[Misc] Worst holiday you’ve ever been on

[BrightonCottager]

Bali, about 5 years ago. Overcrowded everywhere (except the place we escaped to after being woken up by a big earthquake), those really irritating motorbikes everywhere, air pollution, even the surf was meh. Expensive and a shitload of carbon used to get there and back.

 

[jcdenton08]

Turkey with my very beautiful blonde ex in our early 20’s. Absolutely horrible. Men o openly staring at my other half everywhere we went; one walked past and flicked her hair and stood and stared at me. Everyone (except the guide for a couple of day trips) was rude and pervy. The souks were filthy, full of overpriced counterfeit/Chinese tat.

Oh and we got food poisoning towards the end. We couldn’t wait to leave - never, ever again.

 

[Timbo]

Going Skiing without actually Skiing. After the initial amazement at how stunning the scenery was, it soon became the longest week in history for those of us that weren't skiing. Criminally overpriced food and drink, a magnet for coked up nobheads wanting to fight once the sun goes down and the most pretentious 'desperate to be cool' morons trying so hard to have the best time of their lives. Never again.

 

[Sid and the Sharknados]

I really like Paris, walk the streets, take in a few back street bars or sit out on the main drag people watching. I’m usually half pissed which is why I think almost everything is fantastic

I get the same thing whenever I go to... Actually pretty much everywhere now that I think about it.

Apart from Southampton. Obviously.

 

[Sid and the Sharknados]

I love Paris. Been a number of times and have always had a great time.

I do read what people write about Paris and wonder if I'm just completely oblivious to people being complete arseholes towards me.

Alternatively, maybe I've got some sort of force field around me that compels people to be nice to me. It's certainly not my charm, or my French, which is hilariously terrible.

 

[jcdenton08]

My second choice after Turkey would be Paris. Mainly because it’s absolutely filthy. And lawless. And expensive. And the people can be rude, especially service staff. And the drivers are mental.

Some of the things I hated:

- very expensive, basic hotel. This wasn’t in Montmartre or anything, it was well outside of the heart of Paris. Around 30% more than a London equivalent.

- the metro is appalling. Appears to be completely unstaffed - everyone openly jumping the barriers, which we in fact HAD to do when our valid tickets weren’t accepted by the barrier. Spent 10 minutes looking for a single staff member in the entire building. Not even the ticket offices were manned. The network is confusing and badly maintained, and makes me very grateful for the Tube. Communication is poor to non-existent and signage is lacking in French or otherwise.

- the city is absolutely filthy and smells of refuse/sewage. Bin bags piled up high on pavements outside of shops/homes. Presumably the collections were on strike? It smelt of death in busy parts of the city

- literal GANGS openly operating with intimidation scams in and around the Eiffel Tower. Luckily we knew of these scams and were prepared. What they do is they surround you, and try and thrust something in your hand (cheap plastic necklace etc). If you take it through confusion etc they move in closer and say €50 and won’t accept the trinket back. We literally stood and watched this happen for three groups of people in the space of 20 minutes. No police anywhere in sight, despite them being at the same spots every single day for decades.

- on two separate occasions service staff have been extremely rude. This despite me conversing in French to the best of my limited ability. Taking a seat with my partner in a cafe outside the Notre Dame for a (€22) double espresso and bottle of water, the waiter clicked his fingers at my girlfriend and pointed at our seats. Something I’ve never seen done elsewhere anywhere in the world ever, including the rest of France. Something similar happened on another occasion.

- the Louvre was absolutely packed to the point that it was nearly impossible to move around, let alone actually appreciate any of the exhibits. Packed full of loud, bored schoolchildren and confused and flustered Japanese people.

- drivers are absolutely mental. I’ve witnessed some of the worst driving I’ve ever seen in Paris, even as a pedestrian. Cars constantly and brazenly run through red lights, make illegal turns, rev their engines unnecessarily and I witnessed two acts of road rage in two days, one ending in a fistfight.

I’ve seen a lot of the rest of France and generally find it a beautiful country. But Paris is nothing like the rest of France. It’s shit.

 

[MJsGhost]

Benidorm.

Lesson learned - never book a week off work and just trust your mate to book something.

(not when you're 19 anyway)

 

[jackanada]

Have been on some terrible French holidays. I think their complete disdain for English people doesn’t help. The more remote you are the worse it gets too.

I've never really experienced that, though I did feel an air of hostility on a few occasions at the approach of "les rosbifs" which rapidly evaporated for two reasons:
Firstly for reasons unknown I have an excellent french accent. In stark contrast to my actual ability in the language.
Secondly I have a common French surname, though no French family.
I think they switch from thinking I'm an annoying English arsehole to entertaining the possibility I'm an educationally subnormal Frenchie tragically abandoned across the channel at a tender age by his parents.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Have been on some terrible French holidays. I think their complete disdain for English people doesn’t help. The more remote you are the worse it gets too.

Have you been on any nice ones?

 

[thedonkeycentrehalf]

Any Swiss city. Soulless and dull.

You should go during carnival. I’ve managed to get to Lucerne carnival twice while working nearby.

Great fun and the locals really go for it with their outfits and the wide range of music.

A couple of places that would be to your taste - one was in a square where there were people playing rock classics in a Russian style. Another was one of the huge brass bands they have playing the songs of Die Toten Hosen.

 

[dazzer6666]

Have you been on any nice ones?

Nice is grotty as well

 

[jcdenton08]

Just going back to how shit Paris is, there’s an actual syndrome named after it;

Paris syndrome - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

In short, tourists (especially Japanese) are so shocked with how different Paris is in reality to how it is depicted in film/media, they actually display clusters of symptoms.

The reality of Paris makes some people mentally ill.

 

[heathgate]

A Sun newspaper £10 holiday in the mid 90s,... a prefab on a tiny site in Westward Ho in the October half term..... just about as shit a place as you could imagine... the only restaurant open in the immediate area refused to have kids... plus it rained constantly...... truly a depressing experience.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Maybe it’s you? I’ve been to several different areas of France and found them friendly and helpful, apart from Paris, but then London is similar.
We go every year, have made good friends over there, and feel very welcome. It helps to speak a little of the language, and use good manners when entering shops etc.


My worst holiday was camping in Cheddar Gorge, with two children, our dog, when it rained every day. After five days we gave up and went home, having to dry everything off in the house before it could be packed away.

That's the best 'you need to pull your socks up if you expect to get on in this world' wet-fish-face-slap quip I have read for a while. Top marks.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I’ve just remembered another cracker. When I lived in darkest Kent my wife won a holiday on a radio phone in. A week’s coach holiday to Weston-Super-Mare!

We got picked up in Ashford at 8.00 am. Midday we were still in Kent picking up an assortment of pensioners. We were the youngest on the coach by about 50 years.

Our week coincided with the highest tide ever seen in Weston-Super-Mare leading to flooding in the promenade.

We did however get to go to the radio 1 roadshow on the beach with a flyover by the Vulcan bomber.

But sadly Geoffrey Archer was not swept away....what a waste of a high tide <sigh>

 

[zefarelly]

Helicopter flight in Iran

thankfully the good seat made me bounce.

 

[heathgate]

Have been on some terrible French holidays. I think their complete disdain for English people doesn’t help. The more remote you are the worse it gets too.

Not my experience at all, quite the opposite, and I have holidayed in most of the main departments.... and I don't have great French vocab skills, bar the basics.

 

[zefarelly]

Not my experience at all, quite the opposite, and I have holidayed in most of the main departments.... and I don't have great French vocab skills, bar the basics.

THe French are quite like us . . . Regional variations, as well. Brittany ( clue in the name ) is much like southern england. . . . More rural inbred nationalistic areas are different, special even , best avoided. . . . Like yorkshire.

 

[ROSM]

Corsica!

Beaches beautiful, some wonderful architecture. Locals who make man utd fans seem friendly and welcoming

Should have guessed when driving to the villa and seeing any roadsign in French peppered with gunshot to the point of being illegible.

First restaurant we went to I tried speaking French and they ignored me, I tried italian (corsican , like sardinian is a blend of both) and they got very angry. In the end used english and really wound them up. Finally another local stepped in and seemingly told the owner not to be an idiot.

As we sat down, the guy on the next table leaned across and apologised but ended by saying 'don't worry, they hate me more than you, I'm from paris'. And you know what? He was right.

Visiting bonifacio we went into multiple shops with signs saying 'no we don't speak English and neither should you'

Again they didn't seem to want French either.

So it goes down as the Royston vasey of holiday islands

 

[Sid and the Sharknados]

Corsica!

Beaches beautiful, some wonderful architecture. Locals who make man utd fans seem friendly and welcoming

Should have guessed when driving to the villa and seeing any roadsign in French peppered with gunshot to the point of being illegible.

First restaurant we went to I tried speaking French and they ignored me, I tried italian (corsican , like sardinian is a blend of both) and they got very angry. In the end used english and really wound them up. Finally another local stepped in and seemingly told the owner not to be an idiot.

As we sat down, the guy on the next table leaned across and apologised but ended by saying 'don't worry, they hate me more than you, I'm from paris'. And you know what? He was right.

Visiting bonifacio we went into multiple shops with signs saying 'no we don't speak English and neither should you'

Again they didn't seem to want French either.

So it goes down as the Royston vasey of holiday islands

Sounds great. You have to embrace the hate.