internal flight up to Chiang Mai.
Those 24 hrs we spend in Bangkok aren’t enjoyable. Especially since we’ve had the DCs
The north of the country however, even some of the bigger cities, haven’t yet been adapted to suit huge levels of tourism, so is quite pleasant

The Blue Lagoon, very artificial, crowded and overpriced

I loved Chiang Mai, and northern Thailand. Not a fan of the islands generally, too crowded and I’m not a beach person anyway.

Only other place I have been to and have no desire to return is Brussels. Nice enough, I imagine it’s a great place to live and work, but I found it underwhelming..

The most recent time I was passing through Paris with my aged mum and catching a train from Charles de Gaulle and even the young man selling us tickets seemed worried for us that we were travelling about on our own, lol.

Sad to hear someone slagging off Fiji - DH and I spent weeks there as backpackers and loved it. I think any tropical island country might be a disappointment if you're expecting a stereotypical paradise - they're real places with bins, toilets, grumpy people etc. But Fijian people are lovely and the islands are beautiful.

My worst two have been

Blue Lagoon, Iceland. Expensive, crowded with rowdy teenagers on school trips, and not very clean (in contrast to every local non-touristy swimming place we visited elsewhere in Iceland, which were spotless)

San Francisco. Probably because we were jet-lagged but it was colder than the UK (August) , the GG bridge was hidden in fig and the famous bits were full of tourists and tat. It is, however, a great city to explore on foot, and much much nicer if you get off the beaten track. I think the fault was mine for expecting Californian sunshine.

Niagra falls

Kernobhead my in-laws a from a tiny little rainforest village north of Chiang Mai, and it’s honestly some of the most stunning scenery I’ve ever seen in my life! The wildlife I’ve seen there is astounding.
Pre-kids we did a jungle trek with a local guide and was lucky enough to see a family of wild elephants (from a good half a km away). Just as we were about to move on, one of the elephants got up from where she was sitting, to reveal a tiny, newborn elephant The guide reckoned it can’t have been more than a few days old, as he’d been out there a few days before and had seen the adult elephants but no baby! I felt incredibly lucky to have seen such stunning creatures in their natural, untouched habitat, loving completely undisturbed. Absolutely nothing like the abhorrent touristy elephant attractikns that are common place further south

keith we made a similar mistake in San Francisco, we just assumed it would be warm and sunny, because it’s California! It was freezing, we had to buy jackets and jumpers. We loved the city though, one of my favourites.

The elephants sound amazing! We spent a long time researching elephant sanctuaries before we went, as we wanted to see elephants but avoid any places that were exploiting them. I think we found one that was a true, caring sanctuary. There were no opportunities to stroke or feed them, we just viewed from afar.

@Kernobhead I lived in BKK and it's nothing at all like the rest of Thailand. You kind of have to spend a fair amount of time there to get through all the layers of tourist trap/sex trade/americanising and then you find some great stuff. I would prefer to head north though tbh.

The Fairy Pools in Skye. Beautiful photos of cascading blue/green waterfalls. Reality was it was rammed with tourists taking selfies and stupid group shots of them all jumping at the one time and the water was black. Like any other waterfalls I've ever seen

I was so disappointed with Florence. It was just unbelieavably busy all the time - the roads and pavements were crammed full and it was all a bit too much. It is very pretty and we did eat very well there, but it was just too busy to really appreciate the city. Maybe it's different out of peak season. I'd go back though for some of the incredible pasta dishes we had there.

How is Hever castle commercialised?

I’m so easily pleased! I’ve been to lots of these places and loved most of them. LA is just a big suburb, nice to live in, not to visit as a tourist. Everywhere else, Florence, Rome, Paris, SF, Kao Lak, Marrakech, I loved. Nearest to underwhelmed was Marsa Alam

Literally today - Berlin.

Had a day today to go sightseeing. Went to Unter den Linden - looks like a giant building site. Everything is covered in scaffolding, loads of stuff is shut for renovation.

And then I stumbled into an AfD rally which was positively chilling - message unmistakable even for a non-German speaker. Big van driving about with an image of a painting of white woman about to be 'seduced' by some orientals who were clearly Muslim. OMG what is going on here.

Only nice thing was the hordes of Bayern Munich fans descending on the place for a match - reminded me that Munich is a much much nicer place to visit.

I visited Florence 25 years ago and its food set the benchmark for me.

Think I've just been really lucky and lived most places I've been. Admittedly the heat and humidity in Bangkok got to me but city itself was good (hwlped by having mate living there to show us about). Top places have been Norway...just ridiculously beautiful (as long as you expect all weather and know it can be ££) and for the UK the Yorkshire Dales.

Would love to go to Florence but from what I already know can see why people would find it disappointing

• massively crowded with everyone else who wants to go to Florence
• geography makes it v polluted
• some of the key sites are honestly hard to like if you don't know a lot about art. And I am not totally convinced a lot of Renaissance art is that likeable - there are only so many Madonna and childs most people can take

This is why we did Venice properly in late September and had a brilliant time. Had a day trip in August and loathed it - too hot, too crowded, main memory is me passing out on the vaporetto

Much later and weather better, easier to escape crowds. Had 10 days, left still with things to do...

LJdorothy however wonderful other things might be in a city I certainly wouldn't want to return to somewhere I didn't feel safe

But nowhere's 100% safe is it? You could get mugged anywhere and nearly all big cities will have beggars and pickpockets. I understand that if you've had a bad experience you wouldn't want to return, I just think some of the people on here have just chosen to focus on the negative about the places they've visited or the objects they've looked at. The Mona Lisa isn't a big painting. So what? Does something need to be large to be wonderful? Someone saying the pyramids aren't impressive or Sagrada Familia or Notre Dame were boring just makes me wonder why they bothered going in the first place.

Maybe the media, and travel advertising in particular, don’t always give an honest picture of places, @LJdorothy, so the reality can’t always live up to people’s expectations. And if you have paid a lot to go somewhere, and it really doesn’t live up to your expectations, you are going to feel a bit disappointed that you’ve spent all that money and not got what you were expecting.

Of course people aren’t going to go somewhere if they know, ahead of time, that they aren’t going to enjoy it - but if they do go somewhere and are disappointed, it is not unreasonable for them to complain.

Chester. Dh told me it was like York. It friggin' wasn't.

I have never felt unsafe in any city apart from Paris. People don't know what sights or things are going to be like so may be disappointed. Conversely people might be pleasantly surprised by things they see but the thread is about things you have been disappointed by

So essentially everywhere is a bit meh.

Shania Twayne ‘that don’t impress me much!’