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?

You obviously haven't been to Venice Beach recently. We went last summer and it was fucking horrible! Filthy dirty, loads of people opening dealing drugs, using drugs, passed out in the street from drugs, people who looked like gang members strolling up and down looking menacing - we couldn't get out of there fast enough. Santa Monica was indeed much nicer, although there were still a lot of homeless people in the parks along the beach.

Oops I somehow pressed send!

I was going to say we turned up once (Greece - package deal, all booked) to one of these ‘home from home’ types of places. Was dropped off at the accommodation in the middle of the night and an old man answered and shut the door in our faces. We knocked again only to be told ‘no room no room’ we finally managed to get the attention of someone inside who opened up! We were nearly going to just sleep by the pool!

I think it was the type of place where people just stay at the hotel and lie by the pool every day as at every breakfast we were interrogated where we were off to (our answers of ‘exploring the area’ were met with incredulous looks of astonishment!)

We just got back from a weekend Center parc break. I agree with a pp comment a middle class butlins. We were funded by a family fund voucher which didn’t cover the cost of the cheapest room.
The activities are so expensive even just to hire a badminton court. The pool was free and we enjoyed that. We left Sunday evening as we had run out ofstuff to do and couldn’t book any of the restaurant as they were fully booked. Wouldn’t go again.

Interesting reading the comments and as a Londoner I too would avoid the tourist traps and there is so, so much more than the Centre to explore and you can eat / do a great deal very reasonably. I was reminded of a conversation, when a friend and I were staying in a hotel in Sorento. We'd found the beach the locals used (great basic lunch every day), so avoided the crowded pool area in the hotel and booked some great trips, including one to Rome, where we really did have a great visit, seeing things again off the beaten track and with a brilliant guide. We were sitting at the table the following night and the two other couples asked where we'd been, as missing from dinner and not seen around the pool. When we told them about the trips, the beach, the town at night which was 10 minutes walk away (loving the ice cream) they were amazed as they'd not gone further than the hotel / next door bar and so were thinking the area was not all that!

@TollgateDebs was it Marina Grande in Sorrento by any chance? We were few days in Sorrento back in 2007 and it’s the only place in the world that I’ve found a little disappointing and very much brits on hols type of destination. Think of laminated menus offering fish & chips etc.

However we stumbled into Marina Grande area by accident, a small door way off the cobbled lanes and it was lovely there. Very different athmosphere in fact it felt like we had been transported through a secret portal 🤩🤣 Many holidaymakers probably miss it which is a shame.

I agree about those Greek 'family run' home from home type places

I took the dcs last year and it was the weirdest thing I'd ever experienced

After reading this thread I went back and looked at my Tripadvisor review and all the ones before it and after it rave about the food, the service, the cleanliness

I can only think that these reviews are written by the owners because I didn't get that at all

Totally agree.

I can't get my head around "We went to X because everyone says it's great but there was nothing to do." Like...they just went there and expected to be given 'things to do'? They didn't think to look into what other people said they enjoyed, plan out activities, read reviews? Just rocked up in the city centre, fresh off the airport bus, expecting to be entertained?

I've been to 40+ countries, many of them multiple times, and I don't think I've ever been shocked or disappointed. The only places that have been rubbish were places I went for work or for some specific reason, places I would never have chosen for a holiday if I were paying for it myself. Places like Charleroi and Bucharest and Stuttgart.

Honestly how can someone sit with a straight face and type out that they were surprised that Ireland was grey and rainy, the Maldives were boring, Egypt had sexist gropey men, or Dubai was soulless and tacky? How can people honestly be surprised that going to a city like Dubrovnik or Rome in peak season is going to be crowded and miserable? Or that developing countries have issues with sewage and waste management and high crime rates?

I think at least 95% of the time it is the person's own fault if they're disappointed, because it's a lack of planning and total lack of initiative and basic common sense.

We went to Benidorm last Autumn and my expectations were low but it was fine. I liked the beach, didn't like the high rise.
In 2021 there seemed to be relatively few drunk English, mostly older Spanish tourists.
I still wouldn't go back as I think we were lucky.

@SchoolThing

You think that a strange woman massaging your neck on the Paris metro was a good thing ?

This is still funny.
I think for most of these people's expectations were too high to start with.
I expect Venice to be hot, busy and smelly in summer.
I expect Center Parcs to be a kind of Butlins in the forest (but actually it was good, we had deer outside our window, you don't get that at Butlins).
I absolutely expect beaches to be tidal.

Totally agree with this. When DS was young we went to Butlins a lot - and for what it is, it's great. It was also cheaper at that time as the list prices were always reduced if you booked in advance . Centre Parcs has always looked to be overpriced IMO.

You do surprise me. I can't imagine asking for a cocktail in a Canadian dive bar.

When I'm on holiday I like to relax with a nice cocktail. I would even have been happy with a Sea Breeze, but no. Cranberry juice? What's that? Not even a choice of vodkas. Seriously.

I have always lived in London and there is honestly so much too do, lots of it free. And lots of nice, fairly cheap food in food markets or in cafes and restaurants. You just need to get away from the Piccadilly Circus/ Covent Garden/ Oxford Street thing, do a bit of research and it's so lovely. Been here all my life and still like discovering new areas. I imagine that's the same for most cities tbh.

But a Canadian dive bar isn't the place for cocktails, is it? When you go to places like that, you go with the spirit of the place and get a shitty overly gassy beer. It's part of the experience. Same with cooking on an open fire - it's supposed to be fun and different. And why would you complain about going on long walks or sitting by a lake reading when you've gone to a cabin by a lake? Your holiday sounded really fun to me. Surely if you want nice nails and cocktails and not tramping through nature trails you could go to Tenerife?

Why on earth were you surprised, after a 4-hour drive, that you were in the middle of nowhere? And you were in a forest; what did you expect to see apart from rocks and trees? And did you not realise that birds, crickets and frogs a) live in forests and b) tend to make noise?
As for expecting a Cosmopolitan in a village bar in Canada…

I think you didn't think through what sort of holiday you wanted and would enjoy.

If you steer clear of the major museums in South Ken and places like Covent Garden, much of London is much less busy and more relaxed.
In Whitechapel you can go to the Whitechapel Gallery, which is wonderful, and much less busy than one of the biggies. The area is lively and diverse – yes, rough around the edges, but interesting and full of great cafes/Indian sweet shops/proper Turkish grill restaurants etc.
Dulwich has the beautiful Dulwich Picture Gallery in lovely grounds and across the road from a pretty park. Again, not as crowded as the V&A or Tate or wherever.
The Fashion & Textiles Museum in Bermondsey is excellent and on a street packed with nice places to eat and drink.
In my neighbourhood there are small indie galleries, and more artisan cafes than you can shake a stick at, plus zillions of restaurants: Turkish/Kurdish; pizza; Japanese; Thai; burgers; Indian… And you will be able to walk down the street to them without feeling crowded, and get a seat.
That's just off the top of my head.

You can even easily get to places in central London that aren't crowded and stressful. Walking just a few minutes north of Oxford street means gorgeous quiet streets and quiet cafes to read a book. Soho/Chinatown can be quiet during the day as well. Bloomsbury is beautiful and has quiet squares and historical pubs to sit with a book or have a chat with a friend.

But this requires engaging your brain a bit and not being a sheep. So many people seem to do Oxford Street, Leicester Square and Covent Garden, all at the busiest possible times like Saturday afternoon, and then declare London overcrowded and shit.

'When I'm on holiday I like to relax with a nice cocktail.'

Well, that was possibly your first mistake, given that Cosmopolitans and Sea Breezes aren't nice - they're the most basic bitch cocktails ever, with the possible exception of a Long Island Iced Tea, or a Cuban.

And thinking you might get one in a Canadian honky-tonk? Mental.

That's very true; one of my favourite things about London is how varied it is on a street-by-street level. It is always surprising me, and I've lived here for 22 years.

There's really no need to be such a cow about a poster's cocktail of choice

It's a drink made famous by a mid-90s tv show. I think it'll cope amidst a thread where posters are being unpleasant about whole countries 🙄

I didn't say 'it' wouldn't cope just that there's no need to be so spiteful towards a poster.
And quite apart from anything else, in that whole post the specific drink of choice is what you choose to criticise?
It's a masterclass in missing the point.

This is so true. I used to live in Fitzrovia and even when you go one black north of Oxford Street, Fitzrovia and Marylebone are a whole different story. Beautiful garden squares, gorgeous architecture, so much history, the Wallace Collection, great pubs and restaurants and all less than 10 minutes away from the hellhole that is Oxford Street.

I now live around Greenwich and the town centre gets busy on the weekends but no more so than touristy small towns I have been to in England (and the tourists don’t seem to venture even a quarter of the mile away from the centre!). Similarly, I used to live in Notting Hill and while Portobello Road would get rammed on Saturdays (again, by tourists! Not Londoners making the place busy and crowded), a lot of the rest of the neighbourhood remained peaceful even on Saturdays and definitely most of the rest of time.

There is just so much to do and see in London beyond the obvious tourist traps. I take people who say they hate London to mean people who don’t know London.

I take people who say they hate London to mean people who don’t know London.

Agreed. People who think London consists of Leicester Square, Shreks Adventure and M&M world.

Sydney. I actually gasped when I saw the bridge and the Opera House. The Opera House is FILTHY and the bridge is actually pathetic in real life. It's so small and unimpressive

I had exactly the opposite experience. The train drew into Circular Quay - and you got a brilliant view of them both at the same time. I thought it was awesome (but maybe I am easily pleased).