Is there somewhere that you would not return to? And why?

[Mothership4two]

Just commented on a post asking for places you would go back to and why. Thought it would be interesting to find out places you would never go back and why not. Not trying to cause offence! I'm going to get flamed arent I?

Mine are:

Amsterdam. Just found it a big unfriendly city. Away from canals, the buildings are pretty ugly. Staff in shops/restaurants/etc had a couldnt care less attitude. Didn't help that it was a really cold few days and we werent interested in getting 'cake' from cafes or looking at the red light district. I find Dutch people usually lovely.

Dublin: found it drab and old-fashioned. People lovely though and good pubs

Florence: I love Italy but Florence is just a working city with islands of lovely buildings imo. We'd just come from Venice and it didn't compare.

North Wales: beautiful but unfriendly. Everywhere we went people switched from English to Welsh when they heard our English accents including a staff member in a tourist info office! We knew it happened but it just makes you feel meh. The fact if rained every single day didnt put it in a good light for us. Have visited many parts of the rest of Wales, all good. My lovely fil is from North Wales and my lovely sil and dn is also Welsh.

My ILs are Welsh, born and bred N Wales. My FIL didn't learn any English till he was in his 20s. They all speak 'Winglish' when I am around and I have picked up loads of 'odd' words that I can use, just not complete sentences. Even now, almost 20 years since my very first visit, I find myself sniggering when a person speaking fluent Welsh suddenly says an English word because there isn't a Welsh equivalent. I absolutely love it! Their mountains & beaches are beautiful, their home town not so much. I'd happily do a holiday there, but it would have to be a 'relaxing get away from everything' one - stone cottage, no neighbours. Bliss.

I wouldn't go back to Agadir in a hurry. The weather in August is terrible (the only time we go on holiday). The only days we really enjoyed were the ones we spent in the 'Fruit Souk'...and even then we were ripped off. I may try Marrakesh to see if it's any better, but I wouldn't rush to do so.

As others have said, I knew this would turn into a bash the welsh for speaking welsh.
I am English speaking , but have learnt Welsh, and I live in one of the tourist spots on Anglesey that you would definitely have visited if you'd come to Anglesey on holiday.
People don't switch to Welsh to be rude. They switch to English when speaking to you TO BE POLITE!!!!! Welsh native speakers genuinely express themselves better in Welsh, and find it weird speaking English to each other. I have friends acquaintances that I have always spoken welsh to, so switching to English would be odd, and vice versa.
It is raining this morning though!

@milliefiori
Don’t worry, Crete is still gorgeous, I’ve taken my kids a couple of times in the last few years, and it sounds like we have similar taste in holiday activities.

Quite sad to see my home country referred to as a dump 😑 quite hurtful comments for a lot of people on here.

Surely it's all just preference? I've never had a problem in any parts of Wales either.

Definitely Cape Town. The actual landscape is fantastic but the social backdrop was unbearable. We felt very unsafe on several occasions.

Everyone has such different opinions, it’s fascinating.

I didn’t like Crete, Los Angeles, Gran Canaria.

I loved New York, North Wales, Las Vegas, Florence, London!

Dp has been to Amsterdam and said it's a shit hole. Full of tourists on cheap weekends away to get high 😒

Venice. Went when I was a teenager, it stinks and everything is overpriced
Queus are horrendous and the food was a bit meh

Cairo for sure. Felt very unsafe there.

Indeed MsTSwift. The implication is that if you go to Istanbul and you're female, you should expect to be harassed unless you are dressed conservatively and are protected by a man

Plenty of other nice parts of the world to go to in my opinion, for instance I loved Auckland, San Francisco, Lake Como and Rome.

Wouldn’t return to most resort type destinations, Cyprus, Tunisia, Sharm el Sheikh, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote.

Also really not a fan of Madrid, Rome, Milan, Algarve. Zurich wasn’t what I thought it would be either, and stupidly expensive.

I live in London and quite like North Wales 🤷🏻‍♀️
Favourite ever place to visit is Tokyo. I would go every year if we could afford it. Have to stick to every other year for now!!

I simply don’t recognise that version of Amsterdam. We took our then five year old on a last- minute AirBnB holiday there a few summers ago, and had a lovely, low-key time, staying in a nice neighbourhood, taking out a boat on the canals, in markets and museums, renting bikes, eating very well. It was friendly and very child-friendly, and I even thought it was somewhere I could imagine living. I only saw the stag weekend side of things once in a whole week, when I happened to be walking back from the Rijksmuseum to meet DH and DS.

And we were in Venice last month and although I’d expected to hate it — wrong time of year, too hot, too crowded — I absolutely loved it. Only very specific areas were overcrowded and touristy. We stayed in a quiet street in Cannaregio where there was a nice neighbourhood vibe, lots of nice bars and shops, all the art museums were deserted, and everyone we met was very friendly. And gosh, it’s beautiful.

I think anyone who finds Venice or Rome meh is missing part of their soul. All that history...

half the issues on this thread stem from people not doing their research and thus having a completely baseless set of expectations of places. Yes, the Mediterranean will be hot in summer. New York is hot in summer, cold in winter, and is built on a grid system. Big cities will be crowded and very often have considerable numbers of visibly homeless people -- did you expect them to be tidied away for your arrival? Exactly. Also cba to go back to find it but the comment about if only there was a technology that predicted the weather People surprised that a big city is crowded, dirty and noisy...a place known for tourism is touristy...the weather was too rainy/ cold/ hot... That a resort notorious for attracting Brits interested in getting a tan, getting drunk and shagging, especially if it has actually appeared in a reality tv show entitled What Happens In... or Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents is, well, tacky and nasty

I wouldn't go back to Indonesia- never been anywhere so dirty and I mean genuinely gross, and the constant harassment and attempts to rip off and scam people. More malls, McDonalds etc than culture, museums etc bad and overpriced, tours rip-offs, plastic representation of culture for tourists who they assume to be rich and stupid, everything is about how much more money can we extract from them. I have never been glad to leave anywhere else.

A lot of people's issues with places may be easier if you visited in quieter months. We tend to holiday in sept/October. A lot of the places with busy tourism are quieter, also mon-Thursday/Friday seems to avoid weekend city breaks and stag and hen parties. In my experience anyway and aware people have kids hols to consider too.

Milan we used as a base for monza f1, was ok wouldn't need to go back.
Did a day to Naples from Sorrento. Wasn't keen. Enjoyed sorrento didn't find it brits abroad at all but went in October and did lots of exploring elsewhere too.

Just came back from Torronto enjoyed it but prob wouldn't need to go back. So many other places to go so I don't often repeat holiday destinations anyway (NYC an exception)

Pontins at Camber Sands. I saw an ad for a reduced price weekend and thought 'Why not?'. I'd never been to a holiday camp thing before. It was horrific. So filthy you could barely see out of the windows in the rooms. The apartment was SO depressing. Turquoise bathroom suite with dark brown wood effect lino. Someone had punched a hole through the wall between the living room and bathroom and there were dead insects lying around. The facilities looked like they hadn't been updated since the 1960s. I couldn't believe that they were allowed to have such a shoddy operation and left after one hour. I went on Trip Advisor to give it a review and found that some people had given it 5 stars (really started questioning Trip Advisor after that). Came across Butlins and Haven after that and both were amazing by comparison.

Sydney with the little ones was like visiting a hot and humid sauna. Plus I don't care for over crowded beaches . Yes they visited step siblings but we are not going back ( lots of money spent but not much gained in return)

I have driven through north Wales and the scenery is fabulous and I hope to go back to visit someday.

I'm amazed when tourists can't join the dots between a country being really cheap and because it is a developing country also having poor infrastructure and street crime. This is all part of the same issue. It is cheap because it has little social safety net and labour is cheap.

Nice airport. We were staying in Vence which was beautiful and I would absolutely go back if I didn't have to go to Nice airport. I don't even know how it's possible to run an airport so badly.

Greece. It was insanely hot, the hotel was filthy and we brought back bed bugs. So yes, I'm writing off a whole country because of one shitty hotel, but I don't care.

The one place I wouldn’t go back to probably is Tunisia, felt quite unsafe there because of being hassled. And if I’m honest I didn’t really love Australia when I visited (but it was 40 years ago), probably mainly due to the long flight involved.

I love weekend breaks in London, so vibrant, so much to see and do - I live in a very sleepy (dull) market town so a trip to a city is a real treat - ironically our town is a tourist location and lots of people come here on holiday .

I was really snooty about Turkey for years - without even going there, when I did go I loved it, obviously as others say you need to research where you go but it’s now one of my favourite holiday destination. People have such different expectations about holidays, some just want to relax, others want lots of culture and places of interest, some want to be super active. Honestly, I prefer to holiday alone and not have to compromise with family or friends .

Very good point Startup .... and of course tourist locations are going to be crowded and busy ...... that’s why they are tourist destinations .

@AgentProvocateur

"I think anyone who finds Venice or Rome meh is missing part of their soul. All that history..."

Venice is beautiful, but the issue is the sheer overwhelming numbers of people enjoying that history. It is the undoing of it. I wish they would ban cruise ships, for the tourists and damage. I honestly felt guilty and intrusive being there and won't return unless tourism is handled more sustainably.

Turkey, I hated Turkey. I hated the men and their over familiarity with teen DD, I hated the terrifying mountain roads, being woken up in the dark (October) by the call to prayer followed by cockerel crowing and dog barking constantly.

I hate Liverpool, been a few times, don’t live a million miles from it but I can’t like it. I find a disproportionate amount of people (not all of course) abrasive, on the defensive and aggressive. I was told to fuck off back to where I came from by a bloke with a buggy stopped in the middle of an aisle that I said “excuse me” to, to get past.

That would be errrr, sixty miles away mate. Give me Manchester any day,

Australia, some beautiful parts but so far from each other that it didn’t seem worth the 30 hour journey to get there.

Haven’t RTFT but Egypt for me. Had the worst vomiting/diarrhoea there, even though the hotel was clean. The food was vile. Constant hassle from people in shops, even the ones in the complex.

South of France; I think the place was called Rouems (sp?), in the Ardèche region anyway, went when I was 16 with friend and her parents. We stayed on a Eurocamp site and there was nothing to do. Just sat by the pool for three weeks but no shops or anything within miles. When we did go into a town it was so bloody expensive. It was too hot for me and I just really didn’t enjoy myself as I hate not having an alternative. Even now, while DH and I are happy to be by the pool, we like a stroll to an ice cream shop or to have a day browsing the local town or do a trip somewhere.

Camber Sands Pontins was on watchdog in the week for the number of cleanliness complaints. It was beyond filthy and the staff didn’t care.

Barcelona. Unless you're a real Gaudi fan