Ever been on holiday where you couldn't wait to come home

[GardeningQuestionTime]

OK I'm in the sun and it's February...but I'm stuck on an where nothing to do except snorkel and its too windy.

The hotel needs serious updating, there are cocks crowing all night, the breakfast was minimal. The advertised beach is lovely but literally a beach. My alternative plan of lying on the beach reading are scuppered by no umbrella or lounger.

The hire car is a worryingly battered piece of shit.

I'm being churlish but there's a long 5 days stretching out in front of me.

Honestly some stories of shit holidays would help!

2 bad experiences on European city breaks.

1. Graffiti at all the historical sites, surly locals and got chased down the street by random men. It was terrifying.

1. Went whilst pregnant and nauseous. Couldn't eat anything except dry bread and plain pasta. DH and I argued a lot too. The best moment was me sitting alone in the hotel for an afternoon eating chips.

SW France July 2022. It was our first holiday post Covid and I was so excited. We stayed in a tiny gite with no air con. It was 40 degrees outside and 35 inside. It just would not cool down, even through the night. There were devastating forest fires a few miles away, and the air was thick with smoke. It was unbearable outside, and unbearable inside. We were stuck there for two weeks and I just wanted to go home. I even booked a night in a hotel in Bordeaux to get a bit of respite, and when we got there I found the air con in the room wasn’t working and they were fully booked. I’ve never been so happy to get home!

Another Tenerife one here. Only four days, thank God, but what a long four days!

I went in early May or maybe late April with a friend. It was cold, wet and windy and I didn't have the clothes for it, nor the budget to buy anything warmer (single parent at the time). It also transpired that on a previous visit she had hooked up with some guy who lived there and now considered him her boyfriend, so spent a lot of time phoning him or visiting him. She would either leave me shivering in a cafe or persuade me to go with her as a very reluctant gooseberry.

It also became very clear to me that he was very uncomfortable with her being there- I suspect he had a girlfriend living somewhere nearby. There were long and tedious conversations with her asking what I thought of him, did he seem like he was going off her, how she couldn't believe that he was etc etc.

Never been so glad to get home.

Sorry quoted wrong post.

Same in 1992! I was 9.5 stone when I went & 8.5 upon return. Work colleagues were shocked. I said don't bother with slimming clubs, just go to Egypt.

Why don't you go on some excursions OP? Island hop?

We had the same in Bologna Italy a couple of years ago, nearly jumped out of my skin.

I had this EXACT holiday last year.

Somewhere gorgeous and surrounded by happy couples, too.

Needless to say the relationship is no more, but I do want to go back to the place without him. 😅

Where are you? I felt this way in Tobago!

Storm in Turkey. It was very windy and never stopped raining all the while we were on holiday. Caught a sickness and stomach bug and couldn't wait to get home.

Two.

The first, a winter break to Lanzarote where it was cold, cloudy and then chucking it down with rain the whole week. There was no point being there, too wet to sightsee, or sit by the pool.

The second, 2021, where I had a major falling out with my then husband. It was so bad, I did research flights home early. It really was the straw that broke the camel's back and I vowed to myself I was never holidaying with him again. We separated six months later.

Beautiful cottage with a gorgeous garden, overlooking a loch, in an absolutely lovely part of Scotland....me, DH, DS, two dogs, and every single fucking midge in the world. We did not spend a single minute in that garden, and every time we opened a door, nine million of the bastards came into the cottage. Honestly it was like a solid wall of them out there. We tried every midge repellent we could find. DH and DS found one that sort of worked for them but the smell of it was a massive migraine trigger for me. I had midge bites so huge that they visibly pulsed red in time with my heartbeat. We had ONE good day, but only because we got on a ferry to Mull. I spent every other day itching all over and with a splitting headache.

Dominican Republic - an all inclusive with the worst food imaginable, and about 600 people all intent on getting as drunk as possible, unfortunately including the man I'd gone with..

It was ghastly. I was beyond relieved to touch down at Gatwick.

@Crushed23 I had that holiday early 90s in Corfu - awful! I just had the urge to tell him to piss off the whole holiday - it was one of those 'I've booked and paid so I'm keeping quiet till after the holiday' kind of things - it never works-you just end up feeling like a coiled spring the whole time and feeling resentful of others who look relaxed and happy. Although my current H was on a very sticky wicket indeed one holiday when checking in at reception and realised he had left his mobile in the taxi and blew up and called me a stupid cow in front of the receptionist.

😂😂😂

Bulgaria . It rained the whole time I was there. If you paid me . I wouldn't go back.

Just posted this in the wrong thread 🤣

Not been on a proper holiday since covid (have a big one booked and getting back on the horse, so to speak)… previous ones include:

• a 10 day family trip to Jamaica where I spent 5 days stuck in the hotel room with DD who had an ear infection so bad her ear was oozing gloop. Will never be able to watch SpongeBob again without PTSD (it was pretty much the only programme available on the hotel TV that she’d watch)
• 2 weeks in Cancun where I, and then DD, got a bacterial infection and each spent 5-7 days reenacting the exorcist (DD excelled herself in the posh hotel lobby all over their stunning marbled floor), only to have DS develop an ear infection 48hrs before we were due to leave and holiday rep stating that if he wasn’t recovered we’d have to fork out £1200 EACH to extend the holiday and change flights), so ear syringing and mega antibiotics, pain killers and we held our breath all the way back.
• 2 weeks in the Maldives before kids, hubs got an ear infection, cried in pain as had ear syringed to ensure we could get home on scheduled flights;
• same at the end of a trip to Bali (we now rinse ears with bottled water and take a course of antibiotics with us);
• extended family trip to Spain where MiL had her passport/handbag lifted in the arrivals lounge and the tyres of PiL’s blew spectacularly on the motorway on the subsequent transfer to the villa (plus several days of liaising with Brit Consulate and then a day in nearest big city sorting it out)
• oh, and there was the earlier extended fam holiday in Italy where I was on fertility meds and was not only so psychotic from the hormone stuff that I nearly bludgeoned my adorable FiL to death with a skillet for his effing deafening snoring and then quite literally collapsed from ovulatory pain in the Boboli gardens in Florence. No idea why DH remained with me after that.

Anyway. Still married, two kids, adorable extended family… but hoping you feel a bit better now. So much build up over holidays, and often disappointing if you don’t keep a sense of humour!

Many.

Rain in wales (whole week)
Rain in Cornwall (whole week)
France broken down car and no parts
Injury's on ski trips
Food poisoning
Shit hotels
Rubbish flights
Kidney infection
And fall out with coupes we were away with.

I really don't have much luck but in there are a few good breaks and we just laugh about it all and move on.

Howling at this lol this should be written in an episode of a tv series

Rural France with a toddler, staying at a holiday home owned by a friend of DH's who he'd assured me had done it at "mates rates". Originally meant to be going with another family but they pulled out. No worries I thought, won't be expensive. The bloody "friends" were charging about double what a similar sized Airbnb would have cost. It was cold and damp, the beds were uncomfortable. Could have had a hotel for less.

It rained all week. Middle of the summer. We'd been told the pool was heated but it wasn't. Toddler DS could manage 5 mins at a time before turning blue.

We explored the entire local area but there wasn't much of it. Went to the nearest city on the Monday but it closes on Mondays (as well as Sundays, extended lunchtimes, and whenever the hell else they feel like).

I'm a huge Francophile and speak fluent French but that's one area I'm not hurrying back to!

Spain aged 20 with uni friends and boyfriend at the time. Didn’t enjoy it at all. All they wanted to do was get shitface drunk and was so boring. Boyfriend decided to dump me towards the end of the holiday so that was a fun couple of days. Can’t believe I actually put up with it. I’d have booked a flight home if it were now.

Just remembered DH and I went to China before it fully opened, too - whilst there the US bombed a Chinese embassy in error in Serbia and we were held under guard escort as we visited Tiananmen Square as the Chinese locals were on anti US demos, throwing bottles etc at our coach and slinging abuse at our guide who sobbed all the way; we were then sequestered in a restaurant where the brit consul suggested we exit China immediately (several old duffers decided they loved the grub so much, though, that they were happy to risk being stuck in China for the next few months if their travel insurance covered becoming political hostages). Our tour group’s luggage had, by this point, already gone missing once on the transfer to Xian (tour to the terracotta warriors) and been set on fire. However, our own Samson luggage appeared to be flameproof, although we did have to wait a quite few hours for it to cool down before trying to open it…

I got such bad eczema one August many years ago in Portugal, set off by the heat; I couldn't get strong enough cortisone cream or bland enough diprobase style cream before it blew up so badly that I had raw skin on both inner arms. It was horrendous. Everything then made it worse. Bad planning on my part, didn't have the right cream with me. It was awful, I was so miserable and everyone was having a lovely time around me. Awful to be sick on holiday.
I went on a hen week in my 20s also in Portugal to a villa with the bride's friends and sister's friends. They were not my kind of people at all & all spending a fortune & I didn't have the same level of cash. So awkward. I just wanted to leave on day 1 but had to struggle through. Never again, I learned my lesson.

The Lake District. It never stopped raining and the cottage we were staying in was rubbish.

Sunny Beach in Bulgaria, Mid May 2018 .
It rained, and rained and rained.
The hotel was lovely, really close to the beach but it was raining.
I had the feeling of foreboding and said to DH I just want to go home, we’d only been there 24 hours.
DH got a chest infection
Two days later I was hospitalised with pneumonia.My treatment was good but I’ve never been so glad to get on that plane home.