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?

I've never been to another city that smells of piss. And it definitely isn't all tourists - I distinctly remember seeing one guy pissing on the street and he had a dog on a lead (who uses his toilet at home, presumably) so very unlikely to be on holiday.

@zafferana
i wasn’t robbbed in Paris and survived Living an extended period in Russia and lived to tell the tale so it can’t be implied that I’m naive
BUT when I got back to Manchester airport from Paris in went into my suitcase for something after collecting it and found that many things were missing. I told the airport security guard, and the first thing he said was ‘let me guess, you’ve come from Paris?’ And I said yep. He said crime is rife there and this is happening all the time to people - airport staff in Paris airport opening up people’s luggage and helping themselves after it’s been checked in, sometimes cutting and ripping rucksacks etc, opening locks, very adept.

I didn't imply you were naive @Londondreams1, in fact I didn't reference you at all in my post. I was merely responding to many others on this thread who have been robbed, because it's easy on holiday to forget that bad things can happen. That's terrible about your luggage though and implies a serious problem at whichever airport you flew from in Paris.

No I didn’t think you meant me personally.

I just don’t think anybody can be blamed for not being astute when you know if you visit somewhere like Japan the chance of being robbed is zero. So it really depends on the place, not the traveller.

But yes of course important to take usual precautions and be aware that you might sometimes be targeted because you are a tourist/foreigner

Paris is beautiful and I’ve been a few times. The last time I went though I was really struck by how dirty it was. Rubbish everywhere, dog poo all over the pavements and it smelt of urine, and in completely different parts of the city.

And the metro was nowhere near as good as the tube

Overrated, do not understand attraction thereof:

Blackpool, you couldn’t pay me to go there again
Paris, just rude
Dublin, tiny and nothing to do but drink
Cyprus, dusty and owned/occupied by Russians
St Tropez, full of horrid people
Sardinia, dusty, nothing going on
Lake District, awful food and it really does rain all the time
Boston, was expecting something historic and walkable but just seemed like a big not very pleasant US city
Casablanca - not what you think it’s going to be

Worth it:

Arizona/Grand Canyon
Venice
Rome
Taj Mahal
Florida Everglades/Keys
Copenhagen
Helsinki in summer

I was disappointed with Split in Croatia. Absolutely gorgeous architecture ruined by some heavy techno music blasting everywhere. That was mid morning. There was no festival or anything. I hope someone will correct me and say this is not the norm!

I really enjoyed Petra, Pompeii, Toronto.
Am fine with NYC, Las Vegas, LA, Paris, Barcelona, Cyprus.
Wasn't keen on Naples, Marrakech, Dublin (lived there for a year)

Tunisa. OMG a place I'd never return to. Dead cats on the beach, pervy men shouting out in the street what they would like to do to my lady bits and worse still they knew I was with my mother, cows heads with eyes bulging and tounges hanging out hanging on the wall in the markets. I enjoyed the time with my mum but we both agreed it was an awful place.

Paris - were asked several times suspiciously if we were Russians, as my French was not up to scratch obviously. We weren't, of course, and after that all smiles all around. The Metro/underground though... a man happily peeing against the wall, and people just stepping over the stream. As if this is how it should be. Don't use Metro in summer if you have a nose.
Rome - very aggressive sellers of not Italian origin. Say no and you're r@cist. That was my only problem, the rest was very nice.
London - my love.
Turkey - God save you from Russian tourists. People were very friendly, we went sightseeing a lot, wonderful memories.
Stockholm - wear a skirt (being a woman) and get weird looks.

@OneCup

Split is like that, as are other Croatian cities. Opatija looks glorious and is made absolutely awful by the blaring music day and night. I love Croatia and go there regularly, but to the islands, not to the big cities.

What's with the techno? It seems so trashy and pointless. Can you really not sit and relax in peace in Split with a beer or a coffee without the shitty music? I'm planning to go later this year but may reconsider if this is the vibe.

It only smells like piss when it hasn't rained for a while and tbh it's not Parisians who piss in the streets - it's tourists. A lot of cities smell of piss in the summer. I remember Florence at the end of August - OMG it stank! But then it rained hard and it didn't smell any more.

Not true. I was an au pair for a posh Parisian family in central Paris in the 80s and when I took the children to the park the little boy (6-ish) peed against a tree as maman and papa had taught him. The first time he did it I was appalled and took him into the ladies' loos. He told maman and she told me to let him pee against a tree. She and papa thought it was terribly funny and typically English to be so shocked and would tell their friends about my prudish views when they introduced me.

{mention: pixie5121} Split is busy and noisy/Eurotechno musicky in holiday season, better outside of them. Smaller places in Croatia, especially on the islands, are brilliant for relaxing in peace surrounded by beautiful nature and lovely buildings. Fly to Split and then split for the islands!

Thanks! Which islands would you recommend? Will it still be nice late September kind of time?

{mention: pixie5121} We spend our summer holiday in the Kvarner Gulf every year, plenty of great islands. In September the weather will still be mostly lovely (the bora can come up at any time, though) but the sea will be a bit cold for swimming unless you are the type of person who is into wild swimming!

Thanks for the tip! I would love to do 10 days or so in both Croatia and Slovenia later in the year. I have to say the current travel situation doesn't fill me with confidence and I really don't cope well with crowds and packed airports, so hoping I might be able to go when schools are back again and it's all calmed down a bit!

Disneyland Paris as well. I went with gritted teeth as dds wanted to go. I hate rides as well, so my idea of hell. Didn’t like the tat they sold and everything was overpriced.

Beijing. What a soulless dump. All of the incredible history has been either razed or given a coat of Dulux. Don't get me started on the food...

The Great Wall was like a freaky cartoon skit. The hutongs mostly destroyed.

Bali - Kuta. Filthy, poor, crowded, smelly. Honestly nothing paradise like there.

I would second Bali being on this list, it was many years ago now, but my only remaining memory of a two-week holiday, which was supposed to be a fabulous once-in-a-lifetime type of trip, is that there were rats running around the floor in all the restaurants!

I would also add the Seychelles as being a disappointment. Very beautiful to look at and utterly boring. Two weeks there was wayyyy too long.

@HermioneKipper I stayed in Akrotiri. Didn’t have a car so getting around was a real challenge. I just didn’t like Santorini. Maybe I went at a busy time but don’t think I’d bother giving it a second chance

@lampan Ah you were on completely the wrong side of the island.

If you don’t stay on the caldera side you might as well not bother going to Santorini! The views on that side of the island are breathtaking.

we stayed in Imerovigli which was quiet and stunning. Oia is also beautiful but gets busy at sunset as the view is something else

Reading this thread, I feel quite thankful I appear to have been blessed with the ability to enjoy things for what they are. I didn't realise it was so rare.

I agree. I'm stuggling to understand why some people go on holiday. They complain about the weather, the fact that things are done in a different way to where they live, they are bored and seem to expect it the locals to entertain them in the way they want to be entertained. Travel and new experiences are wasted on so many.

It's hard to say without sounding smug, but I completely agree! It must be very sad not to be able to find much enjoyment in things unless they are "perfect".

What I’ve got from this thread is that
a large number of people are severely lacking in imagination!
Going to a country- any country town or city and not being able to find anything interesting to do or see says a lot more about the complainers than about where they’re on holiday!

These are the same people who will leave trip advisor reviews about they’re being too many Spanish people in their Spainish hotel, and the food being foreign. 😀
It’s not hard to see how Brexit happened! Travel is wasted on some people. They should stay at home.