Best/worst country to visit

[travelinterest]

AIBU to ask which countries/cities were the best or worst you have visited and why?

The above should read @clandestino

@Witchofzog Walking through the towns in Greece, on Crete or in Spain which are the centres for the "rite of passage" is like a scene from Mad Max which got cheap booze poured all over it.
Drunks stumbling to the beach from the "authentic British pub" serving full English and then back for more fuel.
Similar goes for the hen and stag parties. I've yet to see one where people are not half-drunk at 3PM. Or meet one on Sunday morning where they aren't hungover and reek of cider and beer and that's the same for women and men.

Worst - Australia, and particularly Melbourne. Utter, utter crap hole.

Best - Greece so far. But that might change if/when we travel more.

Iceland seems to be coming out well on here. Never been since my Dad went and described it as "hell on earth" and had impression he wasn't keen! Also banked with Icesave though did quite well out of that as FSCS paid out the 6.7% interest.

Not read all the post so may have missed it. Poland is a real hidden gem. Loved Kraków and I did Gdańsk this year... beautiful places lots to do and best of all cheap

Re: South America

The only place I've been to is Brazil and I thought it was amazing - beautiful, friendly people, tons to see - and I only saw a tiny bit of it - I'd love to go back. However, it sometimes felt dangerous and I saw a guy being mugged in the street.

DH has been to Chile (said it was modern and nice, but a bit bland), Colombia (which he said very felt dangerous), and Peru (which he liked a lot - found it very interesting, but said people threw trash everywhere, which he found depressing). Other family members have been to Bolivia (beautiful and interesting, but very poor), and Argentina (Buenos Aires got the thumbs up from everyone I know who has ever been). HTH.

Worst has got to be China, so much pollution in the air in the cities. Just a thick layer of smog across the top of the buildings, the people are rude when you can hear what they're trying over the masks they have to wear so they don't get a lung disease.

People constantly trying to sell you suits every ten yards, then at night time they go away the drug dealers and "ladies" of the night come out, along with 8 year olds begging for money, chasing you around, tugging on your t-shirt until you hand over some money.

Dreadful place.

Best place I've visited was probably Iceland. Just a beautiful country filled with beautiful people.

How come everyone is hating Tunisia? Is it just the touristy beach parts? I loved it. Stunning ruins at El Jem - best Roman amphitheatre ever, and Kairouan is beautiful. Also camel trekking in the desert and sleeping in the Star wars cave hotels at Tatouin was fun.

Best - Iceland and Budapest
Worst - last trip to Paris was aggressively over-priced and underwhelming. I used to live there and have loads of happy memories of it but it's really not very friendly or relaxing for visitors.

Cuba - run down and worst food poisoning of my life

Ditto. Could have been the most beautiful place ever (but wasn't), but after 9 days out of 14 with horrific food poisoning I'll never go again.

I love these threads too.

Had both fabulous and very disappointing holidays in different parts of Mexico.

City-wise, I love New York, Venice, Edinburgh, Marrakech.

Favourite holiday ever is the traditional USA West Coast road trip, and earlier in this year I was in Tuscany and said that I reckon if I could only ever visit one country again, I would probably choose Italy.

Was underwhelmed by:

Dublin - perhaps you need to be a drinker, and I'm not.

Cyprus - Turkey a darn sight cheaper and (in my experience, never had any issues whether travelling with or without husband, perhaps I'm too ugly LOL) the people much nicer there.

Barbados - pretty enough, ridiculous expensive and probably the least friendly locals I've come across anywhere. I do think the people make a huge difference to how welcoming a country feels.

I used to send people to work in Tunisia a lot (in my former logistics / corporate travel role at work). They mainly hated it, but I think there were a lot of very heated strikes among employees there. Some of our staff had to evacuate etc. Not to do with the country itself though.

Best: Rome. So many layers of history. So much to do. It’s just so, so beautiful. I can’t imagine ever being bored there.

Worst: Vienna. A bunch of rich racists who take themselves so seriously. Sacher Torte is dry and boring. There. I said it. Vienna is like being in a Jane Austen novel except all the nice characters have gone away for the week and you’re stuck with Bingley’s sisters.

That said, it’s all about the experience. I loved Paris my first two visits, hated it my third visit. I can see how a strong opinion is formed on so little knowledge of a place. (Still not sorry, Vienna.)

Sacher Torte is dry and boring. There. I said it

Omg this is true! The terrible, terrible truth.

IKR, Suck?! And they’re so proud of it! That and their dry bread rolls.

Dublin seems to be universally unpopular here.

We visited all those places in Tunisia Minapaws and really liked them, but we stayed in an awful hotel in Sousse, which just smelled of sewers all the time. Every time we left the hotel we were hassled by hawkers. It wasn't very relaxing.

I was also underwhelmed by Cuba, didn't get food poisoning despite being served raw chicken and not realising, hotel was lovely with 7 pools, beach etc but full of poverty and sad to hear tales from women who said they earn more being waitresses for tourists (maade to wear crazily short skirts) than being doctors. Also full of loud Canadians who kept pushing in queues etc and complaining loudly there was only one burger on the menu.

Best city : New York
Worst city : Berlin

Another place I didn't like - Berlin. A horrid of mix of ugly modern and ugly Soviet with no redeeming features I could discern. It just felt very industrial and soulless. Having said that, I was only there for one weekend and DH and I (then BF and I), had a big row and almost broke up, so that didn't help!

I'm not anti-Germany though - I like Bavaria - very pretty - and I'd happily go to the Black Forest. Lake Constance is beautiful.

Best Cities in US to visit: NYC, Boston, Washington. San Francisco is still lovely and interesting but poorly managed and insanely expensive.

Philadelphia has it's charms but not worth a separate visit. Baltimore is a bit of a dump.

I think the weather definitely plays a part in how you feel about a place.

Dh went to Dublin on a stag weekend when it was grey and drizzly and didn't like it at all. We went as a family a few years ago the weather was glorious and dh said it felt completely different and he liked the city. Dublin will still never be Galway though.

When we arrived in Sydney the weather was beautiful and it was just stunning. After that day it just rained constantly and we found it really boring.

Love
Paris
The Grenadines
Geneva (I was only there for 2 days but would love to go back)

Less keen
Cuba. Dreadful food and an aura of sadness
Scotland. So beautiful but the midges made me miserable

Iceland is stunning but Reykjavik is a bore and so expensive.

Haha, yes. Reykjavík is an absolutely brilliant place to live, probably one of the best cities in the world in my opinion to live in. But I see all the tourists and I often wonder, what on earth are you all doing? You can cover Rvk in one day, max. Not to mention the fact that the downtown area is now Viking and Puffin Themeworld and a complete tourist enclave. (I don't live downtown).

The most beautiful place I've ever been was probably the Canadian Rockies, or Iceland. Favourite holiday in my life, though, was in the South West of France.

Also really loved the Faroe Islands.

I don't think I've ever really been anywhere on holiday that I hated, but Croatia didn't really grab me. I don't think we really did it justice, though, to be fair.

Best cities - Amsterdam, Delft, Lucca, Stockholm, Copenhagen

Best areas - The Loire, Alsace and the Vosges, Lofoten Islands, Scottish Highlands, Northumberland, Wye Valley, Yosemite, Tasmania

Worst cities - Dublin, Monaco

Worst areas - Many bits of California

@Clandestino. It still doesn't make them skanks or disgusting low lives. The ones who are abusive or fighting or whose behaviour affects other people is fair enough, but having a few drinks in the afternoon for your best friends hen do one Saturday and then being very hungover on a Sunday does not make you a disgusting low life or a skank.

A recent hen do I was invited to (but wasn't able to attend) was for a friend who is a responsible health care professional. Most of her friends are in similar jobs. They had cocktails during the day then a meal then more drinks in a bar. You would probably have judged them too despite them all being lovely professional people. They were absolutely hanging the next day but it only affected them and no one else.

Loved Cuba and Brussels. Turkey was my worst. The men and their behaviour toward women and their opinions of the English (which they weren’t afraid to express) put me off ever returning.

There is a long thread on this topic in Classics - Dublin was not very popular in that thread either.. :)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_classics/2697832-Holiday-destinations-that-were-unexpectedly-lovely-OR-awful

However, for most places for everyone that said it was awful another person said they loved it :)

As pp have said a lot depends on circumstances like weather, health, mood, etc - it's also often a bit unfair to judge most places based on a 2 or 3 day weekend /short break, although still interesting to read peoples views.