To wonder what your idea of the holiday companion from hell is?

[Summerbreezing]

Just inspired by another thread, but what kind of person do you hate finding yourself on holiday with?

I can't bear the kind of person who wants to frogmarch everyone around to 'interesting places', and think a minute spent relaxing is a minute wasted. I don't want to spend my entire time in Paris up the Eiffel Tower or wandering around the Louvre or catching a train to Versailles. I want to spend some time just 'being' in Paris, wandering aimlessly around, stopping for coffee or wine, people watching, saying 'let's go down here, it looks interesting' etc. Please don't present me with an hour by hour timetable. It's a holiday.

I only go on holiday with my wife, Dd and sometimes my parents who are fantastic. I loathe staying with or holidaying with anyone else at all. I am a very sociable person but I cannot relax on holiday when I'm with people other than my imediate family.

Years ago, I was going out with a guy who invited me to go on holiday with him and his parents. Big mistake.

I knew the holiday was going to be a bit tense when they packed a joint of beef in their suitcase so they didn't have to eat 'that foreign muck' (although how they expected the meat to last two weeks, I do not know.

We stayed in a villa in Tuscany. The parents never left the villa. Occasionally, they sat on the balcony but made it clear they didn't want to explore the area or eat out anywhere.

They were incredibly stingey. We all chipped in for food, but they only wanted the cheapest, most boring stuff and they didn't drink so I couldn't even hit the bottle in an attempt to liven things up.

One day, bf and I decided to escape and spend the day in Florence. On our return, you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife - the parents were not speaking to us which was quite nice actually.

They were really strange people. If bf ever put his arm around me or hugged me, his mother would say "He never does that to me!".

Funnily enough, bf and I split up soon after returning home.

My mother, who thinks every second must be filled with constant chattering and a continual narration about everything. Is also obsessed with Judge Judy and Jeremy Kyle, so every conversation involves something she saw or heard on either of the above mentioned programs, along with her habit of punctauting her conversations by grabbing your wrist or banging your arm.
You come home black and blue and with a migraine.

What summerbreezing said.

I hate group holidays.

They all go like this:

10 people try to meet at 6pm in the lobby to go for drinks. 7 arrive roughly on time, 2 wander down late pissing everyone off. One doesn't turn up at all. Calls to mobile fail to rouse missing person - cue manhunt.

One person goes to find the missing person. Meanwhile someone else realises that she'll just have time to nip to the loo/get cardigan in case it's chilly later/get sunglasses and promptly disappears. Everyone else waits, twiddling their thumbs. Someone frets and whines about being late for restaurant booking or missing bus.

6.20pm. Missing person turns up - she lost track of time but still had to blow dry hair and do fake tan, so decided to make everyone late. Person sent to find missing person is now missing. Cue frantic calls to mobile. It's now 6.30pm.

6.45pm - person sent to find missing person turns up having got lost. Group eventually sets off.

Someone wears unsuitable footwear -e.g. stilettos on cobbles - and moans that their feet hurt all night when they could have worn flats. Someone realises that friend who nipped to the loo/grab sunglasses/get cardi is not part of group and is missing on action presumed left behind. Cue wailing about "Poor Linda" and 15 calls to her mobile trying to give (conflicting) directions to the bar.

7.15pm arrive at main bar/restaurant area, approx 5mins walk from accommodation, after getting lost. There follows a 15 minute debate on which bar looks nice. Bossy friend insists on X Bar. Lots of people stand on one leg, twiddling their hair and saying "I don't mind" when asked what bar they'd like. No one wants to make a decision. Someone makes a decision, everyone looks disappointed at bar choice

Etc etcetera.

Yuck.

I did a degree in ancient history, and I'm an enthusiastic museum and old church visitor when I'm at home. That's how I like to spend my weekends.

So why did it come as a surprise to my old friend that I wanted to spend my holidays seeing the sites?!?

I planned a trip to visit the hill towns of Umbria. She tagged along. Then moaned that the hill towns were too hilly and she was bored of churches. Because of her moaning we skipped seeing Asissi. We literally drove past the city walls but didn't go in. I could have gnashed my teeth in frustration.
The next year the earthquake damaged those beautiful frescoes. So I missed my chance to see them at their best because of her.

we aren't friends anymore.

in laws.
They are late for everything. They don't think that the usual rules about checking in, or having tickets, apply to them. They don't get going until lunchtime (fine, unless you have small antsy children to entertain waiting for them to get a move on).

So why am I going on holiday with them again this summer? I don't know, really.

" If bf ever put his arm around me or hugged me, his mother would say "He never does that to me!"."

God, imagine the MIL threads if you'd stayed together!

Moaners.

You've paid to go away, you have the luxury of time off work and away from life's stresses...make the best of it!

People who whinge constantly are so draining.

A mean person. Went on holiday with a friend and every single bill had to be portioned out, not split. Eg oh but you had a hot chocolate and I only had a coffee which cost 15p less etc. Drove me mad - never again.

MIL

She is really, really good at getting her own way. She decides each day where to go, when to eat etc and everyone follows her around dutifully. Occasionally she will ask if there is something you want to do but somehow circumstances always conspire to stop that from happening. If DH and I decide to go for a walk, just to get 20 minutes to ourselves she always comes with us.

We don't go anymore as there is no give and take but she keeps asking us. She also goes to the same place each year and with so many places I haven't been I prefer to feel like I don't want to relive her holiday every 12 months.

No one specific. Someone loud, bossy and selfish would be hellish. But everyone I've been on holiday with has either liked the same things as me or accepts that we like different things.

My SIL likes to stay up late and sleep in late. We've been on holiday with her a few times but it's not really been a problem. Only when the accommodation meant that she had to sleep on the living room sofa bed and I couldn't get into the kitchen to make a coffee and some breakfast without disturbing her.

I took to going out for the bread and papers and having first breakfast alone and second breakfast three hours later with everyone else

Someone who just wants to lie in the sun all day and drink alcohol
all night like my exh!!

Anyone except DW and DS when he was a child.

I once went away with the wife of my then boyfriend's boss. Each year she bestowed the magnanimous gift of letting someone go away with her (although I paid my own way) and I guess I should have been more clued up by the fact that it was a different person each year.

Turns out she snores like a trooper. I,being younger, ended up on the lounge sofa bed so I could get a nights sleep. She would appear quite early in the morning and her first action was to smoke a fag practically on top of me - why she didn't smoke in her own bedroom I didn't know.

First morning sat by the pool. Okey dokey. I said I fancied going to the beach - she didn't do beaches. Fair enough, we sat by the pool. Second day I suggested going for a walk to explore the town - it was Santa Ponsa in Majorca so nothing too exciting. She complained after 5 minutes that her feet hurt.

Longest week of my life - we never spoke to each other once we got home.

Anyone who is tight and anyone who looks for a Mc Donald's while abroad - or anyone who looks for a MacDonalds full stop really!!

LindaMcCartney

Also hate going away with attention seeking moaners "Oh the sun's giving me a headache. We'll have to go back so I can lie down" "Oh I'm definitely allergic to the chlorine in the pool. We'll have to go to the beach". "Oh I definitely don't feel well after that meal last night. We can't go t that restaurant again" "Oh there's a terrible draught on this balcony. I can feel my whiplash starting up again. We'll have to sit inside". and on and on and on.....

Funniest memory of a holiday I have is with family friends who had never ever gone away on a holiday ever before and for some reason chose to grace us as holiday companions. I don't know how we got sucked into it too much drink, but we landed up in this small Austrian chalet in early spring with two small children (DD 3, their DD 6).

Friend tells us to go get some food from nearby tiny village while she unpacks, long list with exact prices and all british brands noted. When we get back, with a fairly different set of things, she has stripped all the rooms of all cloth, so blankets, curtains etc and washed them by hand So we're stuck in snowy hillside with thoroughly disinfected, dripping wet blankets. Yes she was a bit of a clean freak always, but still. We had to bring out those shiny emergency thermal blankets from the car.

Then she lets us know she is agoraphobic, so any walks, treks etc are out of the question. Bear in mind this is a tiny chalet on an effing mountain, nothing else to do all around. We ask why she wanted to come here, she says another friend came for skiing. Does she want to ski? Of course not!

So we start going away by ourselves, but her DD wants to come. She won't let her come alone, so she will come with us. Her DH seems to be her second child, he doesn't get a vote. Every time we walk too fast, climb anything, go near anything, she screams in fear. My DD picked a flower, I thought she would faint then and there.
At every meal, she talks of food poisoning with foreign food and moans about TV shows we are missing.

She comes out one morning and declares, This place has too much snow, it's not natural. Yep, snow is not natural for a mountain in the Alps, got you

Her DD scratched her elbow and she nearly got mountain rescue called in. Probably thought I was the most careless mother ever because my DD sneezed one day and I didn't send her straight to bed with Calpol (not exaggerating at all, one sneeze equals bed rest in their house).

It was infuriating at first, then it became so ridiculous we started enjoying it. DH and I played a guessing game about her reactions all the time, and generally tuned her out.

Haven't tried going anywhere with them since.

Vintage I thought you were naming Linda McCartney as your most-hated travel companion. All that vegetarian food and banging on about animal rights etc.

OK, following an earlier "discussion", can I add DH to my list of holiday companions from hell?

We're going away in the summer. Our villa has a pool

DH - you will get in the pool won't you, you won't just sit around reading?
Me - huh? .

DH - you've got to go in the pool, you're so boring, you always just want to sit and read, why won't you get in the pool? you're so boring. We have our own pool, you have to get in it. It'll be fun, you're so boring, you've got to get in the pool. What's the point of having a pool if you're not going to use it? You've got to go in the pool.......
Me - I'm on fucking holiday, I'll get in the pool if I want to. Stop going on about the bastard swimming pool!!!!

We're not going till July

Anyone who cant make a sodding decision, or takes forever to get ready- I have actually been on holiday with someone who wanted to dye their hair before leaving for dinner.
And people who self tan before going to a hot sunny climate

My inlaws, they're religious tee-totallers who are thoroughly miserable eating in any restaurant that isn't a fast food place. My DH and I are wine guzzling food enthusiasts whose idea of a holiday is a leisurely wine/food crawl around a pretty city (we never make it into musuems/art gallaries although we did end up at a monastery one time by accident. Luckily they served wine!)

Ooh just remembered people who only eat in chain restaurants or english pubs in another country. And people who insist on buying an english paper when abroad
just realised all of this in some way refers to one or more of the ils

Gah, I lost a line off the end of my post.

It should have said:

We're not going till July and we've had this conversation at least 50 times already and I'm sure we'll have it at least another 50 times before we actually go.

My friend and her family. She is lovely and we get on really well. I just can't stand her DH or her DD.

Her DH is nice for about the first day and then becomes generally grumpy aggressive and with a huuuuuge chip on his shoulder about various things. Unless you are one particular member of our group of friends, to whom he behaves like an absolute sycophant.

Her DD is hard to like. Sweet and charming on the surface but the sort of child who operates her needling and bullying just under the radar so she never gets caught. I've overheard the kinds of things she says to other children when she thinks no adults are listening. Awful.

But neither of these things could ever be broached with DF. She does think the sun shines out of both of them.