I’ve heard that the Experience Music Project is a pretty cool museum. And I did enjoy the aquarium when I was out there. Pike Place Market…eh, it’s okay. Part flea market, part mall with funky shops, and that one counter that they toss fish over.
If you get bored with the city then there are some decent day-trip opportunities, like Mount Saint Helens and Vancouver. And you can take a boat ride to Victoria, BC and tour the gardens there. So maybe it’s better used as a base for general exploration of that region of the Pacific Northwest.
Seattle seems like a nice place to live. And I always find the “omg RAIN” comments interesting, since it seems to be rainy and cool in Monterey, CA most of the time too and I’ve never heard anyone describe THAT area as anything but amazing and beautiful (which it is, I’ve been there). Maybe they just have better P.R.? IDK.
Not really. I’m perfectly happy never going to a tropical place again, to drink rum based concoctions (complete with umbrellas), be accosted by “natives” who want to sell me flowers they just picked off a bush etc. I have limited funds and limited time: I would prefer to spend both on a vacation I want, not one a travel agent thinks I should have. That said, we ended up in Nassau last year because of a family reunion/patriarch birthday celebration. The rest of the Caribbean was done on our honeymoon–I’m sure it hasn’t gotten less spoiled in the ensuing 23 years.
I don’t care in the least if others find the Bahamas to be Paradise on earth-more power to 'em. I prefer Iceland, Scotland, Norway, Greece and UK (some of which I’ve not been to yet, but maybe someday).
I loved Seattle. Not the town itself (or the Space Needle), but the surrounding area. We went up to Victoria and stopped on some of the San Juans. Wonderful trip.
Seconded. My wife went to William and Mary and when I went to visit her, 40 years ago, CW was a lot nicer. We took our kids about 20 years ago and it was sinking even then, now it’s been turned into a bloody amusement park.
The Alamo didn’t impress me, but I’m not a Texan and don’t give a crap, even if John Wayne died there.
I was in Athens for just a short while, in awful weather, and am not eager to go back.
Mission Control in Houston was the biggest shock. It is a lot smaller than it looks on TV. Not bad, just surprising.
I guess what I was trying to get at is that it’s very easy to not like the Caribbean if you visit areas with a ton of tourists (especially cruise ships). I really do know what you’re saying about pushy salespeople and cheesy, oversized “tropical” drinks - places like Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas (where the cruise ships dock); Cancun; and Cozumel are rife with this stuff. My brother has visited St. Barts’ as well and he says that in addition to being very touristy, it’s waaaay overpriced due to all of the wealthy Europeans who frequent there.
But there are areas where there’s very little of that. I was actually surprised at how laid back and not fake the majority of Puerto Rico was (it looks a lot like many parts of the US in terms of businesses there, but that’s another issue). Perhaps it’s because PR isn’t totally dependent on tourism to make money the way that other islands are, and therefore the tourism machine isn’t in overdrive there with wall-to-wall t-shirts and Rum Runners. The outer islands of the Virgin Islands (that is, outside of Tortola and St. Thomas) are full of laid-back natives and expats who couldn’t give a crap about trying to sell you cheap knicknacks.
Sorry if this all sounds like a big rant. I hate touristy places as much as you do, believe me. That’s why I feel that I should give credit to the places that are still somewhat like what the Caribbean should be, and to the wonderful people I’ve met there.
I wasn’t as impressed as I thought I would be about the Winchester Mystery House. I’d always been fascinated with it and all the weird things about doors and staircases to nowhere and the labyrinthine passages. I finally got to go a couple years ago and it’s mostly a big, old, decrepit, unfurnished house. There was a lot less fun stuff than I thought there would be, and it was a lot more run-down. It was kind of like a movie where they put all the good bits in the trailers. Oh, and it was really expensive to tour.
I’d have to agree with Sakuma Drops on being very surprised by Puerto Rico. It was where our cruise ended, and due to some logistics, the plane flights out were significantly cheaper if we stayed over an extra two days, so we did and extended the vacation.
The rain forest was completely free to enter and other than a few cheap tolls on the freeways (which were nothing compared to the Eastern seaboard in the U.S.), there were no B.S. charges. We took a boat to Viaques island and did the bio-luminescent tour at night and had the single best piece of pork I’d ever had in my life at the restaurant on the island. It’s like a combination of Hawaii and Mexico (and the good part of Mexico, not the ‘get your head cut off by a Mexican drug cartel’ part).
As the person who originally mentioned Seattle in this thread, it’s only fair to state that I also enjoyed the underground tour there. I would certainly recommend it to anyone with an interest in things historical, or in things that are a little different.
I love Seattle- Alaska Avenue is loaded with neat places. I likes most of the restaurants there, inclding the one in the Red Lion Inn-I’d also recommend ETTA’S-great food.
My dislike for Boston is based upon 20+ years living nearby.
Whenever I visit the place (usually to accomodate visiting friends and relatives), I am always disappointed-the place looks so nice in the tour books, but never in person.
I guess I’ve had enough of overpriced, bad restaurants,and just plain rude locals.
Take the “Quincy Market” area of Boston-shops selling tourist junk , with lousy restarants-all with a big pricetag.
Plus, Boston is loaded with homeless (mostly winos and druggies)-I don’t like some filthy, smelly bum shoving his begging cup in my face-and the odor of urine…Boston Common is redolent of it.
Many places in Japan, as someone has mentioned, are so commercialized and tourist-trapped (for Japanese tourists, mind you) that whatever beauty there might have been is completely overshadowed and hidden. (Kyoto and Nara are pretty good exceptions, although its best not to go during popular tourist times. The temples and shrines can be just wonderful. Try early April for the cherry blossoms, or early November for the autumn leaves; or winter for the solitude.) On the other hand, I love going to Tokyo because it is so big and there is plenty to do there (museums if you’re interested, or shopping, or just people watching).
Example: there is a place near Sendai (NE coast, on the Pacific) that is advertised as one of the three (or six, or five, I don’t remember) most beautiful places. It’s a string of islands off the coast that you can see from the town. But the town itself and everything leading up to it is (or was in 1988) filled with one junky souvenir shop after another, and it’s pretty hard to appreciate the putative beauty.
And don’t get me started on the agonizing four-day bus tour I was on a couple of years ago in the area north of Sendai, because my Japanese sister-in-law thought I would love the experience.
Other disappointments include any of the modern Asian cities I have been to, including Hong Kong, Seoul and Bangkok. Mostly just noisy and busy, with not much interesting ot see or do (although I do recommend the side trip to Panmunjom if you’re in Seoul, if they’re still doing that, it’s gripping).
Roddy
Pisa, yes, it had a really drab and neglected air to it when I was there (1995). There seemed to be half arsed, unfinished restoration projects everywhere that hadn’t been touched for months (or years). One thing that made the visit worthwhile for me was the remaining frescos (that weren’t destroyed by WWII bombs) in the Camposanto. The *Triumph of Death *is amazing. I second the recomendation of Siena. A beautiful city with a vibrant happening air. I was so happy to be going down some steps that were fully restored at the top and had actual people working on the restoration at the bottom.
Oh and when in the Louvre, after sparing a glance through the crowds at the Mona Lisa go find Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks, Now that’s a painting!
Vieques is indeed awesome. Culebra is the same way; I don’t think there’s a single big tacky resort on the island, the locals are nice but not in a fake, “let’s con the touristas out of some cash” sort of way, and the diving is excellent. Best of all, it’s a 20-minute flight from San Juan (as is Vieques). In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if you’re staying in San Juan and you want to go to a decent beach, skip the island-side ones and fly to Culebra or Vieques for the day (the beaches on “mainland” PR are not all that great). You’ll be treated to beaches like these that have almost no development and very few people.
A lot of people have said this and whilst I’m sure it’s true (at least for certain values of true), I think it does rather suggest that someone at the San Francisco Tour Bureau isn’t doing their job properly since so many people (like myself) get to San Francisco, visit Alcatraz and Fisherman’s Wharf, and then say “Now what?”
Also, IMHO, “Great Food” should not be a primary reason for visiting a major city- one of them, maybe, but not the main one.
I have only visited a couple of times, both over a decade ago, and I have a memory like a sieve. I can nonethess think of an answer to that question even now. I don’t remember it being in the slightest bit hard to find information about things other than that which you mention.
When you’re in front of the Mona Lisa, make a 180° turn. There you have a huge, famous painting (Veronese’s marriage at Cana) without glass, without barrier and nobody’s looking that way.
I find this fascinating. You enter the room with those two paintings and everybody is around the one you barely can see, while completely ignoring the other that covers a whole wall. There’s something surrealist about it.
All that is fine for you. You aren’t about to convert me; I dislike even Florida for vacation (and I was born and lived there for several years-I was so glad when my father got a job in a temperate climate)–I’m not one to lay on a beach. Look at it this way–there are now 5 fewer people to clutter up the islands, so you can enjoy them more.
Seriously, if I won a trip there I would turn it down. NOT just because of the tourist claptrap, but because my notion of relaxation is not geared toward tropical anything. YMDV.
Everyone’s got different ideas about what’s worth doing when on holiday, so I shall observe that there’s very little of interest for me personally in San Francisco, besides Alcatraz. So yes, there was information on things that were available to do, but of the ones that were actually open at the time we were there, I personally thought very few of them were worth doing or nearly as interesting as they were made out to be.
