Overrated holiday destinations - Vacation spots that didn't live up to the hype

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OrbOfDiscourse said:
I liked most of rural France that we saw (Mont Saint Michel and Bayeux) and wouldn't mind going back for that.
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Rural France is absolutely beautiful, Normandy in particular. I'd love to see Mont St Michel again.
Oscar Wildean said:
Mexico. It's hot and dry and you might get Montezuma's Revenge by drinking the water. Also the cops are corrupt and will arrest you and take all your money. People mostly come down there to drink, party, or get drugs.
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I actually didn't think Mexico was too bad when I went. I went to Mexico City and Cancun. The only major problems we had when we were out there were idiot taxi drivers who wouldn't get off their fucking phones while driving and taking my sister to what the guidebook touted as "the best restaurant in Mexico City" for her birthday only for it to be absolutely fucking terrible. You may say "the best restaurant in Mexico City" is damning with faint praise, but every other meal we had there was fine. I also managed not to get Montezuma's Revenge which is a miracle considering last time I went to a third world tourist destination (Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt) I got fucking dysentery.

Generally though, I'd say the best way to enjoy Mexico is to bunker down in a resort in Cancun. If you can Scuba Dive, the diving there's fucking incredible.
 
Paris is really the only time I've ever been pickpocketed (partially my fault because I had my wallet in one of those pouches you strap around your waist; I never made that mistake again) but the museums are worth it if nothing else. But it was the 1990s so the Paris I remember hadn't yet been "culturally enriched" to the extent that I understand it has now.

I've never been anywhere tropical but I have little interest in visiting anywhere where the beach is the main attraction. Hawaii, on the other hand, is somewhere I'd love to visit but only for what's inland (i.e. volcanoes and the jungles plus tropical snow on Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa) and not right by the water save for the Pearl Harbor memorial.
 
Deadwood, South Dakota is pretty fucking terrible. There is only one thing to do there besides eating and sleeping, and that's playing slot machines, because every building in Deadwood has a tiny casino crammed into it. There's no real variation to it either, they don't even have enough room in most (if not all) of them for a poker table. You know, the thing Deadwood is famous for in the first place. All the employees are rude as fuck too, moreso than usual for a tourist area. Except for Evan's Plunge, I've been to every tourist area in the Black Hills twice including Deadwood, neither time by choice. Deadwood easily wins the prize for rudest, meanest employees, no contest.

To my knowledge it's the only location in the region that allows gambling, but nobody goes to the Black Hills to gamble. And if they do I pity them because of how fucking shitty it is.

Tombstone, Arizona is also pretty shitty, but it's a lot better than Deadwood because there aren't any casinos near (let alone in) Tombstone so there are actually things to do, but not by much. Except for the museum and maybe part of the cemetery everything is fake as fuck, which is ironic considering that Tombstone still has it's historical status while Deadwood lost it by shoving casinos into everything. The only ones who find Tombstone even remotely interesting are baby boomers that are still into westerns so needless to say everyone there is old, except for grandkids that get dragged there by their grandparents (needless to say I got dragged to Tombstone too).
 
Dubai. It's full of wankers and celebrated by even bigger wankers.

Paris is shit too. Full of dog shit, stupid tourists, scuzzy Africans trying to sell you crap at the Eiffel Tower and worst of all, the French.

I mean, I'll give Blackpool something, it at least knows it's shit and kind of revels in it.
 
Has anyone said Las Vegas?

My issues with Vegas are that it's neither trashy enough nor posh enough.

Half of Vegas seems to be trying to appeal to tourists who have a fuckload of money, and, even though I don't have a fuckload of money, I enjoy indulging in luxury digs when I travel. So my favorite hotels there are the Mandarin Oriental and the Cosmopolitan. Those hotels are nice, but they're surrounded by a ton of shit, so, unless you stay in those hotels for your entire trip, at some point, you have to interact with the shit, and that'll kill any illusions you might have of being a baller.

On the other hand, if Vegas were a lot seedier and trashier, I would like it for that reason. If I can't enjoy luxury accommodation because of the teeming masses of average Americans outside the door, then at least I'd like to enjoy a red-velvet-clad, cigarette-smoke-stained casino with waitresses who look like they crawled out of a Todd Solondz movie. But, because Vegas tries to appeal to average Americans and clean itself up to be "family friendly", there isn't nearly enough trashiness and seediness to make it fun. The best thing I saw on my trip there was a broken down Elvis impersonator zipping around on his rascal scooter, and there weren't nearly enough sightings like that for my taste.

Also, most of the food is expensive and mediocre. There are tons of people on the street hustling tourists which gets really old, really fast. And Vegas isn't even as family friendly as the casinos would like it to be. I don't tend to be a pearl clutcher when it comes to what adult themes kids are exposed to, but I do draw a line at escort ads being passed out to little kids.
 
I forgot Vegas. It's tacky and the casinos get old after a while. They need to clean up the escort ads that are littering all the streets. If you love gambling though, it's the place to be. I got bored after a while. It has some pretty good shows though, I'll admit that.
The Titanic museum was cool too. Other than that, the city is overrated to me.

@queue-anon It looks like I agree with you. Were there escort ads all over the streets and on the ground when you went there too?
 
Myrtle Beach:
It's not really as good as it used to be before the Recession.
It Used to Have: Hard Rock Park/Freestyle Music Park, Many Malls, Great Hotels, Tons of crap to do
Nowadays: Beaches, Shitty Hotels, Fill your Shoe with Sand and forget about it.

New Orleans:
World's 2nd Slowest Recovering City, Detroit being first.
It Used to Have: Jazz Flowing Everywhere, Exquisite Malls, Six Flags, Great Food, the Works.
Nowadays: Poverty, Traffic, Ford Explorers, OK Food, Abandoned Shit, A Literal Abandoned Skyscraper

If you want a good place to go, try going up north to like Cincinnati n shit
 
MysticMisty said:
Tombstone, Arizona is also pretty shitty, but it's a lot better than Deadwood because there aren't any casinos near (let alone in) Tombstone so there are actually things to do, but not by much. Except for the museum and maybe part of the cemetery everything is fake as fuck, which is ironic considering that Tombstone still has it's historical status while Deadwood lost it by shoving casinos into everything. The only ones who find Tombstone even remotely interesting are baby boomers that are still into westerns so needless to say everyone there is old, except for grandkids that get dragged there by their grandparents (needless to say I got dragged to Tombstone too).
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Have you visited Calico, California? It's a ghost town out in the desert and it doesn't have casinos. It's an old wild west town you can visit and it's more legit.

Calico Attraction - Online

Information, prices, and hours for Calico Attractions.
www.calicoattractions.com
 
Cato said:
Originally rated this "agree," then thought to myself "wait a minute, what 'cool things' to do in Toronto is he referring to?"
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Casa Loma is pretty awesome if you're into eccentric architecture and furnishings or visiting the filming locations of various "Hollywood" movies that filmed there. But, yeah, I far prefer Montreal to Toronto.
 
nippleonbonerfart said:
Gary, Indiana was not the exciting vacation experience that my travel agent made it out to be.
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My brother’s geography class were given a project where they made a case for the city to host the next Olympics. Obviously, no-one took this seriously and thought up the silliest cities they could think of to host the games. My brother and his partner proposed the Zagreb Olympics, but the winning pair (as determined by the student vote) proposed the Gary Olympics, showcasing such sights as the burnt out movie theatre and other crumbling structures.

Still, the Rio Olympics was almost as much of a shitshow.
 
sasazuka said:
Casa Loma is pretty awesome if you're into eccentric architecture and furnishings or visiting the filming locations of various "Hollywood" movies that filmed there. But, yeah, I far prefer Montreal to Toronto.
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Montreal is far more interesting than Toronto, and Quebec City is far more interesting than Montreal, being the only walled city in North America north of Mexico and the site of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and Battle of Quebec, as well as being full of other neat historical features and tidbits.

But really Canada's wilderness is far more worth checking out than its cities.
 
I have never gone to any hyped holiday destinations I didn't like (then again, we don't go to overhyped tourist locations much in my family). I see a lot of people say they didn't like Paris, but it's fully possible to have a good time if you know how to avoid tourist traps/areas and speak French. Just don't expect the city to be like it's portrayed in Moulin Rouge!.

That being said, I have never understood why people seemed to eager to visit places like Dubai and Thailand. Dubai is just a big Islamic shopping mall in the desert and Thailand is a lousy third world country whose only appeal for middle class Swedes seems to be that it's sunny and cheap, despite the fact that you can get both of those things in places that aren't 8 000 km away.
edibleBulimia said:
I really didn’t like visiting the south part of France. There’s two types of traveling: when you visit a fun place with fun things to do like partying, ( ex: tropical countries) idk; and visiting a place to see its history and culture (ex: old European countries). When I visited Monaco and some small french cities, I was really taken back by their beauty. I saw some lavander farms and I thought to myself “Wow, this is fucking beautiful.”

And then we would visit some old shitty French town, do nothing but explore that shit all day and go back to the hotel. It was boring as fuck. Nice was beautiful but our hotel room was hot as fuck and the employers were rude.
I remember going in one of that rock beaches in Nice with my lil bro and he started to play with some kid, who was dumb af and threw a rock at him. His grandparents were either dumb or racist, because they both saw it and didn’t do anything (probably because they saw I wasn’t from France, when they asked me a question in French and I was visibly confused).

I have more stories.
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Were you only on the Côte d'Azur? The Riviera is the worst part of southern France. It's always overrun with tourists and rude people and has been for a long time. The Aubrac region, the Eastern Pyrenees or even the non-Côte d'Azur part of the French Mediterranean coast are far better and cheaper (the first two regions also don't have a lot of foreign tourists) if you want to visit the French South.

Tell us more
 
TheImportantFart said:
My brother’s geography class were given a project where they made a case for the city to host the next Olympics. Obviously, no-one took this seriously and thought up the silliest cities they could think of to host the games. My brother and his partner proposed the Zagreb Olympics, but the winning pair (as determined by the student vote) proposed the Gary Olympics, showcasing such sights as the burnt out movie theatre and other crumbling structures.

Still, the Rio Olympics was almost as much of a shitshow.
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Gary is just sad. What happened to that city, anyway?
 
Vegas sucks.

Cabo San Lucas is probably all right if you have a lot of money and don't like mixing with "the locals". Otherwise, go to San Jose del Cabo instead.
 
ATaxingWoman said:
I have never gone to any hyped holiday destinations I didn't like (then again, we don't go to overhyped tourist locations much in my family). I see a lot of people say they didn't like Paris, but it's fully possible to have a good time if you know how to avoid tourist traps/areas and speak French. Just don't expect the city to be like it's portrayed in Moulin Rouge!.

That being said, I have never understood why people seemed to eager to visit places like Dubai and Thailand. Dubai is just a big Islamic shopping mall in the desert and Thailand is a lousy third world country whose only appeal for middle class Swedes seems to be that it's sunny and cheap, despite the fact that you can get both of those things in places that aren't 8 000 km away.
Were you only on the Côte d'Azur? The Riviera is the worst part of southern France. It's always overrun with tourists and rude people and has been for a long time. The Aubrac region, the Eastern Pyrenees or even the non-Côte d'Azur part of the French Mediterranean coast are far better and cheaper (the first two regions also don't have a lot of foreign tourists) if you want to visit the French South.

Tell us more
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Edit; Yeah, I did. Lol, all cities from Cote d’Zur. I visited a lot of Communes around Nice and/or Monaco, but I don’t know their names. But I remember we visited Cannes, Monaco and Provence.

About Europe, we also visited Barcelona and stuff. It was pretty okay, I liked it. If there was any negative stuff in it, it was probably from the fact that, because my brother was such an asshole, we made a fool of ourselves in Spain. But that’s another story
 
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MysticMisty said:
Tombstone, Arizona is also pretty shitty, but it's a lot better than Deadwood because there aren't any casinos near (let alone in) Tombstone so there are actually things to do, but not by much. Except for the museum and maybe part of the cemetery everything is fake as fuck, which is ironic considering that Tombstone still has it's historical status while Deadwood lost it by shoving casinos into everything. The only ones who find Tombstone even remotely interesting are baby boomers that are still into westerns so needless to say everyone there is old, except for grandkids that get dragged there by their grandparents (needless to say I got dragged to Tombstone too).
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Lol thats where my wife went to high school. Its not too far from where we live now and we only go like once a year to have a steak at the Crystal Palace and get a picture of my son in a cowboy outfit to give my father in law for his birthday. I went to an AZ government chamber of commerce event they had and told the Tombstone rep there they should change their tourism tag line to"It's what a Renn Fair would look like if it was ran by the NRA." She looked defeated when it got a good laugh from the room
 
Cato said:
Montreal is far more interesting than Toronto, and Quebec City is far more interesting than Montreal, being the only walled city in North America north of Mexico and the site of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and Battle of Quebec, as well as being full of other neat historical features and tidbits.
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Quebec City is more historic and certainly has better architecture, though Old Montreal's no slouch.

Montreal is one of the greatest autumn cities, though, what with Mount Royal being a spectacular backdrop for downtown. I also think there's more in general to do in Montreal than Quebec City outside of the historic sites, especially in summer festival season, with the Jazz Festival and Just For Laughs and Formula 1 week.
 
edibleBulimia said:
About Europe, we also visited Barcelona and stuff. It was pretty okay, I liked it. If there was any negative stuff in it, it was probably from the fact that, because my brother was such an asshole, we made a fool of ourselves in Spain. But that’s another story
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Its expensive, no good beer, the citys arent that pretty and its too hot in the summer.
Just start in Berlin for the Museum Island and go north to the baltic coast and than east till you reach Danzig. the baltic sea is warm enough to swim in the summer and everyone who saw Danzig will understand why germany went to war trying to regain controll over it.
 
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