Most expensive place you have ever visited?

[YourPerkyPoet]

We live in Zone 1 so thought we are used to expensive prices. Where have you been that you thought “ouch! that’s expensive.”

For us it has to be Mykonos and Ibiza, total rip offs. We didn’t find New York too bad and thought Barbados was okay too.

Venice - a crap meal is ££, a decent one ££££

I'm a vegetarian so a hot dog wouldn't usually be my choice but all the stands seem to do veggie options. The one I had on my last visit was so good. It came with goats cheese, red onion jam and walnuts. I'd be at IKEA every weekend if they did those. But I agree, I definitely wouldn't want to pay £6 for a plain one.

Agreed. We've been like 7 times so I should have known better, but I got a bottle of water in the hotel shop to take up to the room in the evening as too lazy to walk to the CVS etc. No prices on the shelves but it's a bottle of water right? $11! $11 for a bottle of WATER.

Venice. Everything is a complete rip off. Even in convenience stores, things like milk, bottled water, etc etc are insanely expensive. As for restaurants, the prices are insane even away from the tourist honey traps and completely ridiculous and unaffordable close to Rialto Bridge and St Marks Square. Even on the edges of the main island well away from the honey spots, prices are still incredibly high. But other islands are a lot cheaper, so we did a lot of ferry island hopping to eat and get provisions!

The bar at the Royal Albert Hall during the Proms - they seem to rachet up the prices.

Maldives. We stayed in a fancy resort but booked B&B only as we don't eat lunch and I don't drink alcohol. £35 for a margarita pizza and £40 for a curry and rice.

Oman is scarily expensive too, compared to UAE.

Tokyo was always said to be expensive but people we know went to bars and had expensive drinks. Cafes and restaurants in the department stores are good value. There’s definitely value there if you look.

That's really good to know, thank you. I really want to go for the museums - the pictures I've seen are just my sort of thing. Do you have any recommendations for other things I should do or see while I'm there?

Kenya was also ridiculously expensive in the hotels - a tenner for a small bottle of water, something like £100 for a cheap bottle of wine with your evening meal. Thank goodness we were all inclusive otherwise we'd have starved. Trouble was all inclusive didn't extend to drinks, just food.

We were warned off leaving the hotel due to risk of thefts/assaults, etc. so we only went on escorted organised trips to "reputable" craft markets etc which had armed guards, but nowhere to buy food/drink/snacks.

But on one of the trips, we went to a "authentic" Kenyan village and they had a little kiosk type thing selling soft drinks, crisps, snacks etc. We bought a couple of bottles of Coca-Cola and gave them the smallest note we had, which was about a tenner. The lovely woman behind the counter was aghast at us and told us she couldn't change such a big note, and that she wanted coins. Now, we'd never seen any coins - only notes - the hotel didn't seem to deal in coins. We found out that the price of our drinks was literally something like 10p! She hadn't enough coins to give us £9.90 or thereabouts of change! We told her just to take the note as it was what we were expecting to pay after a week of hotel prices, but she was having none of it. Eventually we found our tour guide who swapped our note for some coins and we gave her the smallest coin we had which was about £3 converted which she was delighted with. Trouble was we then had coins we couldn't use as they were too small for the hotel! I just wish she'd have accepted the note - at least it would have done her some good!

Barbados, Mexico, Norway... obviously you can experience Barbados and Mexico on a lower budget, but if you want to travel in a certain way it is horrendously expensive. We live in zone 1 London – but I wouldn't want to be visiting London – we looked at organising a staycation recently and the price for a nice hotel is insane.

The hotels get you good don't they?.we arrived late and I also was stung for a bottle of water from.a vending machine I'm sure it was $8.!

Norway last year. A glass of wine, and not a large one, about £13.
Pretty sober holiday.

Sweden and Switzerland

Switzerland
Hamburger cost £35 in average hotel

Maldives - £150 for a buffet at a resort

Tokyo
Oslo, Norway

@StellaAndCrow There is a fantastic collection called the David (Samling) collection. Just excellent. We liked the National Museum of Denmark, The Glyptotek and both palaces. The Queen’s tapestries at the Christiansborg. Palace is not to be missed if you like art. We also liked the Danish Design museum. Again it’s a city that’s not too expensive out of the tourist areas.

I didn't find Switzerland that bad tbh. Maybe I live in la la land. I didn't buy any alcohol though as I was with my son so that might be the most obvious shocker and I missed it. We did eat at a very expensive Chinese restaurant but actually its because it was an 'I failed to book the place I actually wanted, but this looks nice and we're hungry' sort of place, and I knew it would be over a hundred quid before we stepped in the door. Mostly I bough sarnies in supermarkets though.
I also didn't find Lake Bled that bad and I see someone mentioned it here. Mostly I fed them gelato. Which wasn't cheap. But I guess cheaper than a meal!

If you mostly went to supermarkets, that’s not eating out. Most places are cheap enough in supermarkets but when living in Geneva, DD did supermarket shopping in France! As did all the students. As I said, the best bit is no tipping and that means Switzerland is better in some respects - but jolly expensive up mountains.

Coachella. $25 for a slice of pizza. $230 for a round of 8 drinks.

Oh god I’ve just realised it was Oslo….

I was going to say this, back in 2014 a McDs for 2 adults was going to cost us about £50!

Geneva 2 hotels same chain both near the airport. One was almost half the price of the other as it was in France. We opted for the French one.

Had a fun break though. Drove up a road on La Dole it was like 4 seasons in one day. 14° at the bottom -1° at the highest point a car on go.

Miami felt pretty painfully expensive this year. Moscow restaurants were expensive, especially for wine but I was on a student budget then. Nice wine is also really expensive in China. Agree that Barbados felt ok, especially for rum, though supermarkets were expensive for imported stuff.

Barbados and Bermuda. There were probably cheaper places outside of the tourist areas if I'd looked properly, but the prices I paid were on par with being a central London tourist who was ripped off.

Norway. Every activity we wanted to do was over £100pp. There was only one place we found with reasonable food prices so we ate there every day!

We did find a fantastic deal for a northern lights trip though. And accommodation was similar to the UK too.