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 know I'd get a nightmare companion to some! Any of the following would be an awful travelling companion to me ...

1. Wants to rush from attraction to attraction with a checklist, not taking time to people watch or absorb the place they are visiting.

1. People who stick to resorts or tours. I much prefer to be independent.

1. People who take massive suitcases of stuff and then spend hours getting ready to go out, wearing lots of make that just melts in the heat.

1. People who don't embrace the destination they are travelling to and want everything like it is at home.

I'm a nightmare because:

1. I'm always budget concious and don't like to waste my travel funds sitting round a pool drinking cocktails.

1. I'd be thin if I lived somewhere hot, as the temperature rises my appetite doesn't so much decrease as vanish so I rarely want a sit down lunch.

1. I like to stop and take lots of photos. This drives DH mad sometimes (even if some of them are quite good).

You lot would hate me. I spend weeks planning our holidays, with an itinerary designed to fit in as much as possible and times planned to the minute :o

BIL was probably my worst travelling companion. We planned to climb a mountain and had to do it in X hours or less or we would miss the last bus back to the campsite, so we had to start by Y at the latest. At 10 past Y BIL crawled out of his tent in his boxers on his way to get a shower We then discovered halfway up the mountain that he hadn't brought the necessary equipment Halfway back down the mountain BIL's friend's stolen borrowed hiking boots fell apart and DH had to carry him on his back the rest of the way down! I think that day is burned into my memory...

Other than that, anyone who doesn't want to do anything, who moans, or who doesn't pull their weight with the boring-but-necessary stuff.

Either set of parents, for completely opposite reasons. My parents-in-law are doers. Every day would have to be spent at one attraction/site/park or another, with planned dinners out, planned joint breakfasts, and picnics to which I would not be allowed to contribute. This might not sound so bad, until you realise that my father-in-law is one of them what does not do forrin foods at all, and uses a mobility scooter, which means that my husband and I would never get to eat anything we liked, and all of the aforementioned visits either get cut short, or drenched in guilt because FIL is sat in the car alone.

My parents on the other hand are not-doers. All holidays would be spent wandering aimlessly, or sitting and drinking and eating. Perhaps with the odd game of scrabble thrown in. This would drive my husband crazy, who would then drive me crazy. I would revert to a teenager, and everyone would just be drunk and/or hungover all the time.

Needless to say, we have never, and will never, be going away with either set of parents!

I have just come back from a weekend away with my DH. We did the aimless walking, drinking, eating, reading, drinking, eating thing.

We were in Amsterdam - I quite wanted to hire bikes and cycle round Vondel Park and get a train to Haarlem. It wasn't meant to be. We did manage to go to one fairly crap museum, of which I am convinced I missed a large part of, otherwise they couldn't possibly have justified the fee.

Meet people on holidays that you get on with, then arrange to go with them again. I have a friend I met on holiday aged 5. My parents got on well with hers, and enjoyed the same holidays, so we simply went with them again the next year. Someyia we visited them a few hours away where they lived in the uk. That meant they weren't part of everyday life, but we knew we got on in the 'holiday' version of our lives. No repercussions if you don't get on and decide it was a bad idea too....

My friend. We went to a beautiful Greek Island and all she wanted to do was sit inside and play Monopoly.

She also insisted on working out to the last penny how much the restaurant bill should be split between us. She didn't like the sun, she didn't like the pool or sea. She didn't like it that the local s spoke Greek

Someone who wants to go out on the lash every single night flirt outrageously with cheesy guy who then has a mate who wants to latch up to you, the idea being that you are both 'up for it'. & then said someone is asleep snoring all day totally wasted, only to lurch out of bed late evening then want to repeat the whole sorry experience again. That would be a real nightmare.

Also a mate who invited me & DCs to her dad's holiday home in Hastings. She had young DCs too. She was absolutely paranoid about young DCs being in her dad's house. When I caught her staring fixedly at DCs when they were eating & the minute a crumb dropped on floor she started talking in a really highpitched slightly manic voice about you have to be very careful this is not my house oh God there can't be crumbs whats going to happen when we are eating dinner later (they were 4 & 3 years old) then I knew Id be off home next day and say 'no thanks' to any future invitations.

Does anyone else kind of forget how awful it was / kid themselves it will be better this time (because this year's cottage has 3 bathrooms etc) only to find that it is still really shit going on holiday with people you don't normally live with, no matter how many times and variations you try?

Yep, I've done this with my family, and I need to remind DH that he needs to stage an intervention if I say I'll do it again.

We tried it again with my mother because we thought "it will be helpful/better with DS" but we were wrong. She also asked if she could come out to where we would stay when we go to meet our new adopted child (it is overseas and it's the country she's from, but not the same area and she will hate the weather. Fortunately telling her the latter put her right off).

BIL.
A twat of the highest order who seems to go out of his way to make life difficult. He frequently vanishes (into the pub). Any activities are planned around his visits to the pub and if he can't get there cans are produced.
He is also utterly obsessed with BBQ's, except he will buy his own meat, cremate beyond recognition cook his own meat and refuse to share (even the leftovers) with anyone. One year he was so insistent he was BBQing in a howling rainstorm he dragged the BBQ back towards the house we had rented for the week so it wouldn't go out and FIL had to run out and stop him as he was melting the PVC on the window frames.

He's the type who will go to the tea van and come back with his own drink not bothering to ask others. If his own way isn't had he will go into an epic sulk and refuse to come out of the pub.

It's like holidaying with a teenager. This man is 40. I've put up with this both in the UK and abroad, however, things all came to a bit of a head last year with his equally unpleasant wife and I told them both exactly what I thought of them. (not whilst we were on holiday amazingly!)

This year we are going on holiday alone, just us and the kids. It will be blissful. I was half expecting them to turn up (DH still speaks to them) but apparently they are currently at our usual chosen holiday destination so my quiet week, away from the Pub, is go.

People who want to get to the beach at dawn and stay till it's dark so they can optimise their George Hamilton-type tan.

Yes, I'm looking at you, DH. After years of suffering through midday temperatures I rebelled and said shouted that I wasn't going until 3pm.

He sulks and tries to nudge us there earlier without me noticing.

He's also tantrummed and said we were late at the beach. Aside from catching the plane, how can you be late on holiday?

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

stinkle That swimming pool row is really familiar. I thought I was the only one. I'm perfectly happy to indulge my husband's flirtation with melanoma by going on beach holidays with him subject to the following modest demands:

• As said before, I want to get there at 3pm but will accept 2.30pm because any earlier is too hot;

• I want a parasol. Because direct sun is too hot;

• I don't particularly want to go in the sea. I worry about jelly fish and sewage outlets. I don't need to cool down. The reason you do is because you are staked out in direct sunlight and are too hot;

• I want to read a book to stave off boredom. I don't care that my face is in the shade. I will still be tanned. And not bored;

• I want you to apply lotion to my back properly instead of smearing on as little as possible because you think it is a conspiracy by the Cancer Research Campaign to stop people going brown;

• I do not want to hear you whining that my parasol is casting a shadow on your foot and interfering with your tan;

• I do not want to stand around like a lemon every hour while you optimise tanning by turning the beds around like we are sunflowers tracking the sun.

• As long as I get a gin and tonic round about 5pm I'm happy to lie around all afternoon.

Someone who wants to lie around doing nothing all day and to get drunk and go out clubbing every night.

My ILs. The one and only time we went away with them they reverted back to 1977 and treated my DH like he was in short trousers. They also competed for our DC's attention, every time my DH tried to do something with one of them, FIL would say 'oh you don't want Daddy to take you on the water slide, Daddy is a jelly, he is scared of water, come with Grandpa instead, it will be much more fun'. Poor DH. This he put up with for about two days before utterly snapping and telling his parents to back off! Cue lots of po-faced indignance about how they were only tying to help and why didn't we want to go off on our own and leave the children with them?

My MIL is an every-two-minute-tidier as well. I am on holiday, I don't want to tidy up all the time. Drove me up the wall.

I do not want to hear you whining that my parasol is casting a shadow on your foot and interfering with your tan;

Just fell off my chair laughing!

No worries brokentoe

Oh god yes to the flappy anxious people. Sil is like this, we book flights, book hotel (usually city centre). I have yet to arrive at a major airport that does not have a train that goes into the major city.(this is a city break at a major city ie Paris/Madrid etc)
cue months before hand of constant emails about trains, should we pre book a taxi, how will we know what train to get, what if there aren't any trains. Should we pre book a train. How will we know if the train goes near the hotel, what if it doesn't, shall we check there are taxis from the train station, should we try and pre book a taxi just in case and on and on. We hve been doing city breaks for years but still she gets in a tiz about getting from the airport to the hotel.
I love her to bits but i,m very much a turn up and figure it out from there type of person, so this drives me to distraction.

People who impose an uninvited person at the last minute eg "DD (aged 17) is dying to see Madrid so I'm going to bring her along on our group holiday to celebrate our 40th birthdays" or "I was telling a girl at work about our college gang reunion trip to Copenhagen and she's never been there so I suggested she come along". Grrr!

Tightwads. I hate stingy people so why would I want to holiday with one?

Whinging faffers. They refuse to decide then moan about the bar/restaurant/whole fucking country you've taken them to.

Culture vultures. Like the OP, I love to look at beautiful buildings in the likes of Venice and Rome. From my vantage point of a coffee shop in a square.

Super fussy eaters. Especially ones who make a song and dance about it.

Non drinkers. I hate ordering a glass of wine from an already open bottle so this is for selfish reasons.

People who want dinner at 6pm. 8pm at the very earliest on holiday.

Strange types who don't read. I read books, magazines, newspapers, it just wouldn't work.

Those who befriend random people. I'm anti-social on holiday, don't mind a bit of a chat but no I don't want to go for dinner with Nick and Nora.

People who watch TV on holiday. Why?

BIL and FIL - they came to Scotland with us and the kids, and then arranged for us to visit relatives of DPs while they buggered off to play golf. I was fucking furious. I thought we were popping in for coffee, turned out they had said we would spend the day there. They didn't want to come to the funfair with us and generally were miserable.

My mum: I love her to bits but being in her company for extended periods of time sets me on edge. She CANNOT shut up - nervousness - so witters on which then sets me on edge and makes me snappy. Luckily it washes over DP!

I went on a holiday with two friends, one of whom was in a relationship. She only wanted to go to couples-type restaurants and sit there all night.

No bars or clubs at the end of dinner, just straight home. To be honest, we couldn't have afforded that given her choice of restaurant.

The other friend and I won, because it was two against one, but she stayed in the apartment every night and sulked which was fun.

We did indulge her a couple of nights - which were very boring - but why go on a singles holiday and stop the others doing singles things?

One of the reasons she came was because she wasn't going on holiday with her boyfriend. He was going with an all-male group and I doubt he was insisting on dining in romantic restaurants.

I hate stingy people too, but I also hate freeloaders. We went away for a weekend with some friends once (they were perfectly normal at home as well, what is it about holidays that turns perfectly sane adults into annoying nutters?). They ordered the most expensive items on the menu, got utterly wankered and ran up a £100 bar bill while DH and I had a couple of bowls of pasta and a couple of glasses of wine, then wanted to split the bill 50/50. Their bill was over £150, DH and I had about £30

Vivi that was the most stressful 7 days of my life. DH mentioned going again this year, even the kids were "what? Are you mad?" We have managed to remain friends though. Just never going camping with them again.

so true spring breaker ..we have the family holiday when my darling hubby .barks orders all the time is obsessded with time and order .then we have the mummy and 3 ds holiday where we just mooch around doing what we like when we like just bliss .

Not a disaster but DH and I spent some time with another couple on holiday a few years ago. Luckily we weren't with them because that would have been miserable, but DH really likes him, and I like him too so we arranged to meet.

He had a new girlfriend. From our first meeting I suspected she had an eating disorder. It wasn't a problem that night because we were in a tapas bar and we could eat or not, in her case. She ate some olives and drank lots of vodka.

But our friend kept trying to arrange dinner in a more special restaurant. She put loads of conditions on it. She wanted to eat at 6pm, first because she got weak with hunger, then because she didn't like people watching her eat, then she had various allergies that meant she vetoed places. This was Spain - it's quite difficult to find a restaurant that's open at 6pm unless it's McDonalds.

We had various false starts where they'd cancel at the last minute before we found somewhere that was open at 7pm that was acceptable. We drove out. They stood us up. No call or text. They didn't reply to our texts so after a while we ordered. It was a bit crap, empty and was still virtually empty by the time we'd finished eating. We drove home, walked to a bar and got pissed, so the night wasn't ruined.

When we saw them the next day and asked what had happened she burst into tears and said we were harassing her. We didn't see that friend for the rest of the holiday.

When they broke up he said she had an eating disorder but that he hadn't realised. I think he did but she wouldn't admit it and he was trying to force her to eat normally.

I suppose I should feel sorry for her but I didn't want to be involved in their psychodrama.

Before I met dh I went on a weekend away with a female friend. We were both single.

On the 2nd night, after having spent much of the day sightseeing etc, we stopped for tea at a restaurant and this random man came up to join in. Nothing at all wrong with that in itself; the problem was that he was only interested in my friend - and she in him - and I was all but excluded. She ended up going off with him and I was left to walk back to the hotel, alone, at nighttime, through the seediest parts of Amsterdam - a place I'd never been before and couldn't understand the language.

If we'd been in a restaurant in the UK it wouldn't have been so bad as I could easily have called someone else or made my way home but there I felt completely alone.

We never went away together again and don't see each other any more - she got a job elsewhere not long after I had dc1 and we have very little in common.

Something similar happened to me mumofboyo. I'd gone on holiday with two friends - A and B - different to my first story.

A met someone and had a holiday romance. But that was okay because B and I still had each other.

We all went to a club together because A wasn't totally exclusive and the bloke she'd met was nice.

B and I went on a bit of a manhunt. B got chatting with someone. They had a dance and I stood minding her bag. I wasn't lonely, I was talking to someone at the bar that I'd just met.

After a while I wondered where B was. The club was enormous. I went looking for her but couldn't find her. I started to panic because A was with her bloke and we'd arranged that they could leave without us because B and I were together.

Luckily I found A and her bloke, they were about to leave. We all went hunting for B. I found one of the group of friends her new man had been with and he said he'd left with B ages before.

She'd just sneaked off and dumped me. It was miles from the hotel and I'd have had to get a taxi on my own. Like you, I didn't speak the language either.

A and I confronted B about it the next day and she pretended it was all a mistake and she thought I was with A and her bloke.

There was no point arguing about it. I just made sure I was never alone with her again. A and her bloke didn't mind me tagging along with them - which was really nice of them. Much nicer than B. We didn't stay friends.