I’ve never found an entire destination to be horrible, but there have been some destinations that left something to be desired.
I lived a summer in Malta. I loved the history and the architecture. Quite liked the scuba diving and the village festivals. Really did not care for the local cuisine. I hope to never again eat rabbit in a sort of mushy tomato sauce.
Orlando was mostly ok. I felt I should tick it off the list of tourist destinations to visit. But somehow the allegedly non-smoking hotel absolutely reeked of smoke. It just permeated everything. Made me nauseous.
But perhaps the worst destination experience was a visit to Knoxville, TN as a kid. My father built it up as a something great and we were going to have the best time ever. Next time buy the tickets to the circus before we go so you don’t get to the gate and find they are sold out.
Bali. My wife and I were living in Aceh, Indonesia at the time and took our vacation in Bali. It was just one giant tourist trap in which it was very difficult to make any kind of connection with people and the beaches 20 minutes from my house in Aceh were better. We never made that mistake again and spent the rest of our vacations in Indonesia as far away from Bali as we could.
We all have different experiences with a given place, but I’ve been to NYC maybe a dozen times, mostly between 1977 and 2004, and had a great time every time. Lots to see, great food, terrific shopping (did most of my Christmas shopping in 1977 just wandering up Fifth Avenue from Greenwich Village to Central Park, and stopping in stores that looked interesting). Never lived there, never spent enough time there to feel any deep connection with NYC or become a booster or anything, but I’ve had lots of really great experiences there, and no bad ones that I can recall.
So it’s Belgium’s fault that you caught a cold in the Netherlands and that your flight was cancelled? And you couldn’t hear a new song from some flavor-of-the-day singer is your reason for hating the place? You’re literally defining my notion of a ‘snowflake’.
I have to agree with Chefguy. I’m no doctor, but you’re blaming your Belgium experience on germs acquired in the Netherlands, given your symptoms that appeared half an hour into Belgium. And you didn’t say Belgium was bad because of the Belgian people, or Belgium surroundings, or Belgian facilities - no, you said Belgium was bad because of your germs and the timing of a singer’s song release - both of which were factors that Belgium has zero control over whatsoever. Just what exactly made Belgium a “shithole?” It is more nonsensical than a lot of 1-star reviews on yelp.
Imagine if a Mexican said, “I was airsick on my flight into Dallas and then when I was in Dallas, I couldn’t watch my Mexican TV shows - I HATE AMERICA?”
A number of years ago, I was an NEA delegate to the national convention in New Orleans, which was being held throughout the week of July the 4th. I hated New Orleans, I truly did. It was grotesquely hot and humid for one thing. For another, I was tremendously disappointed in the French Quarter. I remember swollen wood and rusting wrought iron fences and gates, and that’s about it. I got sick of Cajun food after two days. The river walk was a joke compared to Navy Pier and the rest of the Chicago lake front.
The only people who have ever told me that they like New Orleans are people who have only been there for the Mardi Gras in the middle of winter, and who were drunk most of the time.
I’ve been twice, but never during Mardi Gras, and loved it. Of course, I got out of the tourist areas and mingled with the locals. Nice folks. Wasn’t thrilled with Bourbon St. proper, but didn’t spend much time there.
As for the OP - I’ve been on business to places I would not care to revisit, but I can’[t recall ever going somewhere for leisure and not having a good time.
I was only there for a day during a layover, and I’m glad that’s all it was. I came away thinking it was very over-rated, and ridiculously expensive. I didn’t see a single tree while I was in the country, and when I got back I was so genuinely affected by it that I researched suicide statistics for the country. That’s how depressing I found it. (Turns out they don’t have particularly high suicide rates.)
Back at the airport in the departure lounge, I asked a few strangers about their thoughts and they all said the same thing, “It was an experience”. One woman who’d been there for a week was jealous of me only having been there for 8 hours or so.
Right. I can’t really think of too many vacations where the place was the issue.
Ok, San Francisco. Now yes, I also worked there for a while, but friends were always asking to go there for tourism. It’s dirty, smells like pee, aggressive panhandlers everywhere. The tourist shops are full of total worthless crap. Great restaurants, sure, but very pricey, and there are lots of great restaurants out there. (OK, I imagine if you go out to eat almost every nite, you might well need many more, but we don’t.) SF also aggressively hates cars and drivers and tries to fuck them as much as possible.
For a work trip, Fresno- the armpit of California. Nothing to do, depressing, bad weather, dirty, crime-ridden.
Iceland is interesting to see mentioned if only because it seems like the trendy new destination these days. I know of two couples who have gone already this year.
It’s a relatively short (6 hours from NYC), relatively inexpensive ($200-300 round trip) flight from the Northeastern states. I’ve not been, but almost everyone I know has; some have gone just for a weekend.
Long ago, my friends and I spent several years learning the Icelandic language. We twice went to Iceland in hopes of enjoying the fruits of our efforts. In that respect, the holidays were complete disasters. Though we managed to check into our hotels, go shopping, buy tickets to attractions, and order food in restaurants speaking nothing but Icelandic, not once did any local ever speak back to us in their native language. Instead, they all decided to “helpfully” address us in English. (Never mind that only one out of four of us was a native English speaker.) The sole exception was this cute little girl whom we met while camping near Akureyri. She was a veritable motormouth who wouldn’t stop talking about how she lived on a farm with her mom and dad and two horses and ten rabbits and fifty sheep and adorable brand-new puppy (see photo).
I recently went back for a third time, this time on a business trip. I could not have imagined it, but Icelandic was even less useful that time. I tried checking into my hotel in Icelandic, but the clerk turned out to be Hungarian. (Luckily, I know enough Hungarian to check into a hotel. I was still determined not to use any English.) In the afternoon, I went shopping, but my efforts to speak Icelandic to the checkout girl were in vain because she was Polish. In the evening I walked into an Icelandic restaurant, grabbed an Icelandic menu, and ordered my meal in Icelandic. The waitress, who was Icelandic, responded only in English. A few minutes later, an Icelandic couple walked in, sat down, and discussed between themselves in Icelandic what they should order. To my amazement, when the same waitress came to took their order, the couple gave it to her in English.
If you include my childhood, I was never fond of trips to Lake Tahoe, mainly because most of the daytime was spent sitting on the beach next to my parents and not being able to do very much, and most of the nighttime was spent in the hotel room while my parents were down in the casino (we always stayed on the Nevada side).
As an adult, the only place I can think of where I didn’t really “go anywhere” was Fort Worth, Texas (for those of you familiar with such things, I was at the Origins gaming convention in 1993). I had to stay near the convention center, which is in a business area where pretty much everything is shut down at night and on the weekends.
I was there during Mardi Gras. Sort of by accident. Anyway, My Wife, my cousin and I decided to check it out. Now I have NO problem drinking beer and hanging out, but this was ridiculous. Shoulder to shoulder drunk people. It was hard to move. I had hoped to see some music. I assumed there would be all kinds of live bands. Couldn’t find a one.
Just include the entire San Joaquin Valley, IMO. I was stationed for a couple of years at Lemoore NAS, near Hanford (south of Fresno). What a pit. If you’re not choking on pollution and sweltering in the heat, you’re being overrun with crickets. There was a brief TV soap opera satire called “Fresno” many years ago. The opening scene was a group of Conquistadors approaching some locals who offer them a bunch of grapes. One of the Spaniards tastes one and spits it out, exclaiming in Spanish “Bleah! Tastes like Fresno!”
In one of several cross-country trips my family stopped in Tucumcari, New Mexico.
Somehow I expected a cool cowboy vibe or something.
What I actually found was cockroaches.
As we were filling up at a gas station in the early evening I heard a sound like autumn leaves rustling in the wind, and then I looked down: the ground was swarming with big, fat, plump, juicy roaches, skittering along this way and that.
I was happy to find our hotel room was on the second floor.
I agree with all that despised Orlando. The entire city is a tourist trap and everything is fake. While I enjoyed Ireland, it pales (get the irony) in comparison to England.
As a lifetime resident of New Orleans, thanks for all the kind words of my city. To the detractors, don’t ever come in the summer.
