Your best/ worst holiday

[liveoppositeacrazyhorse]

Humour me please, I'm bored waiting for a flight.

My worst was Tunisia in the 90's. Out of season, terrible food, felt like we were locked in a resort at night. Couldn't wait to go home.

Best - California road trip with the kids a few years ago. We all loved every minute of it. So much to do, the food was great and lots of swimming and lovely beaches. Monterey and San Diego were our favourite places.

Worst - New Years Eve at Disneyland Paris in 2004. We were so excited. My parents had scrimped and saved every penny take us and it was terrible. Food was awful. Everything was tired. New Years Eve was a massive let down, they starting funnelling everyone in main street from about 10pm by shutting the rest of the park. Fireworks lasted about 10mins at midnight. Champagne was something like €17 a glass. It was a massive anticlimax.

Best - Canada in Spring for my DH 30th Birthday. We went to Toronto and Niagara Falls and the whole trip was the most fantastic experience. We both absolutely loved it.

Best - lanzarote in autumn 2020.

Window in time between lockdowns and had the place to ourselves. Travelled with my parents and could socialise together there but not in UK.

Worst - caravan holiday in Northumberland 2018

Pished it down with rain and ended up going home early.

Best: Barbados (twice). Beautiful place.

Worst: Egypt and Dubai, both shitholes and you couldn't pay me enough to go back.

Best: villa holiday in Provence with grown up DDs and their partners. Lovely villa, own pool, walking distance to a supermarket.

Worst: eurocamp holiday near Venice. Campsite would shut down in the middle of the day with Security throwing kids off playgrounds and football pitches. Daily anti mosquito spray of the whole campsite which you had to shelter from. Did a day trip to Venice, most of the main attractions closed for renovation. We lived in the Netherlands so canals weren't a novelty. Went home early.

We love France.

Best. Difficult, as we have enjoyed every holiday we have been on, even our worst. We had a good trip to West Coast USA, and a brilliant safari in Kenya, both paid for by DHs company as incentive awards. The worst was also an incentive award. 2 weeks in Tunisia. 40 families with children, all from the same company, in a luxury hotel, on a beach north of Tunis. Should have been idyllic. It was totally unsuitable for children, the breakfast was almost none existent. Madiera cake and fig jam with black coffee. Lunch food was OK fir the kids, pool bar with pizza and burgers. Dinner was a mix of Tunisian and French. One item was called a brik. Think a crispy pancake filled with runny egg and some savoury bits. Tagines were good, but this was the early 80s so we had never seen them before. OK for the adults, tricky with the kids. We went on an organised trip to the Camal market. Buses turned up late, one not at all, so we organised a fleer of taxis to take us. Got to the site of the market to a flyblown empty village, the market had finished. Went to the souk in Tunis, and spent the time fighting off stall holders who took any excuse to grope the women. Coffee shops were very much a man's domain. Beggers all over the place with varying degrees of disability including missing limbs. We ended up finding a shop where we could buy cornflakes so the kids had something for breakfast, had a meeting with the chefs to try to get some food that the kids would eat, and organised a football match against the hotel staff for entertainment. Oh, entertainment at the hotel was traditional music and belly dancing, which was great for the adults, not so for the kids. Then, when you went back to your room and put the lights on, you had to wait till all the cockroaches scurried into hiding. Finally, on the flight home, there was a strike somewhere and the plane had to stop at Nice to refuel. Oh, Dick Emery was on the flight and he died a few weeks later. It would have been just about acceptable if it was adults only, but totally unsuitable for families.

I'm trying very hard not to be upset about our most recent holiday

Italy. 4 star hotel. Great reviews. Me, partner, 3 dc from 20 to 15.

I don't think any of us enjoyed it, and it was SO expensive :(

We had a long flight delay on the way out, a room move due to roadworks, a very, very hot temps and horrible attitude from the eldest dc, and I feel very low about it.

I really don't want to go on holiday with the eldest dc again:(

I don't think I'll bother next year

Best: safari in South Africa, 2015

Worst: struggling to think of one, been really lucky

@Lincslady53 ha ha we ate the Bric too! The food was definitely the worst part, felt like we were eating prison slops (not that I've ever been in prison!).

@liveoppositeacrazyhorse op, how old were your dc when you did the USA road trip?

We are thinking of doing this next year but not sure the dc will enjoy it. They will be 8 and 11 when/if we do it.

I've loved a lot of holidays in different locations but a few stand out as being miserable - Disney in Florida (shit food, shit queues, rude people), Fuerteventura (got pebble dashed by the sand/wind combo), Dominican Republic (never, ever again). Hope you have a good one!

We've had lots of good holidays, all for different reasons. Camping in the Vendée / Dordogne, San Diego/LA, road trip in New Zealand.

Worst - IoW. Felt like a dirt cheap holiday because everything was shit but in reality was really fucking expensive. You could not pay me to camp in the UK again.

Best Turkish Gulet
Worst Nile cruise

Best - had lots of great holidays, the Bahamas a particular family favourite and west coast of US.

Worst - possibly the French campsite we were at last week for 5 nights in a tent. 3 of those nights there was very loud music / a rave / neighbours partying until well past 1 am and one night the music didn’t stop till 4. It was awful. Also almost no shade around the pool area and it was 35c. Won’t be going back to a French campsite again that’s for sure. Rest of time in France has been lovely though.

I'm on the worst now. Turkey, Bodrum. It has been the most awful experience ever. We were originally meant to be going to Fethiye but our holiday was cancelled after 4 hours sitting on the plane. We rebooked what was available. When we got to the hotel, they had no record of our booking. We couldn't use our phone to contact easyJet so had to call my sister to contact them. She ended up calling them 3 times before we booked and paid for another hotel as we had been waiting for 3 hours in the lobby of the original hotel. They wouldn't even give us a glass of water and no shops nearby. EasyJet finally booked us another hotel the next day but when we arrived they'd only booked for 2 of us. There's more but I won't bore you with the details. Cannot wait to get home.

Worst: Cuba. We arrived hours after Castro died for a 10 day trip. Found out when our flight touched down. There were 9 days of national mourning announced, with no restaurants open, no alcohol, no music, no public transport. We ended up paying for flights home after 3 days.

Best: I love the Middle East and North Africa: had an incredible time solo backpacking in Tunisia, Morocco, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. Nice people, amazing food, often no tourists around, history, world class sights, and very affordable.

Madeira is also wonderful. Loved the levada hikes, exotic greenery, passion fruit everything, and sunshine in Europe in November.

Tunisia, in 2006.absolute hell hole that I wouldn't return to if you paid me.

Best: Mediterranean cruise
Worst: Haven holiday park in Scarborough

Best was our honeymoon in Thailand. Magical place

Best- loads of nice holidays it's hard to pick really. Standouts are driving around Southern Sweden in summer, Bruges in beautiful winter sun and rural Normandy which was our first trip abroad with DS.

Worst- Wales in Summer of 2020 in a yurt. Really thought it would be idyllic after lockdown and we had stayed there before and enjoyed it. However there was no WiFi and it rained constantly plus we ran out of stuff to do so we came back early. Even that holiday had some nice bits though to be honest!

Best was driving through Europe with my best friend when we were about 25. No money, old Peugeot 206, we had so much fun.

Worst probably Turkey: slimy men hitting on you all over, cheating and/or aggressive shopkeepers, filth and garbage when you step out of the hotel. Been back a couple of times to check if I might change my opinion, but no.

Best: Disney Florida. All three times we've been.

Worst: Tunisia. What a shit hole.

I'm just thinking about holidays with Dh and the dcs, rather than childhood holidays.
Best - camping in Dorset when they were little - we went to Camp Bestival first then stayed near Studland Bay, the sun shone for 10 days and we had a wonderful time. Also Crete a couple of years ago as it was our first all inclusive 'posh' holiday so everything was novel.
Worst - a wet week in Cornwall, in a cottage miles from anywhere.

@dontforgetme mine were 13,12 and 8. They were great ages - we all loved it!

Best was probably a city break on Naples. We absolutely loved it. We did so much and the weather was fabulous.

Worst was Egypt. I had never done a holiday where you can't leave your complex. The hotel was huge and every day we had to run a gauntlet of men trying to get us to buy stuff, from massages to photo packages to trips. It was quite intimidating and by the end I was just fed up. We did some great excursions but even they were all about selling you stuff. I learned never to go on holiday to a place whenever you can't leave the hotel safely on your own.

Worst: Study tour with a group of teachers to Colorado. Programme was non existent and I was rooming with a woman who turned out to be a depressed alcoholic.
Best: Hard to select one - Mexico with DH; Vietnam/ Cambodia with American friend; Trips to India with daughter; Gran Canaria last year also with DD. Mum had recently died and we stayed in a mainly gay hotel and had a riotous time when we had been planning a quiet time.