Best & Worst

Originally posted by @fmf
Best.
1. Welwyn Garden City: well laid out.
2. Slough: sensible one-way system
3. St. Albans: charity shops and fast food and coffee in the High Street, unencumbered by any other type of shop

Worst.
1. Paris: too romantic for its own good
2. Ibiza: not much good if you like dixieland music and other trad jazz
3. Rome: two popes wear the crown, as predicted, no good will come of it, Fatima, homosexuals, you name it

I hope this is a joke.


Slough is a dump.

Originally posted by @paul-a-roberts
Best:
Sydney Harbour Bridge - I was fortunate enough to go up while dusk approached and it was awesome.
Paris - Honeymoon and an amazing city generally (next time will incorporate Euro-Disney for the kids)
Franz Josef Glazier - on the South Island of New Zealand, I did a heli-hike and it was awesome.

Worst:

Grand Canyon - Disappointing, just ...[text shortened]... enjoyable. Will be trying again this year in a trailer-tent, so hoping for a better experience.

I can't say I'm a huge fan of camping either. Especially not since I was marooned in the desert for three weeks as part of my school's "become a man" initiative. They call the area I went to the Sederberg, supposedly because there are nice cedar trees. They f***ing lied. There wasn't a single tree for miles around. Good luck finding shade in 37-degree heat, or a path to walk on. As I arrived back at base camp on the last day I had not found any water for nearly 24 hours and was on the verge of collapsing and I had 25 blisters.

Sleeping alone on the slopes of Sneeuberg on a hard, cold rock living in fear of snakes and scorpions wanting to share my sleeping bag was hardly my idea of fun.

Originally posted by @wolfgang59
What experiences have you had that far exceeded your expectations?
And what were those that left you feeling deflated?
Top 3 for each.

Best
Ras Mohamed national park, Sinai - dived all the sites several times, simply spectacular
Pompeii, epically wonderful. Rome of course and Italy generally.
Glastonbury Tor; at midnight after some magic mushroom tea on a clear stary summer night.

Worst
Capri (also for me)
Paris, has its moments of course, but generally doesn’t live up to its romantic image, traffic is the worst, service is shockingly bad, airports are abysmal especially CDG.
Dubai. Just don’t bother.

Originally posted by @russ

edit : "Size {of Pyramids} is underwhelming." Not my experience.

I had built up this trip in my head for decades - you see so many images
in books and film - that I had effectively ruined it for myself.
Knossos was a disappointment too.

Someone said Pompeii ... yes, absolutely brilliant. But try Ephesus.

Originally posted by @russ
I did this trip as a guest of a company who [b]really did not want staff kidnapped.

Armed guards improved the experience considerably. 🙂

edit : "Size is underwhelming." Not my experience.[/b]

Maybe he was conned and taken to the wrong pyramid?

Twice Rome has been mentioned in the worse places... clearly didn't have the pesto lasagne in the restaurant i went to. Best dish therefore best city ever.

Originally posted by @ghost-of-a-duke
Sorry to report sir, but if you were to return to St Albans's today your experience would be quite different. (Nice little market though).

According to the St. Albans Facebook group I am a member of, there is virtually no other kind of business or retail outlet in St.Peter's Street or High Street nowadays aside from charity shops, One Pound stores, coffee shops and fast food outlets. The hollowing out process was already well underway in 2001 when I was last there. Gone are the days of my youth when there were department stores, bookshops, banks, supermarkets, a hardware store, a toy shop, record store, travel agent, bakery, butcher, chemist etc. etc.

Originally posted by @trev33
Twice Rome has been mentioned in the worse places... clearly didn't have the pesto lasagne in the restaurant i went to. Best dish therefore best city ever.

I highly recommend Naples for your Italian gastronomic pleasure.

Worst: E. Germany (1989, the Wall had just been breached, but before unification). I went out to dinner with three locals; my friends called the waitress over to tell her the wine was corked; she tasted it, spat it out, and accused us, the customers, of having poured something into the bottle to ruin it; there ensued an argument between the waitress and my friends. Outrageous service, lousy food, too.

Best: Rhodes. Wonderful climate, good food, friendly service, they bend over backwards to make a visitor feel comfortable and have a good time.

Originally posted by @moonbus
Best: Rhodes. Wonderful climate, good food, friendly service, they bend over backwards to make a visitor feel comfortable and have a good time.

Never been disappointed by any Greek island.
I really wanted this thread to be about unexpected delights and disappointments.

Originally posted by @wolfgang59
I highly recommend Naples for your Italian gastronomic pleasure.

Strange I didn’t like the place, but to be fair we went for the museum which was unexpectedly closed. I found it to be a bit of a grotty place with a lot of vagrancy. Food was good though, absolutely.

Did you go to Sorrento?

There is a wonderful place in Italy called Lecce which has some stunning ancient Roman artefacts including a amphitheater. I just love Italy to be fair.

Originally posted by @trev33
Twice Rome has been mentioned in the worse places... clearly didn't have the pesto lasagne in the restaurant i went to. Best dish therefore best city ever.

I don’t get it either; first time I visited I spent the entire trip wandering around within my mouth open.

Originally posted by @divegeester
I don’t get it either; first time I visited I spent the entire trip wandering around within my mouth open.

It wasn't bad (my worst vacation though), just didn't turn out to be the experience I had thought. But as we all know, 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'.

Originally posted by @fmf
According to the St. Albans Facebook group I am a member of, there is virtually no other kind of business or retail outlet in St.Peter's Street or High Street nowadays aside from charity shops, One Pound stores, coffee shops and fast food outlets. The hollowing out process was already well underway in 2001 when I was last there. Gone are the days of my youth wh ...[text shortened]... ts, a hardware store, a toy shop, record store, travel agent, bakery, butcher, chemist etc. etc.

They have a TK Max. That's never a good thing.