To ask what famous landmark or must visit place/thing were you secretly underwhelmed by?

[Midge1978]

I went to stonehenge this year and whilst I was trying to get in touch with my inner druid, trying to project historical importance and mystery onto the place, I just couldn't escape the feeling that I was just looking at some very old stones and it was actually (whisper) a little bit boring!! Dh thought it was all marvellous though so I have never told him!!!

Someone said Bondi Beach and I agree. I thought I'd gone to the wrong place. It looked so small and tame. It's all relative though.

Sydney Opera house.
Rounded the corner on a boat in the harbour, the Opera House came into view and the kids said 'is that it?'
It was smaller and dirtier than we expected.

Reminded by another thread. The Vatican. Heaving. Propelled along in a mass of humanity. Claustrophobia.

The General Sherman. He's a big tree but that's it

Vatican City and the Sistine Chapel.

Shakespeare's house.

I live just down the road from Avebury stones. I've never visited Stonehenge. And although I love history the stones are by far the most boring. They don't even know why they're there or what they did. They're just big stones!!
I visited lands end. Bored me senseless. I thought it would be more magnificent lol

Underwhelming:

The 'sea-to-sky highway' in British C Columbia. The Canadians raved about it, but it couldn't hold a candle to the North Antrim coastline.

Balmoral Castle. The scenery round about was very samey and not particularly spectacular, the castle was small, and I couldn't believe that you actually got to go into the royal family's living room. It seemed intrusive.

Overwhelming :

The Hermitage art museum in the Winter Palace, St Petersburg. The sheer opulence of the setting, not to mention the art works themselves, was overwhelming.

The plains of Mongolia. It was another, magical world of wild horses, nomads on horseback, sweeping plains and zero pollution. Ditto the savannahs of West Africa.

Was just about to comment Stonehenge before reading full OP. Didn't help that an American couple behind us kept asking "can I sit on it?"

Oh and the Mona Lisa. She's very small and I think we managed to get no closer than 4 metres away!

How can you by disappointed by Paris? Like, the whole of Paris? Even Montmartre, and the left bank, and the Marais and the Latin quarter, or St Germain etc etc? I get that the Arc De Triomphe and all that are tourist hellscapes but there are so many amazingly beautiful places in Paris.

Keep thinking of more things worth seeing:

The view of Hong Kong island at night time, from Kowloon. Never fails to impress.

The Holocaust memorial in Berlin.

The so-called "Dracula's Castle" in Transilvania...

Eiffel Tower...grey and disappointing like Paris in general.

Absolutely loved the Minack Theatre in Cornwall though....just beautiful.

I am also in the 'Grand Canyon' camp :(

Venice. Virtually everyone was looking to rip the tourists off.

We did find an exceptionally good and very well priced pizza place off the beaten track though. We followed the locals

New York.
Dirty, messy, cold and noisy.

Was expecting Phantom in London on bank holiday weekend to be better - never seen it, always wanted to see the chandelier bit. Very macabre as expected - leads & staging excellent, but:
a) all a bit weird subject matter wise
b) chandelier bit much less exciting than billed - expected more smashing glass sounds!

Dublin - nothing wrong specifically, just a bit 'meh', which was disappointing. And I second whoever said Puerto Pollença in Mallorca. I was expecting a beautiful bay, but it's just a flat windswept nothing with too much development and numerous Brit Pubs (think a menu consisting of pictures). Plus there are loads of marshlands between it and Alcudia (which is a lovely old city), breeding mosquitos the size of flying horses. We only stopped for half an hour and I got a lovely collection of blistering bites.

Mud it has been my dream to go to the Minack theatre for years!!!

Skegness

Tammy Montmatre is my favourite bit of Paris!

Also - Mount Kelimutu in Flores, Indonesia. Several days of bus travel to get there, going via Sumbawa (aka Isle of the Sexpests). Then, up at the crack of dawn to trudge up a hill - to see something that looked remarkably like the flooded gravel pits around St Austell. That really was the biggest disappointment ever.

Yy to the Louvre being overrated. I was enthralled by the Musee d'Orsay, the art was amazing and much less touristy.

Minack theatre is lovely. I didn't see a production unfortunately but did walk around. My friend's Dm used to be wardrobe mistress with an Am dram group that played there once a year. She would describe all the tunnels but it wasn't until I visited that I really appreciated what she was describing.