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?

It's so small and unimpressive

Bigger than the one in NoT though!

Ooh I didn't know there was an M&M world in London. It was the highlight of my visit to Las Vegas. I'll need to go down again

'I didn't say 'it' wouldn't cope Hmm 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.'

Hardly 'missing the point' when it's a point the poster herself chose to make. At tedious length. Actually, I believe mine was the first comment after her post, suggesting a noisy dive bar with pool tables perhaps wasn't the place to ask for a cocktail with which to 'relax'. I also suggested that a spell in prison would be preferential to a holiday in Dubai, which she proffered as her ideal destination. So, no, it wasn't all I took from the ineffably silly post.

It's bullshit, anyway, because although I don't doubt the bartender wouldn't make her a Cosmopolitan - and who could blame him? - all this "Cranberry juice? What's that?" hokum is absurd. You think a Canadian would have treated cranberry juice as something exotic and outré?

I was last in Amsterdam in 2019 and found it a beautiful, friendly city. There was absolutely no pestering to buy drugs in the 4 days we were there.

While I don't disagree that a noisy dive bar with pool tables wasn't the place to ask for a cocktail with which to 'relax', the point is not what specific cocktail she wanted. Your opinion on Cosmopolitans is utterly irrelevant; it's just you taking the opportunity to (for whatever reason) have a little pop at someone for liking a drink that you don't.

The point is that asking for any cocktail in a dive bar is obviously a mission doomed to fail.

I don’t understand this at all. I have visited various parts of Scotland many times and always found people to be friendly and helpful. Not effusive like those seeking tips in other places, but normal levels of friendly helpfulness 🤷‍♀️

Your opinion on Cosmopolitans is utterly irrelevant; it's just you taking the opportunity to (for whatever reason) have a little pop at someone for liking a drink that you don't.

Exactly this. Just a chance for a bit of drink snobbery.

Spot on. Me too!

Completely off topic but there’s a great little dive bar in Detroit just off of 10 Mile and Gratiot and despite being the most unassuming place, they’ll make you a great Cosmopolitan (though if you get Dave, he’ll moan about doing it for ages first.)

Detroit, by the way, is my vote for the opposite of an Emperor’s New Clothes holiday destination. To continue the metaphor, I went expecting jogging bottoms with holes in and I left thinking it was a Savile Row suit :)

Oh wow! I went there in the summer of 2001 and thought it was glorious and beautiful (and warm). I thought the people were really friendly and I had a great time exploring the touristy areas - usually by myself. I'd go again but I bet it's really different now.

It's so subjective though..isn't a lot of it affected the frame of mind you're in at the time, who you're with, the weather etc?
I went to Barcelona on my honeymoon in 1990 and didn't really enjoy it at all. Looking back though, I was very anxious, was living abroad and had just left all my family behind after the wedding, felt out of my depth for what we had planned. Years later I went back with a friend and it was like visiting a different city completely 😂

Scotland is the best! Can never be overrated! We're here now staying with relatives near Stirling for half term. The beaches are beautiful, the scenery majestic and the people friendly. We went to a beach in Fife yesterday - bloody freezing! But the kids loved it!
And they do the best fish suppers in the UK. Don't @ me

Johannesburg (though not all the fault of the city – to be fair) – It was massively bigged up to us by our resident friends and family to go stay.
We read up on the energetic city, café culture, nightlife and markets. We planned in a busy schedule as it was to be a trip of a lifetime. We were due to hop around various friends and family members for several weeks. Most lived in downtown areas that were considered safe to wander about freely so we thought we would get a really good feel the city from different people’s viewpoints or interests. We were so excited to be going.

The hype was all a lie - Literally it felt like we had been placed under house arrest from the day we arrived. Despite us being very aware there are areas to be more careful of (like most big cities in the world) and being really well seasoned travellers, we were permanently put on caution by the locals/family. There was this very restrictive, anxious on edge vibe that Joburg was not safe at all for anyone, in any area, whatsoever.

The lauded night life that had been sold to us involved travelling between guarded compounds for events or meet ups. Local friends and family caused such a fuss if we even considered going to anywhere that wasn’t a large well-known mall. Every time we arranged to go somewhere such as a museum or a market in what would be considered a ‘safe’ area we were firmly talked out of it and promised that it would be rearranged but it never was.

It seemed everyone in the compounds stayed in them. We thought it was just because we were there, but seems the community just lived in the compounds. There was this whole interesting city that we had looked into and researched just the other side of the barbed wire that we just didn’t get to see.

After an absolutely miserable wasted three weeks of being closed up indoors or going out to soulless shopping malls we bailed. We ran away in a hire car and drove down to the Cape and did a totally unplanned trip round the garden route.
It was wonderful, freeing and the vibe was very different.
Loved every minute of it.

See, I can take or leave Scotland. It has never been a draw for me. I've visited Edinburgh, Dumfriesshire and St Andrews. Perhaps it was the time of year visititing Edinburgh and St Andrews (it was October) but I found them quite depressing, particularly St Andrews which I found had an awful vibe, made me shudder, which was a shame as I'd gone up to look at the university. Just so grey, cold and dreary. St Andrews felt like it was on the edge of the world and beyond that was nothing. I did like Dumfrieshire but it was the summer so a different feel I guess.

The weather makes a huge difference to how you feel about a place, I think. If you feel warm and relaxed and there are blue skies around you feel happier. If you go and it's grey and drizzly then perhaps it is harder to feel relaxed. Although I don't feel that way about, say, York when it's cold and grey.

It's fascinating how we're each drawn to places, or repelled from them, all with different experiences.

@Essexgirlupnorth
"Pattaya in Thailand hotel was lovely but it was like Benidorm couldn't wall down the seafront with out being sold something, offered a hand made suit and my husband got offered women while he was with me. Husband also nearly got electrocuted by a dodgy sign. "

I would be genuinely surprised if those things were to happen to you in Benidorm!

If you feel warm and relaxed and there are blue skies around you feel happier.

I think this may vary based on where you live. I live in a warm and sunny climate; I love to travel to cold and rainy places for a bit of a change.

This thread is still giving me endless amusement!

The hype was all a lie - Literally it felt like we had been placed under house arrest from the day we arrived

DevonSunset that does sound grim, but in fairness Johannesburg has a reputation as a very dangerous city and your friends and relations were no doubt concerned for your safety.

Drink snobbery. Ok 😂 That really only applies if you're the sort of person who thinks one attractively-packaged poison has more value than another.

My point was that she was, for reasons beyond my ken, anxious to portray herself as some sort of Alexa in 'Schitt's Creek' - finding herself in a Canadian backwater, breaking nails, picking her way through sawdust on the floor, and sitting gingerly on sticky bar stools while attempting to attract the attention of a slack-jawed yokel with a filthy bar towel, who doesn't know what a cranberry is. Sure. Ok. Undermined somewhat by picking a cocktail which hasn't been fashionable since Natasha Bedingfield was in the charts. I don't give a toss what people drink - although if it's on the Wetherspoon's menu, it's perhaps not as exotic as the poster would like to think.

Re electrocution risk by dodgy sign My DP used to live in Lisbon (we LOVE it btw, deserves all the love and couldn't rate it enough! 🇵🇹 ) and he said it was well known that pressing the traffic light buttons was like playing Russian roulette! Especially when it had rained!

Hawaii

it was, to me a posh version of Blackpool

The thing is, at the time we were due to visit the safety advice was no different than any other big city, we were staying in a area considered very safe and we are fairly careful travelers. I can't honestly believe that the whole of Joburg is so terrible that there was not a single safe place in a whole city?

It felt like a massive missed opportunity.

That's like me saying the whole of Barbados is shite cos we only walked down a street before getting back onto the Cruise ship. If we'd done an organised tour or gone to a beach I think I'd have enjoyed it a lot more.

I think you're being a bit naive here. It's had a reputation for being very dangerous for about as long as I've been alive. I've been all over the world and stopped short of visiting South Africa because of what I'd been told by South African friends/colleagues.

Those complexes and barbed wire fences aren't for fun. They're for a reason.

Well aren't you lovely.
Your snobbery is making you sound very insecure.