Places you've been underwhelmed by

[HannaPintura]

I just love going away and have really loved most places. One place in particular really Underwhelmed me...Gibraltar...just like Britain in the sun! I'm sure it has so much to offer, but I couldn't wait to cross the border back to Spain!

How can the Taj Mahal be a let down! Made me

Sometimes the criticisms say more about the poster than the place....

Lanzarote - amazing beaches and super clean
Paris?! How can you slate Paris? Did you walk round the Marais?
Cuba is a communist state so no, the shopping won't be up to much

Well may I ask what you expected to see out of the London Eye? Sydney Opera House perhaps?

Maybe they should relocate the Sydney Opera House to London for the viewing pleasure of the people on the London Eye.
Or paint a picture of it on one of the windows so people can pretend they're somewhere else if they wish

EuroDisney
Gran Canaria
Spain in general

Aberdeen is a god awful place. Relentlessly grim and grey, with a dour forbidding air. Stornoway bleak and boring. Stanraer a shithole.
Can't leave Scotland out of it.
On the other hand, love Edinburgh, like Stirling, the East Neuk of Fife is fab, love Dumfries & Galloway, the NE coast with Gardenstown, Banff, Port Soy is lovely. Peterhead is to be avoided at all costs...

Amsterdam but liked The Hague.

fuerteventura, grubby

Cape Verde, very rough sea and nothing to do

Malta, dull and lacks beauty

Algarve, just don't get what all the fuss is about.

Spain in general

That just made me laugh. Madrid, Barcelona, San Sebastián, Santiago de Compostela, Granada, Ronda, Seville, Jerez, etc, etc. Yep all crap

Some places mentioned here that I love. Paris is one of my favourite cities.

Stonehenge totally agree with. The Grand Canyon was also underwhelming.

Places I dislike that others love are Rome and Venice. I’ve been to the latter three times and actually hate it. Overcrowded in the summer, it’s like a theme park with little authenticity for me. I thought it might be better out of season but it’s not. Verona, Florence, Pisa and Florence I quite liked and I love the Italian lakes and rural Tuscany so I don’t know why I hate Venice and Rome so much.

Paris

Dirty and doo poo covered every bloody street corner

In fact most of France is like this.

"Spain in general"

Really?
Last summer went to Spain for 2 weeks was fabulous
we saw art in Madrid then cocktails in a rooftop pool
Canyoning in carzorla national park
Saw the Alahambra in Granada so beautiful tears came to my eyes
Mezquita in Córdoba
Nighttime festival in local town we were staying in
Long afternoons in the pool

But yes - the whole of Spain is underwhelming

Most places to be honest. Paris and Cambridge in particular.

Doris makes we wonder which places do pass muster...

on the reasoning used by some of these posters:

Swedish archipelago- beach was really cold when we visited at Easter and there weren't any lifeguards

Dutch village- there were some annoying British people there (oh yeah, so they may just have been my own teenagers that I brought, but so what, undeniably British and you don't expect that when you make a special effort to travel abroad)

the whole of Italy- changed trains in Milan on my way to the Riviera and it was really noisy and confusing

Welsh mountains- nightlife wasn't up to much

Florence - a dump Eeeeek

Lanzarote- urgh.

Pisa- glad I went, but wouldn’t bother again!

I found Cabo Roig which is somewhere in Spain (blocked it out I think) to be the most unpleasant place. TurquoiseTambourine, just down the road are the beautiful salt lakes (complete with flamingoes) and loads of castles, you're an hour's drive inland from the Mudéjar city of Murcia (with parts dating back to the 9th century), as well as beautiful Baroque architecture and the famous Sta. María cathedral. A bit further south is another city, Cartagena, full of Roman ruins almost 200 years old, as well as several great museums. And Cabo Roig's beaches are amazing!

cory

So many possibilities aren't there?

'yeah, couldn't believe the lack of a real ale scene in Riyadh'

'went on an Antarctic cruise to see the penguins and it was just so cold all the time'

'we took the car to France and got a flat tyre, I'll never be back'

People writing off entire countries on a visit is making me
The one saying "awful resort, would never go back to this country"is like someone saying they'd never visit England again because the holiday park they stayed at and presumably never set foot out of was crap!

My favourite complaint the lack of food shops in Cuba

Waiting for the complaints about the Amazon - too many trees - or the Vatican - too many churches.

We host foreign students and girls from Russia (far north), China (Beijing) and Brazil have all been in tears at the prospect of leaving England and going home. That puts me off visiting any of those places..

Downtown Manhattan (basically the bad features of central London) and Central Park (too many roads through it and most of it you can't go on the grass). First couple times in New York that was pretty much what I saw so was underwhelmed.

then I got to stay in Harlem and the north of Manhattan, visit Brooklyn, Ellis Island, Greenwich Village etc, and was totally converted to NYC.

Generally I manage expectations so the only other significant underwhelm I can think of was Legoland Windsor - a bland theme park with half-arsed Lego bit on one side, and overcrowded even on an INSET day in October.

treacle, how about "went to the Arctic and didn't see a single penguin"?

Though I should mention for the record that I did once go swimming among the ice floes on a beach near Gothenburg. It was on New Year's Day, I was accompanied by teen nephew- and a somewhat bemused-looking harbour seal. Great fun was had. Can't say that I would actually recommend the Swedish West Coast as a winter swimming resort, though: can see that it might not be for everyone. Even for me, once was enough.

I didn’t enjoy being in Devon. It rained most of the time we were there and I didn’t find it particularly friendly. We had a few days in Cornwall and it had a whole different feel to it, it was lovely. I’m a country girl and I loved the scenery and everything, I just didn’t enjoy being there.

AccidentallyRunToWindsor
Cuba. It was impossible to buy food and the customer service was non existent. You did know it was a Communist country?

Barcelona, Oxford and Paris are all just delightful.

I'm not a fan of Brighton but can see the charms that others like.

YetAnotherSpartacus - Prague was the same for me! I expected drunk lads, noisy pubs/restaurants but it was beautiful. Would love to go back.

treacle, how about "went to the Arctic and didn't see a single penguin"?

I offer you ' we wanted to see polar bears and penguins and didn't see either'

Iceland in August is apparently the wrong place to go. who knew ?

Naples wasn't great - filthy and stinks, dog shit all over the place. Old town pretty unsafe with thieves preying on tourists and locals riding scooters/driving cars straight into crowded narrow passages. I was ready to come home after 3 days. It wasn't all bad - good pizza and gelato, good clothes shopping, interesting underground history tours.
I loved it because all of the above. I hate sanitised places.