If you choose a city as a holiday destination what do you expect to 'do' there?

[NonHighStreetClothes]

I read the regular 'worst places to visit' threads with a morbid fascination & i'm always amazed at how many posters say they've visited x, y or z city & found it 'boring' with 'nothing to do'.

I find it incredibly hard to relate to this as its never been my experience. So it got me wondering- if you decide to visit a city what do you look for?

What 'things' do you want to do there?

I've been to 160 cities in 30 countries across 4 continents (I have an app). Some places I've been to once but many I've been to multiple times as I travel quite a bit for work.

I have never once found a city boring.

Certainly there are some i love more than others. Some i adore spending time in but would never want to live in - I'd live in Paris in a heartbeat but I wouldn't consider living in London though I love to visit regularly.

I'll start - when I plan a visit anywhere, particularly if its my first time its usually because I am especially interested in something related to thst place & in my case that usually means writers, artists, Historical figures.

Things I look for:
I read about the history of that city
Museums
Art galleries
If in Europe I love to look up the oldest 'Grand Cafe' & make sure to havea drink there
Historical walking tours - we've done brilliant ones in London, Dublin, Prague, Budapest, Trieste, Krakow etc
The best wine bars
The key attractions (i'll only usually do this once & once ive seen them i focus on other stuff on subsequent visits)
Booking tickets to an event - opera, performance, exhibition etc
Churches/ cathedrals etc
I've often read a book thats inspired me to visit a place or an area in a city so ee love mapping that out & locating it

We love sitting at streetsife cafes soaking up the atmosphere & people watching

Then at night we love research the oldest traditional bar, a jazz bar, a cocktail bar, the best place for steak or seafood etc depending where we are

Every city ive ever been to has all of these elements + more

So...I'm curious- if you've found places boring & couldn't find anything to do - what is it you look for?

I love a city based holiday, but increasingly since smartphones and COVID you really do have to book lots of things in advance, and it's a pain.

This as well.

Oh Im city break planner

Ex Londoner now living in rural NI I need my city fix

I choose where we are going by flights available

Then I research everything

We love architecture , museums, galleries and churches and graveyards and bridges.We love history and castles and palaces. We love parks and open spaces. We love street artists and buskers. We love the different foods and I too love a good supermarket

Latest city breaks have been - Liverpool ( numerous times ) Edinburgh ( also numerous ) York , NewCastle, Dublin, Belfast, Krakow ( twice and would go again and again ) Pisa and Florence ( although that was primarily for a wedding ) and we are looking forward to Prague in October and Harrogate next summer. Also trying to fit in Bristol but the flights dont suit

The only place I never really enjoyed has been Dublin. Cant say I hated it but I wouldn't rush to go back, and the only place I avoid is London

We rarely do walking tours but do a lot of independent walking - but have done the 24 hour ticket bus tours a fair few times.

Relaxed coffee stops, and even the occasional afternoon beer on a pavement. Sometimes even a long stop with our books.
Museums, galleries, visiting significant buildings.
A bit of shopping, as there’s always something different to home (may need to explore to find these).
Find nice restaurants for a mix of local delicacies and good food generally.

Usually try to find a hotel with a pool.

We’ve done a lot of city breaks (2-5 days) and a few longer holidays spent going to a few different cities. Rarely been disappointed.

Whereas resort breaks have often bored me senseless.

I don't research much or plan in advance either, apart from maybe 1 or 2 thinga i really want to fit in. The rest i decide on when i am there

But I can't think of any city I have visited that didnt have something I enjoyed about it . I don't have mega high expectations of everything or expect things to go perfectly.

Not city relatd but we spent 3 days in a tiger reserve in India looking for tigers . Given the time of.year we were told we had a good chance of seeing them but nada, not one. I still count that safari as brilliant and a success. Just the whole experience was wonderful

I don't research much or plan in advance either, apart from maybe 1 or 2 thinga i really want to fit in. The rest i decide on when i am there

But I can't think of any city I have visited that didnt have something I enjoyed about it . I don't have mega high expectations of everything or expect things to go perfectly.

Not city relatd but we spent 3 days in a tiger reserve in India looking for tigers . Given the time of.year we were told we had a good chance of seeing them but nada, not one. I still count that safari as brilliant and a success. Just the whole experience was wonderful

I went to Malmö with my son because he loves ice hockey and wanted to go to a match and to a proper hockey store.
We were there for a day, and outside of the hockey match it was so boring, we did try to find things to do but it was just so… boring.

So to answer your question of what I want from a city; anything but Malmö. We just felt like we’d “done Malmö” in less than 6 hours.

I like to look up a few attractions to visit - and how to get there on public transport- before I go to a city. I don’t tend to research cafes and restaurants, I prefer just to choose one that looks nice in the moment. I like a bit of exploring and happening upon things rather than having everything mapped out beforehand.

I like visiting museums, historic buildings, walking along the waterfront if there is one, boat trips etc, but I also like walking round looking at the shops - I also enjoy a foreign supermarket.

I can agree with Malmo! Also felt I had done it in less than a day. Can always go to Lund or Copenhagen if there a longer time. Otherwise I find Helsinki uninspiring. It’s fine but I wouldn’t rush back.

I must admit that whilst i used to research and buy lonely planet guides, often now I just arrive, check in to my hotel and google where I am etc whilst I chill out for half an hour - seems to work fine for me. I also have never found anywhere that can’t keep me entertained for a couple of days

I usually buy a top ten guide or similar and try to research in advance if there's something that needs booking up ahead. If anything I tend to go for short holidays and leave feeling there's lots still to see.

Years ago I went to Prague and found that too limited. We were done in 2 days.

As per a pp Dh went to Dublin and felt there was nothing really there apart from bars and the Guinness factory.

Well I'm in between, a bit of a planner but it's so easy to plan on the hoof now with mobile phones. But if I was a complete non-planner who had found somewhere boring I certainly wouldn't post here so you could explain to me where I was going wrong.

I do love a city break but not all cities are equal. It's fair to say that Miami / Paris / Berlin / Florence are a lot more worth a visit than Dublin or Brighton & Hove.

We always do a football stadium tour - you can get a lot of a city's history, politics and atmosphere from visiting a football stadium. The Red Star Belgrade tour was especially memorable. I hate queues, tourist traps and big statement museums. I can google the Mona Lisa if I need to see it - I don't need to shuffle in with a crowd of mobile phone holders. But any offbeat or small museum is a joy (Leprosy Museum in Bergen, Tram Museum in Lisbon, Jose Marti's house in Havana). Same with tours - loved the Franz Kafka walking tour of Prague. We always book unusual or well reviewed restaurants and we like window shopping - my kids more than me. I also love parks and playgrounds even though the children are getting too big.

Pre-kids I used to research exhaustively but now I do a broad bit of research when booking, book any in-demand restaurants a couple of days in advance and then decide what we're doing on arrival.

I adore cities - not all are created equally however. Found Malaga horrifically boring as it didn’t cater to my tastes. Dislike Dublin too.

I look stuff up before booking. But after booking last time I also started a thread on here re the place, and got loads of brilliant suggestions so i could then look up where they were in relation to each other and plan an itinerary. I was very grateful and would totally do that again!

What app do you use to log cities visited OP?

This is great OP, I’m currently in a new city and loved it but did lots of research before coming.

I always think this too when people go to places like NYC, Paris or London and just moan about how boring they are, when clearly if a little research had been done they’d have got so much more out of it. I live in London and love it, but if all I did was hang around the Shrek experience I’d find it pretty shit too 😂

I've no interest in telling people what they're doing wrong.

I am interested in learning more about why some people find certain cities boring & what is it that makes them boring to them.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude but it definitely comes across that way and is probably why they aren't replying.

It's an app called Places Been but there's probably other, better ones out there too

I suppose they just get there and other than being not at home, it's same shit different place.

Except it doesn't have to be.

We've been to Malaga a few times & while its not really the usual place I'd choose to visit (we were there for a reason) it actually turned out to be a lovely destination as once we'd visited the Picasso museum etc on the first visit we had no compunction to do those things again.

So it became a real break. We had some bars / cafes & restaurants we loved & my dh swam a lot. I wandered about the old city & drank sangria & we read a lot. It was v chilled.

I think I used to research more in the past but now less so. I think because with most big European cities, you know what you're going to get so it'll all be fine - a cathedral, lots of churches, some museums and art galleries, a river to walk along, possibly a castle or fort, lots of outdoor restaurants and bars, a public garden to rest and stare into space, a funicular or cable car, a little tourist train or tuk tuk, a must eat local delicacy and shops. From all of that, you'll have plenty to do mooching around.

My eldest books everything in advance though. All her restaurants and trips from social media recommendations. I can never be sure I would want to do that exact thing at the time. I've also seen the big ticket items in Rome, Paris and Florence when you just turned up. Bit of a shame that's not so easy any more.

OP what’s you top 5 city’s.

Oooh that's a hard question!!

in Europe :

Venice
Paris
Budapest
Prague
Berlin

Special mention to Trieste, Luca & Krakow.

Further afield:

New York
Sydney
Bangkok
Hangzhou
Hobart

What about you?

Mine are

Cape Town

New York

St Petersburg

Rome

Istanbul