[Misc] Worst holiday you’ve ever been on

[southstandandy]

Sadly it was Egypt. We always fancied going to see the Pyramids (which were fascinating) but the locals would just not leave us alone wherever we went. It became really oppressive as I'm sure they are genuinely nice people, but god did they constantly harass us for money.

Ended up spending most of our 2nd week at the hotel with a lovely pool which was nice, but we did want to see a bit more of the surrounding areas but felt pressured into not going out so much.

 

[ElectricNaz]

Dominican Republic.

Got scratched by a cat, had to make three seperate 2 hour round trips to the hospital to get rabies jabs (then one more when I was back at home haha). The hotel covered all costs though, which was good of them. Spent half the holiday panicking when I woke up, wondering if I'd be scared of the pool water etc...

Tbf I'm going back again to the same place later this year, so if that's my worst holiday ever I'm prob quite lucky!!!

 

[Insel affe]

Another vote for Tunisia, feck all outside of the hotel apart from as someone previously mentioned a market, which was dusty and full of men spitting everywhere and trying to grope the ex girlfriend at the time.
Tunisia too hot, nearly all the the buildings looked half completed and had been just left, shite food, horribly sexist rude men.

 

[Eeyore]

Exactly what I was thinking

I think my holiday low was my toddler daughter producing a code brown in the pool at Butlins, Bognor.

It's officially known as a 'contamination incident'. If ever a leisure facility is closed for that reason it basically means a toddler has taken a shit in the pool. Well, I say toddler, there is no guarantee of that. When I was a kid they basically used a fish net to drag it out and it was as you were.

 

[Eeyore]

I've only been on a foreign holiday six times in my life. The strangest was when I had a buckie in South Africa and had to carry a gun around with me in case of potential car jacking. When my host gave it to me I was a bit in shock. Two of those were for cricket festivals in Europe.

 

[HeaviestTed]

Lesson learned … take control of booking.

Be the TBOBE of holidays

 

[Birdie Boy]

A guy I know only ever went on 2 holidays. First one was Tenerife, he ended up in hospital for 6 weeks after a bar fight.
2nd one was about 2 decades later to Miami. Walked out of the airport looking the wrong way and was run over and killed.

I have had many bad ones, the family call them adventures rather than holidays but no way I can beat that one!

 

[Peacehaven Wild Kids]

I’ve had several holidays across Europe, Asia, Middle East, Caribbean and Central America.
I’ve clearly been very lucky.

Worst - Dom Rep mid 90s - Rained for a week, got food poisoning and it was quite iffy leaving the hotel as a lot of the locals walked around openly carrying guns. But that was about it really.

It’s all a matter of opinion though because when I went to Cuba in 1993 a lot of people had “a shit time” No decent food, no water sports, no nightclubs, shops with nothing in them, power cuts, lack of hot water etc..
It was by far my favourite holiday but have deliberately never returned as the changes would cloud my good memories.

 

[METALMICKY]

Tunisia. First package holiday aged 19
Heatwave - 45 degrees at times, no aircon in hotel room
Food was truly awful
Got sick
Got stung by jellyfish

Not been back

But did you pull? Every cloud and all that!

 

[dazzer6666]

But did you pull? Every cloud and all that!

Went with the Mrs. She HATED it

 

[Questions]

A weekend away in Paris. I flew to Belgium on Good Friday to meet my then girlfriend who was working out there. With two of her colleagues joining us, we drove down after work to Paris.

As we got to the outskirts of Paris, we asked one of her colleagues where the hotel was at which point he said "Oh, I didn't bother booking anything, I thought we'd find somewhere when we get there". This would be around 8pm on an Easter weekend and pre- internet days.

Needless to say, we spent several hours driving around Paris trying to find a hotel with no success. We went back out towards the airport to try the hotels there but again no luck. Back in the city, someone thought they saw a vacancies sign in a hotel across the road so our now tired driver did a u-turn, only to be t-boned on their company car by someone following who had (quite rightly) not expected us to do a u-turn without looking.

Having got through all of the insurance stuff, it turned out the hotel didn't have any vacancies and it was now around midnight and we had a car which had two doors and windows caved in.

In desperation, we headed back out to the airport and a friendly security guard at one of the hotels we had visited earlier took pity on us and let us park in their covered car park so we could get some sleep in the car.

The following morning involved two of us making a trip to the local hardware store to find gaffer tape and plastic sheeting to cover the car windows while the other two went to the Paris Tourist office to find a hotel to stay in.

The hotel we found was basic but fairly well located and close to another underground car park where we left the car for the next couple of days.

The journey back started with the realisation that the fuel cap release was under the drivers seat - the side which was caved in. This meant someone wrapping their arm in clothes to avoid the glass while reaching under the seat from behind to try and open up the fuel cap. Having eventually managed that, we then had a long slow drive home with the wind buffeting the side of the car. The noise was so bad, my ears were still ringing several days later.

I flew back early the following morning and ended up at the County Ground for a one day game (B&H?) which, inevitably, Sussex lost.

No happy ending to this story either. It was the last time I saw my girlfriend as a couple of weeks later we decided to split up.

Apart from the above did you enjoy yourself ?

 

[Barham's tash]

You were brave to take two teenage girls there. Only place I found that was vaguely nice was the local harbour with a few average restaurants and some civilised people. Can't for the life of me remember where it was in Tunisia but it was 30+ years ago.

Port El Kantoui

 

[Jackthelad]

Paris - Grey ugly city, people were very rude.

 

[dazzer6666]

Port El Kantoui

We stayed in Sousse which I think was quite near there.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Paris

- very smelly
- somehow has worse poverty than London
- expensive
- biggest visitor attraction is a painting of a woman with a wonky nose you have to queue up 2 hours to see
- next biggest visitor attraction is a giant staircase
- full of French people

I had my worst ever holiday there. Massive falling out with German GF and the pair of us walking around with faces like smacked arses for the entirety (luckily only a weekend break). Actually that pretty much sums up not only all our holidays but most of the time we were not on holiday. "Good times", as she used to say

Luckily I never mentioned the war.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

We stayed in Sousse which I think was quite near there.

I stayed there in around 94. I enjoyed it. Some years later the same hotel (pretty sure about this - it looks very familiar) was host to an Islamist gunman atrocity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Sousse_attacks

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Any Swiss city. Soulless and dull.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Well I nearly had a terrible holiday on the millennium. I booked a package holiday to Goa at a price less than any flight leaving early Jan 1st. Having miraculously not missed my flight with an epic hangover/comedown and an hours sleep I was some way into the flight before I was able to pay attention.
The flight was full of middle aged generally fat couples who would in the future go on to vote Brexit and complain about Muslims despite living in semi rural developments that never see anyone of colour except delivery drivers. Conversations were generally about fear of dirty toilets and dirty Indians, whether you'd be able to find fosters, passing on recommendations of a place that did a decent pork chop.
Now I had already planned to escape the resort after the first couple of nights and return to it night before returning, but despite being a complete wreck I took decisive action and on exiting airport I walked away from the waiting coaches and reps, hopped in a tuk tuk, went 50 miles in the other direction and rented a small hut on the beach.
The best part was when I got to the airport for the return flight about 40 mins before departure because it's a tiny airport to see the burnt and generally miserable cohort who had been left at the airport 3 hours prior.
They were obviously complaining about the waiting when one of them piped up "it's not as bad as when we arrived and sat on the coach for over an hour waiting for some chap to get out the airport and it turned out he wasn't there".
Sorry to digress but the lesson is if you're on a shit holiday you may well only be a bit of initiative away from a good one.

Genius, and a masterpiece in raconteurship

 

[sussex_guy2k2]

Have been researching my next holiday, and some trip advisor reviews.
Apparently these conditions contribute to the “worst ever holiday”, for some Brits:

- No English TV channels in the hotel (abroad)

- Pool wasn’t lively enough (no music)

- There was no evening entertainment in the hotel

- no fried breakfast in the hotel

What has been your worst holiday experience?

Benidorm.

Because it had all of these things, amongst other things.

And a ton of racist, boomer Brits.

 

[sussex_guy2k2]

Awful "weekend break" for New Year in Paris. Went with my girlfriend at the time and two of her friends.

The room booking fell through (they double booked us and gave the room to the people who arrived 2 hours before check in), one of her friends had a nasty break up the day before so spent the whole weekend crying/screaming, we managed to find a room for the second night but spent the first night sleeping huddled on a bench by the Seine, and then one of the girls lost their passport so had to spend a couple of hours at the embassy getting a temporary passport so we could get the train home.

Overall, exhausting, miserable and freakishly expensive.

Other than that, I've been very lucky holiday-wise. I find review SO misleading because some people have impossible standards. 1* - The scrambled eggs were too dry and although there were twelve swimming pools, the one I wanted to use wasn't heated.

My favourite one was a review for an all inclusive in Greece. It was something along the lines of: "2* - Hotel was nice, food was very good although difficult to book. Sadly though, too many Germans"

Paris is awful, to be fair. Unlike large parts of France which are lovely.

Having been there a few times, I never get how it holds any romantic appeal.