Ok, I know in this thread YMMV…and it will vary greatly depending on your own personality and where you live.
I’ll start with Orlando, FL. I’m sure I am not biased because my rental car was stolen there :). I didn’t like my trip there at all. The weather is hot and muggy with no beach or sea breezes. Nothing but large chain restaurants. A very confusing toll highway system. So many tourists and no place is off the “beaten path.”
Nassau, Bahamas. What is the allure of the Bahamas? I guess if you’re coming from a cold climate some people might like the weather. I have never felt more tourist trapped than I did there. Nassau seemed like a dump to me. The whole cruise ship experience from Florida to the Bahamas was also…less than appealing.
Man, I came in this thread to talk about Orlando! I was there for the American Library Association annual conference, which they may never hold there again. Virtually nothing to reccommend the place.
Except we did eat remarkably well - there was a great Chinese place near the convention center, and we spent a lot to eat but definately it was worth it, everywhere.
But still, what a hellhole. I’m dating a guy who went to high school there and he keeps telling me that the actual places where people live are fine, but I don’t believe it for a minute.
I can’t think of any city that I’ve visited extensively that I was underwhelmed with but, then again, most cities I’ve been to, I was only passing through and basing a city on your perception of it as you’re driving through it or flying over it is a bit odd.
With that being said though, LA just didn’t impress me as much as I thought it would. I plan to actually visit more extensively one of these days but the parts I saw just weren’t as impressive as I expected they would be.
All the barbed wire fences surrounding various buildings was pretty interesting though.
Milan. Ugly and boring, with a disturbingly high number of McDonalds (seriously, I have talked to other people who have noticed the same thing).
I went to Italy for a week with a couple friends several years ago and our flight was out of Milan. We ended up there a day and a half before the flight, and found ourselves completely struggling with finding interesting things to do. We ended up having a great time in a bar, but we could have done that back home. It was to the point where we were contemplating calling the airline to see if we could get an earlier flight.
There are a number of cities I don’t particularly like, but Milan is the only one I wish I had never visited.
Funny, I had a better impression of LA than I expected to the one time I was there. I went in with really low expectations though and that might have helped.
The closest answer to the OP I have is Washington DC. I only went there once, though, and it was almost 30 years ago but still not impressed.
I’m going to say New Orleans. Now before I am drawn and quartered, let me say that I wish I had never been there so that my first visit could have lived up to my expectations, and I’m willing to go back under the right circumstances.
I went to New Orleans alone for a conference, and New Orleans is not a good “on your own” city. In New York, on your own you can go to great little resturants, fantastic museums, marvelous plays, music is all over the place and I think the shopping is good there, too. In Chicago the deep dish pizza is just as good, and Shakespeare just as enthralling when you’re on your own, and the Art Institute is pure gold. Plus, if you can’t start a conversation in a bar in Chicago, you aren’t trying. San Francisco, Seattle, London–same thing, lots to do and enjoy on your own, and plenty of places to engage in conversations with strangers.
But New Orleans–sorry, it’s just not “on your own” friendly. So much of it seems just a facade for tourists, I couldn’t find the real town–a little jazz club I could feel comfortable at (or that I could safely leave alone at midnight), that tucked away resturant with food devine, a quirky “only in” place to hold in my heart. I found New orleans to be smelly, noisy and nerve-wracking. If I was out after dark, I continually worried about being safe, a concern I haven’t had in many other cities (I take your standard precautions everywhere). I’m sure that an elegant, mysterious, boisterous New Orleans exists, with friendly people and lots of sights and hidden treasures, but I didn’t find them. I need to go back with someone or a group–that seems to be the way to do new Orleans.
Oh, BTW, there’s never any reason to go to L.A.
I’ve found Paris to be overbearingly obnoxious and self-important. It’s the only place in France that confirmed rather than dispelled the stereotypes of the French.
Dallas. I spent a week once there that was hell. I was in a conference held at a hotel off of the 635 and didn’t have a rental car. There was no place within walking distance to eat and the hotel had crap for food. I finally got a ride with some other folks downtown and we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Whoo Hoo, er, I mean, big deal. Ok, so I was actually stranded in some suburb of Dallas, but I wish I had never visited.
Fort Worth. Different trip, but at least this time I was staying downtown, such as it was. I was there for work, and had to be in the Federal Building by 7:30 am. What time did the coffee shop open? 8 am. That was just major suckage.
Kingston, Jamaica. Our group was robbed there. The next day, were were threatened to be robbed again. Spent the rest of the trip in Ocho Rios, which rocked. Had to go back to Kingston for the flight out, which sucked because that was the day the Pope was flying into Kingston and security was tight. I should mention that one person lost his return plane ticket in the robbery. In order to enter the airport, you had to show a ticket. In order to get a ticket, you had to enter the airport. Spent 30 minutes trying to explain that to the security guards, who just didn’t understand. But I’m babbling - Kingston sucks. The Pope can have it.
New Orleans, as P.J. O’Rourke once said, is like taking a sauna in a high-crime drainage ditch. But is is a pretty, pretty city. Orlando is a giant McDonald’s where the air conditioning doesn’t work. But the natives have been trained from birth to smile at you. And there are some good restaurants. Nassau is an exotic, temperate slum, but its citizens are even better trained than Orlando’s. And it has some pretty architecture also. Los Angeles is a lousy city, but it has some wonderful neighborhoods.
The worst city I ever visited was St. Louis, late 1980s. Tornado-based architecture, gulag-based cuisine, and concentration camp-based manners. The International Bowling Hall of Fame and Museum does not provide quite enough culture to make up for all of this. I believe that it is not a coincidence that the phrase “under the arch” refers both to downtown St. Louis and the crud stuck to the bottom of my shoe.
That is funny. The first time I went to Europe, I flew by myself to Milan. I took a shuttle from the airport to the grand train station and only had a map to reach my hotel several miles away. I was terrified until I stepped out of the station and saw the Golden Arches and I felt much better. I used the bathroom in that one. I eventually reached my hotel and met my party but I had learned that McDonalds was one of the best places to go to the bathroom while walking around. Every time I had to go, there was one just around the corner.
Middlesborough, England. The city that the good times forgot. A town centre that terminates in a fifteen foot high fence behind which are the derelict docks.
Pisa, Italy would very nearly make the cut but for the frescos in the Campo di Miracoli. A depressingly down at heel place, covered in scaffolding but with no building or renovations actually taking place. Ok so the tower has been stabilised and reopened since I was there and I don’t suppose it actually rains all the time…
You know…I live in the Los Angeles area, and it’s unfortunately the least interesting downtown I’ve ever been to.
Just a bunch of tall buildings missing a certain amount of charm and culture. I’ll take downtown San Diego over it any day, drive notwithstanding.
Oh…and Tijuana…well, that’s something to behold. Dirt, vendors walking up to your car selling cheap plastic crap, tequila flowing everywhere at all hours, horrible drivers, and tainted food. Yick. Of course, every time I went, it wasn’t as a tourist, it was as a worker/helper on a charity type project, so I wasn’t probably seeing any part of Mexico in its finest.
Mind you, this was 26 years ago, but Rochester, New York is hands-down, the most ugly and depressing place I’ve ever been. It was filthy and crumbling, the roads and sidewalks were in terrible disrepair, there were buildings boarded up everywhere, and every occupied building seemed to have bars on the doors and windows. The whole place shut down at 6 PM, and no white people could be seen on the streets by 7 PM. I witnessed people in $1500 suits, driving Cadillacs and Lincoln Continentals - to the welfare office!
I was staying with a musician friend, in the ghetto, no less. I came to discover that I was the only white person in the area, and everyone knew it! If not for the good reputation of my friend, I would certainly have been taking my life in my hands to be anywhere near that neighborhood, anytime. I must stress that I never had a problem, but it was really weird to have people coming over to the house to see the token white guy!
It’s the only place I’ve been where I couldn’t wait to go back home to Canada.
Exactly! The main (I think) piazza in Milan has not one, but TWO McDonalds around it. TWO! And it’s not that big a piazza! And then we began to notice them everywhere. Why? I mean, they have great food in Italy, why on earth would you choose to eat at McDonalds over a restaurant serving actual good food? It’s just bizarre.
I may be the only person to say this, but New York City.
I went to visit a friend, and while I really enjoyed spending time with them I hated living without a car for a week, and the lack of air conditioning practically everywhere I went. Not to mention the dank, smelly subways and people, everywhere, all the time. It seemed like the only place I could go to get some quiet (and air conditioning) was the museums.
Maybe something really is wrong with me, because I happen to really like Orlando, and I’m actually looking to relocate there soon
