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?

In fairness this occurred twenty years ago....but Corfu.....small hotel.....everyone drinking....everyone drunk all the time. We all had fridges in our rooms so we bought some beer and wine and would have a glass in our room and go out to a restaurant in the evening. Third day we arrived back and they had taken our lovely new fridge and replaced it with a manky old fridge, rusty as you like and humming so loud it could have been a plane taking off. I tacked the owner.....basically....'you were putting too much booze in fridge and might damage it'!!!!! six cans of beer and two bottles of wine!!! I was so angry I stripped the bed....found dirty stains all over the pillows and mattress...no mattress cover or pillow covers....stains on the blankets. Dirt under beds....filthy pipes in the bathroom, stray cats everywhere that slept on beds during the day (windows open as no air con in August) took photo's of all, told the local agent to move us. They 'couldn't
' but we got our money back at the end of the holiday. Thank God for Trip Advisor....check everywhere now.

Definitely centre parts, it’s just middle class butlins

My daughter went to NYC on her 40th with her best friend. They hated it.....she is a well travelled lady having been pretty much to most places in the world....but she said it was full of people trying to get one over on you.

We have been a dozen times to Paris....every time to date...we have had at least one incident with someone trying to pickpocket.

I agree, although they have a quirky way of showing it. For example, I had someone try to break a bottle over my head.

Thanks so much for this thread, had been hoping to go to Centre Parcs for years 🙈 Now off the list!

We live in Devon and we have amazing beaches, best thing is to ask on local groups for best places for different age kids etc.

We made the mistake of going to Nice for part of our honeymoon - just can't believe how rudely we were treated (I speak a little bit of French and we did try), one place just wouldn't bring us a drink, it seemed to be a game. Such a shame as it's a beautiful place, did manage to enjoy some walks, time in the sea and some lovely meals with jugs of wine but not sure I could go back because of the open hostility. I didn't like Barcelona either, we did eat some amazing food but everyone i know who's been has either been robbed or someone has tried.

I hate London - the cost, it's so hot on the tube, people are so busy and rude. I'd be happy to never go again! I liked New York though!

😱 my favourite city! We didn't ride the tube, everywhere we went was incredible. I would happily live there is it wasn't such a big time difference. Genuinely shocked! The food and mix of cultures, all the micro breweries, sea and mountains.. lovely Canadians.. what is there not to like!

I didn't like Centre Parcs at all. Also not keen on Glasgow but that was really because of the awful weather when we were there and the awful taxi drivers that didn't seem to know where anything was and asked us to direct them! Also one asked me if I could speak English! I am a Londoner but I am pretty sure not that difficult to understand.

Otherwise I have liked everywhere we have been on holiday. Really liked Berlin, Brussels, Stockholm, Barcelona. Love Holland although there are much nicer places than Amsterdam there.

I love love love love love London. For me, by far the best city I have ever been to. So much to see and do, such lovely parks, such great museums and free. It costs a fortune to visit the museums in Stockholm.

London is not expensive either if you know where to go. We eat in a veggie indian in Covent Garden when we go and it is cheaper than the indian restaurants where we live now in the Midlands.

I don't know how posters can say London is dirty or overcrowded - what all of it - Chelsea, Kensington, Hampstead, Chiswick, Islington, Greenwich etc?

@rookiemere Actually was just coming back to this thread to mention Northern Ireland! The way my NI friends went on about it I thought it would be all pubs, fiddles, charm and greenery. It was not.

But maybe we did it wrong? (road trip with one of said NI friends). We spent so much time driving across souless agricultural areas to get to the next "must visit site".

Belfast, grim and dull. The awful kissing rock, why does this count as an attraction? Giants causeway, spectacular but somewhat ruined by the visitor centre and road (even though we went out of hours). But worst of all was the "dark hedges", so dissappointing, theres no atmosphere or magic at all because the location is so boring and its actually a very short stretch. There are significantly longer beech hedges is much "wilder" locations and romantic holloways across the UK.

Love this thread.

joining the center parcs club. One of the most expensive holidays we had when children were small and was biggest disappointment ever, was anything but a ‘holiday’

dirty, dingy lodges, miles from anywhere, rained solid all week, every inch crammed with people so everything was a q. Vowed never to go again, never have.

So many people on this thread (& all the other similar threads about holidays that pop up at regular intervals) say they've visited such and such city & 'there was nothing to do'...this baffles me.

For people who've had this experience- do you not research? Read up about that place in advance & figure out if it sounds like you'd like to see those things? Or do you choose a city like Venice or Dublin because you've heard of it & know people go there & arrive with ZERO ideas of what you're going to see & do there?

Do people walk out the door of their accommodation & expect to 'find' stuff to do or see? I actually can't get my head around visiting a city & coming home saying there's nothing to do there!

Perhaps we're weird in that case as we have constant lists of places we want to go to and we research extensively before going so we know what things we want to see & do.

We repeat visit places we love & add new ones in all the time too.

I can't get over some of the comments on here though - Venice was too old, I mean come on - hilarious! I've been to Venice 8 times & know it pretty well & I could never get bored there!

I caught the train back from Brussels once and there was a woman sitting opposite me on the way back from a day trip complaining bitterly that it was a complete dump. It transpired that she'd got off at Brussels-Midi and just wandered around at random, rather than engaging in the brisk 20 minutes walk / 5 minutes cab ride north to the centre and the gorgeous town square/chocolate shops/art galleries etc.

This was in the days before smartphones and the area around the station was indeed a complete dump, but I was baffled that it hadn't occurred to her that she was doing something wrong, or that even a small city needs a bit of research on what to see before you go. I felt that informing her of her error at that point would serve no useful purpose.

It’s interesting to see how everyone has such different views on places.

I can’t stand London. Hate it. I absolutely adore NYC, though.

Someone mentioned hating Moscow earlier in the thread. I loved it. One of the best holidays I’ve been on and would have gone back (won’t now for obvious reasons).

For people who've had this experience- do you not research? Read up about that place in advance & figure out if it sounds like you'd like to see those things?

To be fair, when I visited Barcelona it was because a conference was there. I probably would not have spent more than a day there otherwise.

Marrakech. Had a couple of days there in a large mixed group when I was a student back in the 80s and thought it was amazing. Returned in 2007, approaching 50, with an older female friend. We'd booked rooms in a boutique riad which was situated in a maze of shady, smelly alleys with high walls, all the alleys patrolled by lads on motorbikes brushing past us and everyone staring at us — and not in a friendly way. We went out on the first afternoon and couldn't find our way back and when we asked for directions the guy we asked wanted money to get us there. He led us in what turned out to be the wrong direction, to a restaurant where he want us to have a meal before he took us to the riad. Presumably he was hoping we'd pay for a meal for him (and presumably he'd get a cut of the profits). Even the man who let us into our riad when we eventually found it stared and said something under his breath when we made it back.

Day two and we braced ourselves and tried again. We'd been modestly dressed the day before: this time we were covered head to toe. Hour after hour of men staring, trying to make eye contact. We'd sit at a cafe and they'd come and sit and try to talk and want to know where our husbands were.

Day 3 we were so freaked out by the situation we transferred to a large international hotel outside the city and spent the rest of the week there, still being pestered by waiters ('Madam, you are so beautiful, you want me to come to your room?') but without feeling under siege. And by the way, I'm a plain, rather dumpy woman who can travel alone in Europe without much bother.

Was in East coast of Florida one time and an American woman was complaining about "how awful the ocean was as full of seaweed"!

Quite like CP! the convenience factor with young kids is great, we stayed in a lovely new lodge. BUT the prices mean I’ll never
go back! The spa was underwhelming.

DLP was great fun, awful queues, again extortionate and the food choice was abysmal. Ditto LegoLand. No need to repeat those trips!

Barcelona felt unsafe though I went to a few great restaurants.

Disappointed to hear SF consistently rated as so shit!

LOVE Edinburgh, London, Paris, Petra, Florence & Rome, Devon, Cornwall

This is not surprising at all.

My messages keep getting cut off - these guys think Western women are easy and they are looking for an easy life and visa for the UK.

My trip to Cairo with a female friend in my twenties was head and shoulders my worst travel experience ever. We ended up confined to our hotel room. Utter misogynistic shithole. Would dissuade any woman visiting North Africa unless staying in a resort and not leaving it. Sorry not pc but the reality.

Yes, exactly.

I think people need to be savvy about what the reviews say. If there are a lot of '[owners] are amazing, couldn't do enough for you' and 'it felt like a family home', I steer clear. I don't want a stifling family atmosphere, I want to be left alone to enjoy my holiday. It makes me really uncomfortable to be grilled on what I'm doing and where I'm going.

Give me a business type hotel any day, where I can come and go without anyone poking their nose in, and the staff are there if I need them rather than constantly in my face.

I love Venice, will be going for the third time this year. First time with DDs.

So much this!!

I don't think you actually get cold and hot beaches Is it possible you went to one on a hot day and one on a cold day?

Agreed. I went to Ireland with a British-Indian friend and felt quite uncomfortable at times. I could also sense an undercurrent of anti-British feeling. Let me stress those were the exceptions and that the vast majority of Irish people were pleasant - friendlier than most Brits, actually. But it IS there. Ireland is the only place in the world I have felt disliked for my accent and nationality.

It amazes me that British people go through all the hassle of taxis and airports just to visit another grey island in which the cities are duller and the weather even worse. I didn't like the Irish landscape either. Maybe it's beautiful on a nice day, but beneath drizzle and grey sky it looks rocky and bleak.

Oddly, I had the exact opposite experience in Scotland. I expected hostility when they heard my Essex accent. Instead, everyone was friendly and nice. I also liked Edinburgh more than I expected. And the Highlands are heaven.