Reverse Bucket List…

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What would be your reverse Bucket List? Experiences that are meant to be awesome, once in a lifetime moments… but in reality rate as anything from ‘meh’ to ‘fuck that!’

Mine is…

A spa day. Totally boring and over priced to wallow in a pond of other people’s filth.

Everest Base Camp… never seen such a pile of litter. Made me feel sad.

Christmas shopping in London. Sensory nightmare.

North West 500… how to become the most hated being on the planet, drive a camper van round the narrow lanes of north Scotland.

Designer outfit. I still looked like a mad old bat.

Fish and chips by the sea at sunset. Getting covered in the shit of psychopathies seagulls isn’t what happens on Instagram.

Also
Raw kelp carb diet healing retreat.

Australia. (Sorry, Antipodeans.)

I'd saved and saved to travel down the East Coast with a view to potentially moving over there (as most Irish people my age were doing at the time) and built it up so much in my head and then ended up lonely, broke, with prickly heat AND sunburn so bad the skin on the backs of my calves split when I sat down.
There were amazing moments that I don't regret, seeing the Whitsundays was incredible, but on the whole it wasn't for me and I'd really hoped it would be.

Another was staying at the Sanctum Hotel in Soho. I'd been so excited about it as it had always been pitched as a true 'rock hotel' but actually it was pretty average, the room was really cold and the hotel just generally seemed a bit shit.

I'm usually a very positive person so it feels weird to actually be admitting that these experiences were disappointing and not just looking for the bright side!!

I also loved skiing but it took about 5 years, so it's an expensive and time consuming bucket list item!

I went to Angkor just a few years ago and thought it was absolutely amazing, albeit very, very busy in the most central sites. Agree with the pp about the stilt village, though. My abiding memory is of some tearful young tourists pleading in vain with a local to sell them some sort of wildcat trapped in a steel cage that was just big enough for it to crouch in so they could release it. Awful.

Apart from some nice restaurants, I also hated Siem Riep itself - it’s a party town for young travellers and I hated the pumping music and fried tarantulas on sticks bought for a laugh and then discarded on the ground. And not forgetting the bars filled with sad young local women waiting to sell sex to aforementioned partygoers.

It’s all about the expectations though isn’t it?
Dh came back from a work trip to Monterey all excited because he’d been on an unanticipated whale watching trip and seen whales. Whereas there must be hundreds of people every year who come back from their bucket list whale watching trip disappointed because they were expecting a transcendental experience and the whales weren’t up to scratch.
Like Stonehenge, if nobody told you it existed beforehand you’d think it was amazing. (Well a lot of people would. Not everyone on this thread.)

Definitely a spa day.
Also: a cruise
Any all-inclusive holiday resort
Pretty much any party

And public proposals are a vile attempt to coerce someone to marry you - I would automatically say "no", on the basis that the proposer clearly knows nothing about me!

But the Sistine Chapel is one of the wonders of the world - I have seen it a few times and can't wait to see it again.

My wedding day 😢though it was beautiful, there was love but not passionate love. He turned out to be a closet gay.

Also facials. I had one before the wedding. What was the point in that? An hour's worth of sandpapering my lovely skin. Never again.

Holidays in Cypriot budget accommodation infested with massive cockroaches..

I'll dump my whole childhood into this reverse bucket because that was a crock of shit too.

Furthermore, anything designery like Gucci belts and Chanel handbags 🙄

Nail-bar shops, just why?

Pot holing
Bungee jumping

Never going to happen.

Too much walking? It’s tiny!
Plus not run down - just old.

Thanks to both of you giving me helpful tips about driving the 500 all duly noted am trying to persuade my adult son to come so we can share the driving. Will plan and book carefully always like spending money locally how else can places survive.

This is such a joyless thread. I feel sorry for you all.

The Mona Lisa, the Louvre is wonderful, would happily spend days there, Da Vinci is an incredible artist, have been to several exhibitions.

The Mona Lisa is so incredibly underwhelming though. Small and dark and ordinary in a massive glass box and there's a huge stampede of tourists mowing down anything in their path to get to it.

London marathon. Thought I’d love it and be telling everyone they “simply must do it”. Fucking hated it.
Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Seeing a childhood band reunite. S Club 7 were shit in 2015.

• Beach holidays in general, gets so boring after the first two days and washing sand off / putting on sun screen is like a chore
• having a destination wedding - looks amazing in photos and guests all have a ball, but the organization involved for the couple is high stress and leaves little time to enjoy the experience
• having a big wedding all together - it’s nightmare!
• back packing as a young twenty something in South East Asia - feeling like a spoiled white brat the whole time
• spa days - UNLESS it’s a really nice one like AIRE, then it’s worth it
• New York City - maybe I just didn’t find the right people or places, but found it quite soulless
• hen do’s - never been to one I really enjoyed
• surprise parties - who enjoys having someone throw you a party when you aren’t prepared/rested/dressed for the occasion?

I can highly recommend walking in Italy, the dolomites are incredible. I wasn't sure how before we went, it was someone else in the group's bucket list place, but it was fabulous. Beautiful scenery, amazing food, lovely people, fascinating history, great walking, a bit of sound of music trivia!

Rome and Pompeii are brilliant too.

Big ben NYE midnight, stuck in a crowd of chain smoking Chinese tourists, can't even remember the fireworks just the passive smoke.

Careful. The keen cruisers will be along to tell you its the Best Thing Ever and anyone who says different is just jealous/snobby/ lacking in class/ pick insult.

Others...

3 star Michelin restaurant - took dp to this place he’d wanted to go for years and years for his 40th. We hadn’t been anywhere at this level before so expectations were high. Service was fantastic, we had a great table and the food was presented beautifully. But nothing tasted of very much. I found all of it weirdly washed out. He loved it though, which was the important thing, and to this day I join in reminiscing about how wonderful it was.

Agree with Pisa. Leaning Tower is interesting, but not really one of the great marvels of the world and the town doesn’t have a lot else to offer. I don’t really enjoy that sort of monumental site, though. Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Statue of Liberty, giant statues of Buddha (unless ancient). Dull.

Oh, give over Pollyanna. Perfectly happy thanks, just some things we don't want to do.

I liked venice, but saw a man pooing in the middle of a park just before you go into the city, that's my main take away, it was broad daylight.

Hen dos.

I saw a lady pooing in a city park in ho chi Minh. What a shame they'll never get to meet.

Sigh. My kids were fascinated and awed.

Disney world Florida

Stupidly expensive, massive queues, adults prancing around in mouse ears. Nauseating

Rome - bit of a shit hole other than the forum and Sistine Chapel

Glastonbury - horrendous, full of attention seeking twats pushing their kids around in wheelbarrows thinking they’re the first ones to do it

Long haul flights to destinations half way across the planet or further. I think I would like to experience the sights and sounds of the far East, India, South America, Africa, Australia and so on. In practice I can't justify the self indulgence of it all.

Love this. It’s probably climbing (?) the Eiffel Tower for me. Windy and underwhelming.