Have you ever been anywhere on holiday that was like the emperors new clothes?

[Cheeseandlobster]

I did. Last year I went to a very small hotel in Greece. 16 rooms only with pages and pages of great reviews.

When I arrived all the tables were pushed together and everyone was sat together pissed as farts getting louder and louder. One woman was drunker and swearier than the rest and it turned out she was the owner.

It was expected that you socialise and drink at the hotel even though the entire pool had no sun from 1pm and the surrounding area was beautiful. The owner would bark at you if you asked for food from the menu and would openly slate other guests for making reasonable requests. And the interrogation you got if you went out of the hotel was crazy.

Luckily I met another lovely solo traveller who felt the same as me so we paired up and left the hotel at the same time each day to share the interrogation. I will never stay at another small hotel again because of this.

Anyone else?

Apart from 2020, we've been to Barcelona every summer while staying nearby for over a decade and never experienced pick-pockets, despite spending some of the time on La Ramblas.

It's incredible how the Olympics changed everything for the city though - I went twice in the mid-80s and La Ramblas and anything south of Placa Catalunya was a no go area - deserted and full of drug dealers and prostitutes.

Jesus. I’ll just stay in Doncaster forever after reading this.

For me: Paris - unless you know it well, we found it intimidating. But we were young.

Corfu, Sidari. What a dump.

@Mally100 I felt exactly the same about Turkey, I was always looking over my shoulder. I thought it was because I'd gone with a female and it might have been a completely different holiday if I was with a man.

Marmaris in Turkey. Never had so many men pester me in my life. Went there with my female friend a few years ago. We were both sexually assaulted, in broad daylight. Her by a shopkeeper whilst we looked at bags. I was accosted and groped in the sea by a Turkish man. It was terrifying. He wouldn't let go and I was out of my depth.

I will never return.

I didn't say you couldn't walk there. I'm just thinking it seems a bit stupid to repeatedly walk in an area you claim to be so unsafe, but each to their own.

I'm not suggesting anything. I'm saying it's well known for being a pickpocket paradise and a tourist trap, and I don't know any locals who walk down it. Perhaps your perception of Barcelona being unsafe has a lot to do with choosing to repeatedly put yourself in an unsafe area? Just a thought.

I've been to a lot of places mentioned and enjoyed in some way the majority of them. Never been to a centre park tho.
Marrakech was an experience but I wouldn't go again. I found a few sharp French phrases came in handy for overly persistent attention.
I thought Genoa had a strange, slightly menacing, atmosphere but I wasn't there long. Rimini was also odd.
I went to New Orleans pre Katrina. Lovely but people kept warning us not to walk anywhere.

I didn't say you couldn't walk there.

Thanks, that’s good of you.

I'm just thinking it seems a bit stupid to repeatedly walk in an area you claim to be so unsafe, but each to their own.

When did I say that I ‘repeatedly walk up and down’ in that area? I don’t. What I actually said was that every time I’ve walked along the Rambla, next to the Placa Reial, I’ve seen someone have their bag nicked by someone who has sprinted away through the Placa. I noted that because another poster denied that there were any risks of robbery in Barcelona and described anyone who thought that it was wise to be careful there a ‘nervous Nelly’ displaying ‘Barcelona hate’.

You yourself acknowledge that that area is considered by locals to be unsafe because of the number of pickpockets and muggers. So I’m struggling to see your point, I’m afraid: if nobody, in your opinion, should walk in this area, how do you see that working?

I'm not suggesting anything.

No, because you’ve got all the criticisms of tourists and no solutions.

I'm saying it's well known for being a pickpocket paradise and a tourist trap, and I don't know any locals who walk down it.

Who is allowed to walk on this main pedestrian thoroughfare, then? In your opinion?

Perhaps your perception of Barcelona being unsafe has a lot to do with choosing to repeatedly put yourself in an unsafe area? Just a thought.

Well, either it’s unsafe - as you yourself say that it is, telling us that locals would never walk there because of the pickpockets and robbers - or it is not. My perception is kind of irrelevant to the facts, isn’t it?

I've racked my brain as I've loved most places but Barbados was a big disappointment.

We were staying on the 'younger' cheaper side of the island but twice cycled to eat out on the posh side. There were so many truly beautiful restaurants but they were all deserted and going under as all the big, expensive hotels had colluded together so that if you had paid to stay in one, you could dine for free in any of the others, which completely ruined what was a vibrant restaurant scene in that area.

The hotels themselves all looked very fake and cheap too, despite the inflated prices.

{mention: pixie5121} Couldn’t agree more! You can’t compare having a bagel in NYC to what you do at home as NY is literally famous for its bagels and, as an extremely biased NY resident, they can’t be beaten. Boston, oysters in the sunshine with the best people watching (if there’s no sunshine, you picked the wrong season to go). Vegas is kind of gross but you roll with the grossness because you knew it was Vegas when you booked it. Florida is so much more than Orlando and that’s just a tiny part of the US complaints, never mind the rest of the globe.

I’ll give you all Center Parcs though. That isn’t a holiday, it’s torture.

I did love the Maldives as I do like swimming, snorkelling and really want to learn to dive. We went after I had been doing several months of 10 to sometimes 16 hour days of hard physical work and I really just wanted a place where I could lay by the pool or on the white sand and soak up the sun, get warm and not have anything to do whist my body healed the bruises.

It was also a great leveller for me as I don’t wear make up and I don’t drink

The humidity was so high that after the first night when those that had put make up on had found it had slid off their face after 10 minutes the next night no one was wearing make up. (You will be surprised at the amount of women who do pass comment on my bare face normally)
I think the humidity played apart in people not being able to consume alcohol
Water was the only thing people could drink. Dh ordered a can of beer but he said his throat just closed up and he couldn’t drink any of it.
It was after about the 3rd night that people realised they were having a good time even though we were all completely sober.

@Benjispruce4 Not just lucky but super lucky. We were there for a whole week and it only snowed on the last day. I can't even put it into words how happy I was when I stepped off the plane and it was so sunny I thought I should have brought sunglasses along. Most things look better/worse depending on the light, don't they? I really loved Edinburgh.

@Iamthewombat wow, basic logic really isn't your friend, is it? I guess you need it spelling out.

My point is that the 'danger' in Barcelona is largely concentrated on one relatively small area which is generally full of tourists. This makes the city seem much dodgier to tourists than it actually is. This area is easily avoided, and is generally avoided by people who actually live in the city. You have seen more bag snatching in one place than I saw in the entire time I lived in Barcelona. It's basically that simple - stay away from the tourist areas and avoid most of the petty crime.

That's literally my only point. Feel free to keep embarrassing yourself with illogical rants about where people are 'allowed' to walk and whatever else you managed to deduce from a simple post.

Predictably, you’ve lost the argument and now you’re resorting to insults. I won’t comment on the irony of your criticising my logic.

I am laughing at the advice to tourists to stay away from tourist areas though!

Naples

It's actually bordering on tragic how people fail to understand the point. It's not about the fucking bagel (although I completely disagree that you can get excellent bagels in Britain, generally). It's about being in Central Park soaking up the atmosphere, whether you're having a bagel, an ice cream or a fucking Starbucks. It's about feeling like you're somewhere really different, looking up and seeing skyscrapers, hearing people talk differently, just being somewhere else. I think so many people are disappointed by places because they treat travel as some kind of weird tick list of things to 'do' rather than simply appreciating being where they are.

I’m with you. When I’m Rome etc. And I also have some of my happiest memories around food. In Istanbul we were at a little restaurant known for its meatballs and the guy at the next table starting chatting to us. Such a lovely and interesting man. Turns out he was the editor of the daily paper.

In NYC we always go to a diner for breakfast and just soak up the Americanness of it, we love the wide streets and all the sights familiar from the movies.

In Paris we do crusty bread picnics in the beautiful parks, in Barcelona we drink wine from clay jugs in underground bars.

In Girona we joined the folk dancing in the street.

Generally just enjoy places for what they are and who lives there.

Except I never once advised that, did I?

But like...isn't that the entire point of the Maldives? To go there and chill out and do nothing? I can't wrap my brain around someone going there and saying it was boring. What exactly did they think it would be like?