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.

@HomewardHound

That must have been Birkenhead? Other parts of the Wirral are beautiful

OP, your comment on the people of north Wales is arrogant, short-sighted and shows a distinct lack of knowledge. Nobody switches from English to Welsh just because an English person is nearby.

As already pointed out by others, many people in Wales, particularly in the north, speak Welsh as their first language. Some don't even start to learn English until they start at school. So the fact that they can, and do, speak 2 languages fluently is something that should be praised, not criticised.

Switching from one language to another is very common all around the world when a person is fluent in more than one language. It is called 'code-switching' and is a recognised speech pattern.

It's not all about you, you know.

Well a fair few of us on here have experienced the language switch so I doubt we're all making it up.

@icanthelpyou did you learn any welsh words to be able to say hello and thank you as you would any other country abroad?

@icanthelpyou
I don't think you're making it up, I think you are misunderstanding it.
The welsh language isn't some trick that locals do. It's the language they speak naturally to each other. If you worked in a shop in a tourist area in say, London, would you and any co worker start to speak French to each other because there happened to be a French speaking tourist in the shop? Of course you wouldn't, it would be odd. You might speak French to THEM to be polite if you could , but not to each other. Can you imagine if the French person complained about two english shopkeepers speaking English in England?

I was there for a friend's 5 day hen do, by day 3 I was in tears and scared to leave the hotel, having been constantly groped in the street, and other such delights. It's an absolutely disgusting place, and I would recommend it to nobody.

Parts of Istanbul are wonderful. There are some magnificent areas with wonderful shops, restaurants etc which are modern and very European where there are no issues with creepy men.

Also Amsterdam, loved it and it was the only European City I felt I could move to. Wasn’t seedy in the slightest and the only place my kids beg me to take them back to.

Also London is a dump? Most big cities are crazy and busy and if you stick to oxford street and Leicester Square it is fairly grim but take a step off the main roads and just a street behind you’ll fine the real London - quiet streets, family owned cafes which have been there for generations, quiet gardens, children scooting to school, maybe a brand new playground, shops selling things you never knew you wanted.

I visit a sports centre in N wales and the staff switch between English and Welsh constantly, depending on the language of the person they're talking too. There's nothing rude about it at all and they're very welcoming. If I order food and one staff member shouts out the order to another, they'll do it in English because that's what I speak but it wouldn't trouble me if they did it in Welsh.

I'm English myself and am sorry to say I've never met anyone except the English who are so suspicious of people speaking other languages, and think that 'foreigners' are somehow doing it to exclude or to talk about you behind your back. It's an astonishing, insular and frankly shameful attitude. I've seen it a number of times on MN and many times in rl. I guess it goes hand-in-hand with your mother tongue being the international language of the world and being almost wilfully crap at trying to speak any foreign languages. Disclaimer: obviously not all English people are like that.

There's absolutely loads to do in both Malta and Lanzarote that doesn't involve sunbathing or drinking so I can't understand how people can say it is boring or there is nothing to do.

What about the volcano Park, caves, gardens, watersports and Cesar Manrique stuff in lanzarote or Valletta and other historical sites, warersports etc on Malta plus trips to Comino and Gozo?

These threads always turn into 'we didn't do any research and didn't leave the hotel complex even though it wasn't very nice so I'll write off a perfectly lovely destination based on a tiny unrepresentative part of it' moanfest.

I went away to Turkey with a female friend and her two young daughters . First and last time. I think if I'd gone with a man it would have been a very different holiday.

"I've never met anyone except the English who are so suspicious of people speaking other languages, and think that 'foreigners' are somehow doing it to exclude or to talk about you behind your back."

Cone to East Asia, it's 10 times more insular here.

There's only one place I wouldn't go back to, Sharm El Sheikh. Because we didn't know what we were bloody doing.

We stayed in a resort for 2 weeks, and were bored off our titties by day 4. There was very little to do outside of the resort (would've known that if we'd done some research) and when we did venture out we were subject to endless coaxing from men who wanted us to go to their shops (and once a man galloping along on a camel)

I think a lot of it is about knowing what you personally like and dislike, and also not going somewhere for ages when you're likely to eventually get bored of it! And also having the right expectations - countries with a unstable economy/wobbly government are likely to have high security hotels/people living on the streets. That's the reality of the country you're visiting.

Copenhagen.
I was as expecting it to be amazinb and I was underwhelmed.

It's interesting to hear all the comments about Welsh. In Ireland there are areas where people speak Irish - they will switch to English for a visitor they didn't recognise but back to Irish for another Irish speaker they know. The difference is that the Irish are PROUD that the language exists and is thriving, even if they can't speak it well or at all. Why all the angst about Welsh?

When I am in a Bengali curry house in London, they often take my order in English and shout back to the kitchen in Bengali. I wouldn't complain about that either.

@BarbaraofSeville we did do several of those things in lanzarote. Didn't stay in a resort (we self catered in a holiday home), and yet I still found it fairly dull in comparison to other things. There just wasn't the same choice of things to do - you could do everything there is to do in less than a week's holiday. Pleasant enough place but nothing at all to make me want to return. And nothing to do with lack of research or not venturing outside of a large resort!

Tunisia!! The men were grabby & seriously shocked we weren't interested! And cats sat all round us when we went out to a restaurant,

Same choice of activities

@purpleolive, I agree the cruise ships should be banned. They cast a shadow (literally and figuratively) over the whole city. I think they’re banning them from coming right into the lagoon, but that’s not really enough. Sadly, I don’t think Venice will exist in 50 years.

@foreverroses What? People fling shit at you?

user yep, it’s well known for it. The Lonely Planet etc. guidebooks all warn you!

They fling gloop, not sure what it is, then offer to clean your shoes or bag or clothes for a price...

Jesus Christ that's nasty. Think I'll give it a miss!

The difference is that the Irish are PROUD that the language exists and is thriving, even if they can't speak it well or at all. Why all the angst about Welsh?

I reckon it's because Wales is attached to England so some English people see it as a sort of county of England. It must be disconcerting (for those sorts) to drive a couple of hours, not get on a plane or ferry, and people are speaking a different language at the other end.

@icanthelpyou, I'm not doubting that you've experienced it, but it's the reason that it happens that I was referring to. We just naturally switch between one language and another, all the time, not just when English speaking people appear.

There are lots of city break destinations I’m not planning to return to because I have ‘been there, done that, ticked it off’, and there are other places I want to visit, eg
Las Vegas
Budapest
Toronto/Niagara
Rome
New York
Berlin
Dallas
Prague
Etc etc

I have no plans to return to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur because I hate the climate.

Paphos & the Costa del Sol are too ‘Brits abroad’ for me. Ditto the south of Mallorca, but the north of the island is lovely.

Also, I have heard so many horror stories about Egypt that I have no intention of visiting the place.