Where was your most disappointing holiday, and why?

[wholetawn]

I'll start off. Our most disappointing trip was to French Polynesia in the South Pacific. The scenario is stunning, but we found the people unhelpful and quite frankly, lazy, unless you were offering to pay them a lot of money to do something small.

Probably a week in hotel room in Nice MIL gave us, good as it was mainly free but Easyjet lost the luggage for 2 days then I got food poisoning for 3 days.

I did have a good time but I really disliked Paris. I then learnt there's such a thing as Paris Syndrome as so many people feel the disappointment when they get there.

Sri Lanka. Everyone raved about it but we were targeted by scammers constantly.
Preferred South India by far.

France with partners sister, her boorish husband and their dc. They drank (we're on holiday!) so I, being the only responsible parent, spent the whole time looking after their kids as well as my own. I had a crippling agoraphobia/anxiety attack during it and was constantly told I was rude to not be 'joining in' it's a beautiful place we'd been to many times but they shat on it, frankly.

Menorca, end of Aug, so ridiculously hot, no breeze, ants in the apartment, only us and one other English family, all other guests were Italian, they were so rude. Couldn’t wait to get home.

Cornwall, 2 weeks in July.

I stupidly expected wall to wall sunshine and it mostly rained with the odd sunny day, ex-p and I had the WORST colds ever and dd1, 6 at the time, acted like a twat for most of it.

Happy days 🤣

Mauritius. It cost us a fortune and we were so bored! The resort was nice but there was little outside the resort. It was then that we decided we were definitely not a sun/sea/sand sort of family and we preferred a good road trip with the freedom to go where we want when we want.

Ibiza. First holiday with dp. Hotel was lovely thankfully, but they'd had a really poor season so everything touristy was shutting down early ! No excursions still running, which we found out the morning we were supposed to go on said excursion having booked and paid at our welcome meeting! Reps leaving the island early, hotels shutting and moving guests to other hotels. Looking back we laugh, but at the time it was so disappointing.

Sicily. Everything, and I do mean everything, that could go wrong did from the minute we stepped off the plane to check-out. A catalogue of disasters from rip-off accommodation, torrential downpours so bad I lost a sandal (last seen sailing down the street), a train that was so slow it actually went backwards and crap restaurants. We even managed to end up in a pizzeria where the pizzas were microwaved. That takes some doing in Italy!

I once made the mistake of saying this on a travel forum and got a lot of indignant people telling me that of course if you HATE art, culture and great food then Sicily won’t be for you and that I was simply wrong!

I’ve been again since and had a much better time.

Where in Sicily did you go?

Isle of Wight. Terrible weather and DS and me were both I'll. couldn't go home early as all the ferries were booked up.

Cuba

Lake District. It rained for 13 days out of 14. Incredibly noisy workmen digging up the drains outside our cottage every day starting at stupid o'clock. It was a sea of mud outside because of the drains, and the cottage had pale carpets throughout. We stocked up on waterproofs and spent our time trudging wetly up hills, bribing the kids with mint cake, then having picnics in the car. And playing on the Wii in the cottage.
I LOVE the Lake District but never persuaded xDh and kids to go back, ever.

Skiing with an ex. We got seperated into two differnent groups on the second day and so I barely saw him all day and he was exhausted when he got back so we didn't go anywhere or do anything together at all. In fact he barely acknowledged me.

Same here although never been to India.

Perhaps we would have been better doing a tour first but we really wanted a lazy holiday. We stayed in Bentota for 12 nights in a 4* well regarded hotel.

Bentota was horrible! Beggars everywhere and when you walked into the small village the locals looked at us as if we were aliens.

Hotel was vile! One pool was closed so the only other pool was overrun by rich Indian families and their obnoxious children who treated the staff appallingly.
The whole hotel needed a damn good clean and being much more used to impeccable Far East standards and being a complete clean freak in my own home just felt grubby for the whole time.

On the plus side the local restaurants served wonderful food but the holiday was deeply disappointing as everyone else seems to rave about how wonderful Sri Lanka is and how friendly the people are. Definitely not our experience at all! ☹️

Sharm El-Sheikh

• Local town just felt like leery/sleazy men staring
• Everything was centred in the hotel with very little outside
• Locals kept speaking to English DH in Russian- he must have a Russian look?
• DH and I are competent, advanced scuba divers, each with over 200 logged dives. We've dived around the world and this was the worst dive in our lives. Can only think dirty or faulty tanks/equipment, as its the only time I've run out of air and had to buddy breath. 'Coral reef' was almost bare the the dive master told us it grows in the summer and dies off in the winter 🙄

There was a plus side, which was hiking up Mouth Sinai to watch the sunrise- surrounded by snow!

Corfu. July. Too hot, transport issues, villa was expensive but disappointing.
Zero complimentary offerings in the villa, so effing tight, decent uk cottages/barn conversions do that so much better.
Beautiful place, but really too hot.

St Lucia, AI. Poured with rain, resort was not built for rain so loads of mini floods. Resort was boring, resident band were boring, and it was miles from anywhere.

I went to Turkey. I did not enjoy it. All the local men were quite frankly a bunch of creepy pervs. One stood across the road from us at a bus stop wanking and flashing his arse.
I hated haggling in the shops. One shop keeper actually took my glasses off my face and said I was "beautiful lady" without them and kept going on about doing a "good price for a beautiful lady".
I am blind as a bat without my glasses. Charge whatever price you want - but I want to be able to see thank you very much.
🤮🤮🤮

I had a similar experience in Morroco. Just awful.

Portugal. Some family members offered us their “holiday” apartment in the Algarve, which we thought was v generous, however when we arrived there it was in an inland, very ordinary non touristy town, and was just a flat in a normal block of flats full of regular Portuguese families, not a holiday destination. (Not even a balcony!). It looked over a busy duel carriageway!
It was 40c all week and the flat wasn’t air conditioned so we couldn’t sleep, and there was no pool to cool off in.
there was a sports pub/restaurant downstairs where the food was ok, but we could hear all the shouting from there up in the flat, as they seemed to have football on the TV every night.

It was a 45 minute drive to the nearest beach so we had to do that most days just to feel the breeze. While we were there the flat plumbing leaked so we ended up spending a day without running water and another day sitting in the flat waiting for a plumber.

I’m sure the Algarve is lovely but it’s ruined for me…

Camping in the Isle of Wight. It pissed with rain the entire time, our tent got flooded and we ended up leaving early.

Closely followed by Morocco, where I got food poisoning and flashed at and no man would speak to me the entire time, because women 'are private' and speaking to any man who isn't your DH, DF or DB makes you a whore. And I dressed really modestly, so it wasn't like I was showing any flesh. But I am a western woman, so clearly a whore anyway.

Yes, I got called whore and bitch there a few times. Absolutely furious.

@JamSandle - it was Trapani and Palermo. I’ve been to Trapani again as part of a longer trip around the island and it was fine. It was simply some awful reverse serendipity that meant that I somehow picked all the wrong things and went to the wrong places at the wrong time!

Oh gawd you’ve reminded me of some really scary experiences in Morocco when I went with a college friend in my 20s. I was convinced we would be abducted and raped 😯