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.

Hawaii.

I went to Oa'Hu and there isn't too much to do outside of drinking and sunbathing, neither of these things I enjoy doing. It felt like a very distant Spain and the jet lag took a whole week to recover from, being 11 hours behind. Extremely expensive too.

I found Pearl Harbour interesting though.

Devon. The overpriced cottage was filthy and smelt of dog, there were builders next door with an excavator all week and dc was ill.

My DH booked a week in Wales. The cottage was dire, he didn't look at any of the reviews, didn't tell me where it was so I couldn't check. All the reviews said it was rubbish. I came home needing another holiday. I told him if he ever did that again I would leave and come straight home.

Honeymoon in the Lake District. Started great but then dh went down with flu. Managed to get him home but he couldn't get out of bed for days and was off work for 2 weeks. As a bit of a workaholic this was not normal. Definitely passed the bit about in sickness and in health.

Normandy in August with a baby and a four year old. It torrentially rained all week, some neighbouring kittens went missing in a storm, our gite smelled very strongly of mould, had mice, mice droppings everywhere, contained broken furniture I couldn’t sit on and beds that were basically mattresses on top of each other without a bed frame.

I would otherwise recommend Normandy just not that gite!

@Ladysaurus Are you sure this happened in Gran Canaria? It's a fairly middle of the road holiday island and I've never heard of anything like this before

Tunisia (before the terrorist attacks). To be fair it was very influenced by being in a miserable situation- many years of secondary infertility, treatment and multiple miscarriages and our marriage was in tatters. We'd discussed divorce the morning we left for holiday. Anyway it was COLD and really windy. Too cold and windy too swim or sunbathe. We'd been to Morocco (Agadir) a few years earlier the same week had great weather and a great time but this was so different. The hotel was OK but it could have been anywhere. We were told by the English reps it was best not to leave the resort. We did a couple of times but got loads of hassle to the point of aggression and gave up. There was nothing really to do, except argue. Our son was about 7 and mad about trains. He was delighted to see there was a level crossing opposite the hotel and kept asking if we could go there and wait to see trains coming past. We must have looked a right sorry state. Two parents and a child standing silently and miserably at a railway track like we were about to commit mass suicide. The security guard from the hotel kept appearing, looking worried and trying to wave us back inside. There was one organised trip on a boat. We had to leave really early and missed breakfast. We were freezing. It was even colder and windier and went on and on, nothing to do. English rep was supposed to be doing commentary but she was seasick and kept running off to chunder. By the time we got back we'd missed lunch too. Luckily after the holiday came to an end life got much better. That was 10 years ago and we are still married.

So glad to see I’m not the only one who finds Paris deeply disappointing. Dirty, boringly mono-architectural, unfriendly, crap food with the same menu in every single bistro, overpriced and just not my place at all. In fact I’d go as far as to say that if I got offered an all expenses paid trip I’d say no. I must’ve been 10 times and never again.

not mad keen on Dublin either, as a PP said, there’s not much to do except drink. It’s all very plastic and OMG the prices. The rest of Ireland, lovely.

shocked to see Costa Rica on this thread. I absolutely LOVED it but it’s important to pick the right time to go.

My worst though was a week in France, near Perpignan. I’d recently split with exH and it was the first holiday I’d taken the kids on by myself. A friend kindly offered to let us come into their gite. Ugh.

the friend’s husband turned out to be a boorish misogynist and the couple argued like cat and dog all weekend. The “gite” was a ruin. Weeds growing up through the kitchen sink plug hole, grubby grubby place. The place was a wreck: the other couple’s DS severed an artery in some broken glass in the overgrown garden, the pool was filthy. I feel itchy just thinking about it.

strangely my DD’s still remember it fondly and talk about it still, 15 years later!

Marrakesh- dirty, smelly, felt really unsafe on a girls trip with hardly any women around, the men in the markets were really aggressive. Got food poisoning, would never go back!

Conversely we've also had a holiday that should have been crap but which we really enjoyed. Last minute October half term trip to Fuerteventura. Resort was falling apart. Fridge was leaking brown stuff on the floor. Weather cold and rained about half the days. Managed a day at wildlife park which closed an hour early (torrential rain). Went to day trip to a water park where everyone refused to get off the coach on arrival (torrential rain). Went to visit the salt museum (really running out of stuff to do) decided to walk there across the beach which turned out to be mud flats and the pushchair kept getting stuck (yes if you read my previous post we did have another baby eventually). But so many funny things happened, we all laughed a lot. Its one of the holidays we talk about most. When we got back and people asked how we the holiday we'd say it was crap but we had a brilliant time!

I must be very lucky, because I've never had a crap holiday. I've had experiences within one or two holidays that I didn't love (like getting dysentery in the Libyan desert and shitting blood for 48 hours with no access to plumbed sanitation). But I've enjoyed the majority of every one. Including Egypt, Morocco, etc - in particular loved gently haggling for souvenirs. (Knowing a few basic Arabic phrases helped a bit, maybe.)

New York! Both DH and I confessed after a couple of days that we weren't enjoying ourselves. The city is filthy, the public transport is crap, the food was all huge portions and just not great, even highly rated placed the food disappointed. Having to pay to get into museums, having to tip absolutely everybody, the doorman at our hotel wanted a tip, the maid cleaning our room wanted a daily tip and they day we didn't leave one she left a bag of trash on our bed!

Honestly some of these. That the entire experience of fucking ROME could be ruined by a rat running over your foot outside- I’m laughing 😂

Loved all my holidays/travels in Morocco. It's a developing country, you have to be smart, but it's worth it. Decorative arts, the geography, the gentleness of the people (outside of transactional situation).

Worst - Cuba. Just felt like my presence there, as a foreigner, was causing trouble. Felt really bad for the locals.

Felt exactly the same ! Couldn't wait to get home !

Got groped in those fcking markets
Was horrendous

Plus we went to pay for food in a restaurant
Waiter put it through as 800 pounds not 80 (in their currency)
Got really annoyed when we corrected him ffs

Bahamas, lovely beaches and scenery but the hotel was a pre 1960's nightmare. So dated and tatty, it was all inclusive and there are no words for how dire the food was. I spent the week in a rum drunken haze to get over it!

Camping barn in the Lake District which my tightfisted dickhead ex booked for the weekend of the queens golden jubilee. He said he’d organise a B&B. I kept reminding him and of course by the time he did it everything was already booked or extortionate.

As a caveat I actually like outdoors stuff ( hiking, climbing etc) but I like it with a cosy pub, good meal and comfy bed at the end of it and where I don’t have to shit in a hole and wear damp clothes as nowhere to dry them.

Literally had to share a bathroomless shed with 16 complete strangers who mostly snored. Miles from town and ex couldn’t drive my car as too expensive to insure him so I had to drive back from pub every night and couldn’t even get drunk to blot out the horror of our accommodation. I bonded with two eleven year old twins who were hating it as much as me and just wanted to go home and play GTA on the Xbox.

ex and I split up about a month later.

Now strangely although I hated Egypt - I liked Marrakech- yes it was quite hassley (not as bad as was with husband who obviously gave off don't mess with me vibes) and yep it had a unique smell of donkey piss and mint tea but I found it characterful in a way that Egypt and Dubai were not. Food was very good too and I didn't find it particularly dirty- in a similar vein I really , really liked Istanbul too .

I cannot think for the life of me why a bunch of girls would go to any of these Arabic countries though (with maybe Dubai being an exception as a different vibe altogether) - to me they are places to go with a bloke - it shouldn't be like that but the reality is that I just feel it's less threatening.

Gambia, total shit hole. Felt really unsafe and intimidated by locals who just hassled you and followed you everywhere. Food was rank and I got diarrhoea

Lake Garda, like deaths waiting room.

Dingle peninsula in August. It was foggy and rainy all week! I’ve heard it’s beautiful, but we couldn’t see a bloody thing.

Southern Italy. The little mountain village where ex DP’s family hails from. His two brothers and their wives (one of whom was absolutely poisonous) commandeered their mother’s beautifully refurbished apartment, while we bagged his father’s filthy studio flat, which resembled a small cave that stored about three households full of woodworm infested furniture.

Poor 18m DC was tired and whiny throughout and the journey down from Milan by car took us about 17 hours, including time to get the fuel tank drained because dickhead ex had filled a diesel with petrol. He wouldn’t consider forking out for a hotel to break up the journey, or allow me to drive his company car.

The area was absolutely beautiful and the village festivities were lovely. Every summer families from all around the world (returning emigrants) descended and caught up. My Italian was good, so I could understand what was going on and converse with people.

However, I was in an abusive, volatile relationship and when I look at the photos I looked absolutely haunted and miserable.