Nope–that holds for me for the entire region. We traveled the Caribbean about 20 years ago. I’ll never go back. It holds no charms for me at all. YMMV.
Martinque: dirty with trash littering the streets
St Thomas: slightly cleaner
Barbados: mildly interesting historical tour, but not worth the trip.
St Maarten: meh
US Virgin Islands: cleaner, but boring
Puerto Rico: we only saw the inside of the airport
And everywhere-hawkers and buskers who do not leave you alone. I also have no fondness for Lladro figurines, Rolex watches, perfume or gambling.
I’m not a tropics fan–I found this out by traveling to the Caribbean!
That’s too bad. The Virgin Islands (especially St. John’s, USVI and Virgin Gorda, BVI) are great and feel much less “landscaped” than other portions of the Caribbean that tourists are typically funneled into. Puerto Rico is nice, too, it has some awesome non-beach things to do (rainforests, caves, Arecibo Observatory, Ponce Art Museum, Old San Juan), and if you want great diving, the outer islands of Culebra and Vieques are wonderful.
The Bahamas always struck me as primarily a place where cruise ship tourists go. Same with Cancun/Cozumel. There seems to be much more in those places to cater to people who are just off the boat for a few hours and either don’t have time or don’t care to actually immerse themselves in the culture of the places they’re visiting. It does not help that one of the closest places to the cruise ship dock in Cozumel is Carlos & Charlie’s, Ground Zero for 20-year-old morons drinking Fishbowls and trying to hook up.
Yep. I had the same impression. But to add to that there was a well dressed guy lying on the sidewalk, projectile vomiting into the street, while people stepped over and around him like it was an everyday occurrence.
I was there for a week while my wife was at a conference. I got an old and tired vibe from the city and couldn’t wait to leave. I eventually just ended up in the hotel room and read some books. Walking across the Golden Gate and Alcatraz were cool, though.
San Francisco for tourists sucks- the tourist destinations are completely segregated from the real life of the city, and are minimally fun. The tourist sites are the absolutely bottom of the barrel and have few redeeming factors.
But San Francisco is a great city to eat, to get lost in, to shop in, and to just watch the world go by. With a tiny bit of research, you can get authentic food from any part of the planet, from top-notch dim sum to Senegalese specialties. The specialty shops are world class. An afternoon in Cole Valley or the Mission…it’s absolutely brilliant.
I’ll give you, there are A LOT of homeless people. They’d all be in your city, but the weather in SF is better. In the end, they are pretty harmless.
My problem with Florence is that it felt less like Italy and more like an Italian theme park. It didn’t help that 2/3 of the people I met were American students doing a semester abroad.
And I love great art, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed when there’s so much of it in one place. If I make it back I’ll take Rick Steves’s advice and stay in Siena or one of the other hill towns and do a day trip into Florence.
I don’t know what a Jubilee year is, and I believe you have it backwards. It WASN’T hot or crowded with added security when I was there.
BTW, I’m from San Francisco and the places tourists go generally baffle me. Why would anyone voluntarily go to Fisherman’s Wharf, for instance? Apparently a lot of tourists. I don’t know, it’s weird. I don’t think San Francisco is particularly thrilling myself, but it’s like tourists intentionally go to the dullest part of the city.
Fisherman’s Wharf is where there’s usually a big pile of sea lions on that one dock. If you’ve never been to coastal California and have never seen anything like that, then I guess it’s something for the itinerary. OTOH, I don’t see the point in going to some place like Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Hint: if you can also go to one in freaking Times Square, it’s probably not a One-Of-A-Kind San Francisco Experience.
Me, I preferred the Japanese Tea Garden. Very tranquil and out-of-the-way enough that not many tourists go there, it seemed (I’ve only visited SF, never lived there). Coit Tower was cool, also.
Yangzi River 3 gorges. I didn’t go back in the 1980’s before that damn dam was built. Now it’s essentially a placid meandering river and the gorges don’t exist in anything but name.
If you go to China on a group tour - pick one that does not feature the gorges.
Dublin was disappointing for me, although the rest of Ireland wasn’t. I dunno what I was expecting, but I was underwhelmed.
I wasn’t that impressed with Pisa, either. The tower was interesting, but the whole city seemed like one big tourist trap.
Seeing the Mona Lisa was . . . interesting. People file in, snap pictures, file out. They don’t even look at the painting. And the painting is tiny and behind a barrier so you can’t really look at it close up. Not that the mobs give you a chance to linger anyway.
For me, the opposite experience was seeing the statue of David, in Firenze. In pictures, it doesn’t seem that impressive, but in real life . . . wow. It was truly awesome. I was truly blown away by how stone can be carved to look so much like flesh, and the subtle curves of the muscles are just perfect. (Especially in David’s butt.)
Wait, you mean the whole reason to see Graceland isn’t the tack factor?
I haven’t seen it, but yeah, from what I know about it I figure anybody expecting a tasteful location will run away screaming.
It’s one of those notions which came from the thight bonds between moneymaking and religion; it doesn’t make any sense theologically speaking, but makes sense as a way to improve the influx of pilgrims to sites.
Strictly speaking, a “Jubilee” is a “time of joy (jubilation)”; it’s often used to refer to anniversaries for example. In a Catholic context, it’s a year that has been marked as “extra super bonus” for a pilgrimage site. Compostela seems to be getting them almost every other year, sheesh…
My brother was in China a couple of years ago; they skipped that on the advice of a friend who’s from China, under that exact reasoning. I guess the reason the not-extant-any-more Gorges are kept in tours because people are dumb enough to sign for them, but damn - if people were rational, it wouldn’t make any sense.
I went to Fisherman’s Wharf because I was making a point of buying one (1) small touristy item for each of my close relatives at every location I visited during that year: I was going to tons of places, so that seemed better than angsting over finding one perfect present for each person and maybe ending up with a dozen heavy items. FW was an evident good point to get touristy crap. One of the most succesful items from that trip wasn’t something bought, though… it’s a picture of a golden stretch of sea: “that’s the Pacific?” “yeah; well, a tiny bit of it, of course” “woooooo, you’ve been to the Pacific! Showoff :D” (hey, most of my family haven’t!)
Well, after reflection, I’d have to add : Boston, MA
-dirty (trash in the streets)
-overpriced
-terrible traffic
-overrated restaurants
-nasty people
You can see most of what is interesting in 2 hours. The public transit system is slow and dirty (the MBTA subway stations stink).
Mostly, Boston is a rundown, crowded city with limited appeal.
Ralph-I take it you’re a New Yorker. :rolleyes: While aren’t as WONDERFUL as NYC, we do have our world-class universities, and great museums, and the ocean.
For me it was Bali. I hated, hated hated Bali. Just one big tourist trap and drunks on spring break. I should note that I lived in Indonesia for two years, so its not like I wrote off the whole country, but Bali sucks. There was a nice island about 1 hour away from us by boat that had quiet beaches, no hawkers, and no drunk college kids vomiting into the sea. We went to Bali once and that was one time too many for me.
Just jumping in about the Alamo – I can’t say that I’m entertained going there, but for me that’s hardly the point. For me the place should be regarded as a shrine and a place of reflection rather than a vacation spot. I think of the hundreds of people, Mexican and Texian, who died there and why. Of course, the place is promoted as a tourist destination, but that’s not the Alamo’s fault.
The Book Of Kells is a huge tourist draw, but like the shitty Molly Malone statue it’s not something I’d think to recommend to a tourist. Funnily enough, most of my recommendations would be corpse based. The bog bodies in the National Museum and the mummies in St. Michan’s Crypt are two of the more interesting things to see in Dublin IMHO. One is free in and the other is maybe 3 euro.
I have been to Atlantic City, Vegas and Reno. I do not understand gambling, I don’t particularly care for gambling, and the entire vibe I got from the 3 cities was tired desperation. People trying to get that one win … and losing their rent money doing it. The food was disappointing in general [though I understand that you can now find ‘specialty’ places like some of the ones in Mohegan Sun, we go there for the BBQ place and the Tuscany [Todd English’s place] and other than some of the high profile name shows boring. In defense, we only went to Reno because it was the stopping point for one vacation trip headed to Fresno to visit mrAru’s mom.
That sounds like a good place to visit. I normally avoid large cities like NY Boston LA and such unless they have some very specific museum or feature we want to visit.
I am probably one of the few visitors to the Louvre that has actually never seen the Mona Lisa. THe Winged Victory of Samothrace however is phenomenal, and I can’t forget being in a gaggle of kids with nuns when they discovered the statue of the Hermaphrodite … :dubious::eek:
NSFWish this is the view when you walk into the main room it is in, and this is when you walk around to the front.
Might that beNoe Valley instead of Cole Valley? I visited my sister in SF; she was on a long-term business stay. We visited the Mission District–including the mission itself & its graveyard. The firefighters of 19th century SF built an especially impressive monument for one of their own who did wrong & was hanged. Still, he deserved to be remembered. (Many of the later arrivals in the graveyard were Irish.) But I found Noe Valley especially charming. Just a hilly neighborhood with little shops & restaurants. Not one of the Famous Sights but a great way to spend a few hours.
My sister insisted we visit Fisherman’s Wharf. Definitely a tourist trap but she loved the sea lions.
Coit Tower had been hosed down when I visited. I like murals as much as I like missions & the view from the top was lovely.
And there’s nothing to beat City Lights Books. Just across Jack Kerouac Alley from the Cafe Vesuvio. Walk around the block & you’re in Chinatown.
A great city for walking! (A good city has enough non-homeless people on the streets that they outnumber the bums. Houston shares mild weather, so we’re also on the homeless itinerary. They really freak out the suburbanites, though.)
Yeah, the Tea Garden (which is part of the larger Golden Gate Park) is not unique to SF (although it is the oldest in the US) but it’s a nice nod to the Asian communities in the area. My favorite part is the tea house where you can purchase Japanese tea and snacks
There’s also apparently a very good Asian art museum in SF, but unfortunately I never got around to going there.
:dubious::eek:
