What are your least favorite places that you've traveled to?

[DCnDC]

@enipla

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.

I have a close friend who moved to NOLA about a year and a half ago. He refers to the French Quarter as “the darkness.” Went down to attend his wedding last fall. Wasn’t Mardi Gras crazy but there was still a gang of people everywhere. Spent a lot of time in the FQ but never actually walked down Bourbon Street. Had a great time but it really is a complete shit show down there.

[Ludovic]

@That_Don_Guy

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’ve been to Fort Worth once and I did indeed see nothing there because the Water Gardens were closed for refurbishing (I think it was right after the incident where a couple people drowned there.) I had to make a special stop just to see them years later when I was passing through!

But nevertheless I wasn’t bored because I was closer to downtown and thus to the bars and was with friends. We were close enough to downtown that we called a cab and he was nice enough to tell us that the bars were literally just two blocks thataway so we walked.

[Chefguy]

@Chefguy

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!”

And of course, it’s on YouTube. at about 1:40.

[Mangosteen]

@madmonk28

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.

Lake Toba? Had a great week there back in '76. Sure hope it hasn’t changed too much.

[Ponch8]

@Chefguy

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’.

@Velocity

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?”

The point of my post was that I had several misfortunes while in Belgium. They may sound trivial and may not have had anything to do with the country itself, but I did not enjoy my stay there. I’ll let other people travel to that pee-pee-soaked heck hole, but I’ll spend my future vacations elsewhere.

[pullin]

@minor7flat5

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.

Interesting how the same town delivers differing experiences. We were pulling our camper to the Grand Canyon and broke down near Tucumcari. After limping to a local campground, we left the truck at a shop for a few days and rented a car to sightsee. We spent the entire time roaming Route 66 and photographing it. The kids still remember it as one of the most interesting stops on our journeys. We have a lot of the pics in the link in our photo album (but with the kids standing in front).

[minor7flat5]

@pullin

Interesting how the same town delivers differing experiences. We were pulling our camper to the Grand Canyon and broke down near Tucumcari. After limping to a local campground, we left the truck at a shop for a few days and rented a car to sightsee. We spent the entire time roaming Route 66 and photographing it. The kids still remember it as one of the most interesting stops on our journeys. We have a lot of the pics in the link in our photo album (but with the kids standing in front).

The places around it were fine…this was just another rest stop along a 7,500 mile journey around the States. And perhaps on any day outside of “cockroach season” the town would be just another sleepy place in the Southwest.

Your Route 66 side trip sounds fun–I remember traveling the vestiges of Route 66 as a kid in the 70s and it was a neat journey, one that firmly planted “road trip” seeds in my head.

[SanVito]

NM

[scareyfaerie]

Los Angeles - we spent about 4 days there, that was 3.5 days too many. Awful place, and after a drive around to look at the old part of town and the observatory, we were done.