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

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Stoneheart said:
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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Lol, to be honest we only went to France’s beaches. In Spain (and a bit of Frankfurt, as we had to go there because of a flight connection) we saw some of Gaudí’s buildings, shopped a lot and tried some of the food.
 
London:
There's plenty to do, but once you've done it, the place itself is awful. It's overcrowded, overpriced, full of crime, and has to be one of the ugliest European capital cities outside the former Soviet bloc. It's architecture is a jarring mishmash of classical antiquity, visually oppressive 1970s brutalism, and neo-futurism, and it's culture is no less disjointed: most of the people you run into are a mixture of tourists, broken-English migrants, and bored commuters, and the prevailing atmosphere throughout the city is completely soulless. The best part about visiting London is the train ride home.

Paris:
The biggest disappointment about Paris has to be the way that the reality is so different from the image people typically have of it. Before I went, my perception of Paris was that it was a beautiful, glamorous, and sophisticated city, but when I arrived, I was greeted instead by litter, homelessness, warning signs about pickpockets, gypsies begging, and gangs of African migrants harassing people to buy their cheap trinkets. It is a beautiful city, and like London, there is still a lot to do, but the aforementioned drawbacks are a huge spoiler, and like London, it is also hugely overpriced.
 
Hellbound Hellhound said:
London:
There's plenty to do, but once you've done it, the place itself is awful. It's overcrowded, overpriced, full of crime, and has to be one of the ugliest European capital cities outside the former Soviet bloc. It's architecture is a jarring mishmash of classical antiquity, visually oppressive 1970s brutalism, and neo-futurism, and it's culture is no less disjointed: most of the people you run into are a mixture of tourists, broken-English migrants, and bored commuters, and the prevailing atmosphere throughout the city is completely soulless. The best part about visiting London is the train ride home.

Paris:
The biggest disappointment about Paris has to be the way that the reality is so different from the image people typically have of it. Before I went, my perception of Paris was that it was a beautiful, glamorous, and sophisticated city, but when I arrived, I was greeted instead by litter, homelessness, warning signs about pickpockets, gypsies begging, and gangs of African migrants harassing people to buy their cheap trinkets. It is a beautiful city, and like London, there is still a lot to do, but the aforementioned drawbacks are a huge spoiler, and like London, it is also hugely overpriced.
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The disconnect between what is advertised in Paris and what you actually encounter is so great that it causes Japanese people to have mental breakdowns:

en.wikipedia.org

Paris syndrome - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Honestly, I liked Paris, but the first two days I spent there were shitty and smelly. It took a bit before I found the charm of the city.
 
Banff is overrated.
It is ok if you want to drive around like an old person and buy overpriced stuff, but the ctual activities are kind of a disappointment. the "hot springs" were nothing but a giant swimming pool. seriously, you can tell me it was just a regular heated swimming pool, I would have no reason to doubt you . If you want to visit hot springs, you're way way way better off going to radium hot springs.
 
Paris is either a love/hate relationship or just pure hatred really, and they should advertise it as "Beautiful metropolis with the population density of a SE Asian city that will eventually crush your soul" not "Cute romantic place"
 
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Крыса said:
Paris is either a love/hate relationship or just pure hatred really, and they should advertise it as "Beautiful metropolis with the population density of a SE Asian city that will eventually crush your soul" not "Cute romantic place"
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Maybe it helps that I was advertised that it was also a cramped metropolis full of rude assholes (This is the one thing I'll defend Paris on without wavering: everyone I met was very nice and helpful, except for the people scamming around tourist destinations, but they're so fucking obvious.) and the streets are littered with McDonalds wrappers. So I was fully prepared for the worst but ended up liking it.
 
TheImportantFart said:
Also, make sure you have enough for a small mortgage laid by. Fourteen quid for a fucking beer.
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It was about £7.50 for a pint of good stuff when I went, and even their piss lager isn't bad, that was about a fiver a pop, so London prices when you think about it.

It's expensive, but not to that extent. Just don't bother with the Punk museum as it sounds cool but it's literally a public bog.
 
GentlemanFaggot said:
Maybe it helps that I was advertised that it was also a cramped metropolis full of rude assholes (This is the one thing I'll defend Paris on without wavering: everyone I met was very nice and helpful, except for the people scamming around tourist destinations, but they're so fucking obvious.) and the streets are littered with McDonalds wrappers. So I was fully prepared for the worst but ended up liking it.
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For some reason people have high expectations so of course they're disappointed, but I don't think it's much worse than comparable big cities, apart from the gross overpopulation which cannot be overstated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_population_density (all of the French cities in that list are in the immediate suburbs of Paris), those insane numbers don't include tourists of course so in reality it's even worse. Look up the population density in your city and imagine being packed with 2, 5 or 20 times more people and buses of clueless Asian tourists on top of that. Living like this just really wears you down so people may not be as friendly as in bumfuck nowhere, Minnesota, but honestly it's amazing that the place hasn't been burned to the ground already (not for lack of trying though).
 
I live in a place with an annual event that people travel to attend and the best thing to do is just stay home and wait for them to leave, haha! The only thing they can really do is go to bars or restaurants so there's not much else tourist-y to do.
 
queue-anon said:
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.
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Oscar Wildean said:
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?
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That's the reason why my mom told me not to look at the ground when I went there years ago. There were also tons of vending machines full of dirty magazines; I recall seeing one right in front of a local church.
 
Hellbound Hellhound said:
Paris:
The biggest disappointment about Paris has to be the way that the reality is so different from the image people typically have of it. Before I went, my perception of Paris was that it was a beautiful, glamorous, and sophisticated city, but when I arrived, I was greeted instead by litter, homelessness, warning signs about pickpockets, gypsies begging, and gangs of African migrants harassing people to buy their cheap trinkets. It is a beautiful city, and like London, there is still a lot to do, but the aforementioned drawbacks are a huge spoiler, and like London, it is also hugely overpriced.
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I blame Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris movie.
 
toilet_rainbow said:
Panama City, Florida is a crowded, dirty, and gawdy tourist trap if you don't want to get wasted on spring break. The beaches are also filthy.
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I remember being really impressed with the beaches back in 2004 (clear and blue, though maybe that's changed since then), especially since all I had mostly experienced was the brown-colored water of Galveston, and I really found the touristy stuff (just seeing it in maps and real life) far more interesting than the bland and boxy buildings in my town. Also, in the process of writing this, I found out that the Treasure Ship burned down almost a decade ago. It was a three-level building shaped like a pirate ship with a restaurant on each floor. That does suck.
 
I agree with everyone saying San Francisco, the only thing to do there is get pozzed. The touristy stuff like Fisherman's Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge aren't worth it either, the former is a tourist trap and the bridge is foggy and cold as balls (at least it was every time I've been there)
 
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