Hey, if I’m paying $300 a night for a hotel, I don’t want to walk outside and see a bum pissing in the potted plants at 2 in the afternoon. And having beggars on the sidewalk every 30 feet is not my idea of how you welcome guests.
Every alley I walked by smelt like piss.
Chinatown? BFD. I saw more tourists than I saw people speaking Chinese. (Yes, I know I resemble that remark). But nothing is so like Chinatown as another Chinatown.
The Golden Gate Bridge? IT’S A BRIDGE! Yeah, it’s really big and it’s painted but so what? You wanna see a cool bridge? Go to the St. Joe river in Idaho and there’s a bridge 30 miles from the nearest electrical outlet where you can stop in the middle of the bridge, spit off the side and it takes 5 seconds for it to hit the water. Now THAT is a cool bridge.
Fog. We have fog at home. And if you want cool fog, sit on the shores of a lake at 9,000 feet and spend an hour watching the fog come in and cover the mountains and trees and creep towards you until you can’t see 20 feet.
And for what they charge for a bottle of Miller beer, I can get a shot of good whisky AND a pint of beer that was made 30 feet from where I’m standing at the bar.
Another supposedly fun place I’ll never visit again.
Whistlepig maybe you just aren’t a city person? Nothing wrong with that of course. I didn’t like SF either the first time I went, I liked it much more the 2nd time, not sure why. I think it was just because I was in different places in my life.
I agree with you about the aggressive panhandlers and ubiquitous homeless in general…it definitely detracts from the ambience.
Hmmmmm…I can’t think of ANY city I wish I’d never visited, if only for the horrid experience. Then again, I LIKE horrid experiences. And I’ve been to Muncie, Indiana.
Grenada was a little spooky. The base of the Fascists in southern Spain, the town where Garcia Lorca was murdered. While the Alhambra is gorgeous, when you go down into the city itself you notice that they BURIED THE CITY’S RIVER UNDERGROUND. What a bizarre, hideous thing to do.
GorillaMan is insane. Paris is the greatest city in the world, after New York.
Kallessa is on the money. NEVER any reason to go to Los Angeles.
Why I’ll have you know that the Cattlemans Association of Small Town Montana (where I grew up) once held a raffle and the first prize was a WEEK in New York City!
2nd prize - two weeks in New York City
I hate cities in general, but I have enjoyed Savannah, Georgia and visiting Vancouver and Victoria, B.C.
Of course, for a Montanan, going to western Canada is like visiting your nice cousins.
Canberra, Australia is a city without a soul. It is a government entity, created to house and host bureaucrats.
I lived there for five years, and when I visit Aus again, I will make no effort to go there.
I am not sure how to describe it, exactly. I think it defies any comparison. It is part Stepford Wifes, part Potemkin Villiage, part Salt Lake City. There is nothing wrong with it, explicitly, but there is nothing right with it either.
We have that too, four minutes south, (give or take 9000 ft altitude).
And for what they charge for a bottle of Miller beer, I can get a shot of good whisky AND a pint of beer that was made 30 feet from where I’m standing at the bar.
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You went to the wrong bar. I got two damn good, big Mai Tais and a Pacifico for $5 Wednesday night. Anyway, there’s overpriced bars in every town.
I wouldn’t say I wish I’d avoided LA, but I was certainly underwhelmed. I’ve been there once, not counting trips to and from Dodger Stadium. We were driving down Hollywood Blvd (I beleive) on our way to Mann’s Chinese Theater. The area seemed kinda scuzzy, so I figured we were a mile or two from the nice part of the street. Mann’s was on the next block.
Native Californian checking in here:
Los Angeles (hometown): Acquired taste and you have to seek out the fun parts amidst the sprawl
San Francisco: Nice, but visiting there takes so much effort.
San Diego: The City That Only Looks Like It Should Be Fun to Visit
Personally to me, hell on earth in California is Fontana.
Didn’t like Orlando or Atlanta. Paris really was nothing special but not a bad experience. LA I’m not a fan of but parts of it are nice.
Bangkok is kinda special if it’s your first big asian city.
Chongqing (Chungking) is an absolute shithole. I’ve been to a lot of bad nasty Chinese cities with population in the 5-10 million range, but Chongqing was absolutely the worst. Food sucks, weather is horrible, no redeeming architecture, fog bound or polution impacted about 365 days per year, horrible hills, etc. It was the most bombed city in WW2, and rose from the ashes in communist stalinistic influenced Maoist architecture. Ugh, just a stinking cesspool.
I guess that the visit to Graceland sort of made the trip worth it, but the city itself has very little to recommend it, IMO.
Sure, you can probably hear some great music if you find the right place. And i guess if you’re into gumbo or catfish the food might be OK. But Beale Street? Let’s just say it doesn’t quite live up to the hype.
My list:
NEW ORLEANS: filthy, hot, dangerous dump. What really scared me: waiter in a French Quarter restaurant TOLD me NOT to walk back to my hotel…he said “man, you betteah take a cab, you might get shot!”
El Paso, TX: hot, dry, dusty and BORING!
Las Cruces NM: everybody in this town seems to be on serious drugs!
Bangor , ME: stay away from this dump!
Now for the good places:
LA: sure there are lousy neighborhoods, but the goodones are great: Weswood (home of UCLA)-great place!, Manhattan Beach, Marina Del Rey, etc.
MIAMI: South Beach rocks!
Agree with you that Dallas TX sucks: noby in the downtown after 5 PM (no reason to be there). Little Rock ARK is also a worthless city…Bill Clinton aint comin back here.
Gaza City is objectively speaking the worst hellhole I’ve ever been to. I can’t say I really regret it, though, because I was with friends, and it certainly wasn’t boring.
Jerusalem just seems to rub me the wrong way. It’s like the whole city is screwed on half a turn too tight.
I wouldn’t say I regreted going to Canberra but I wouldn’t bust a gut to go back. It just seemed very artificial, sterile and lifeless. Well compared to other places in Aus anyway.
Seems several people didn’t like Bangkok. While I would agree it wasn’t a pretty place it certainly wasn’t boring. I would go back, if only to use the train station to see more of beautiful Thailand.
Intrigued by the comments about Canberra, I went to their tourism website. And out of half-a-dozen random pages, I found zero pictures of Canberra. Not a good sign for the potential tourist.
(except for Fyshwick 
)