C N loaf

I'll start. <BR>Place: Scotland <BR>Why: Very cold climate, surprising levels of poverty in certain towns (safety?), not much to do if you don’t dig soccer, hard to understand people owing to very strong accents, rare to find people actually playing the traditional music or wear the kilt-dress and bars serve warm beer!! <BR>

xxx

I've never been to Scotland, never researched a trip to Scotland, and am not planning to go to Scotland in the near future, but I know without any research that Scotland (along with all countries) have areas of poverty. <BR> <BR>By the way, the accents aren't strong to others in Scotland. Maybe you're accent was too strong for them.

elaine

oh boy. <BR>here we go. How dare "those people" have those accents?! <BR>troll alert.

C N loaf

Elaine, <BR>Try taking a cab in Glasgow.... <BR> <BR>

Art

I've never been disapointed anywhere that I've traveled. Of course, I've not been to North Dakota. There have been places that I would choose to return to over others, but how can one be disapointed with the ability that we have to travel the world. <BR>Regrds, <BR>Art <BR>

kate

For me it's Amsterdam. I found it a bit grubby, the sights a bit uninteresting and it was full of grubby student-types looking for drugs. I know I'm out on my own here - most of my friends love it. I'm also all for legalising cannabis but unfortunately because Amsterdam is one of the few places where you can smoke openly I've find it just attracts of lot of horrible types (large drunken stag parties of lads for instance). <BR> <BR>I also lived with a Dutch girl at Uni who put me off the Dutch for life. I know it's just one individual, but she was SUCH a cow. You'd understand if you met her.....

sarah

Barcelona- Don't get me wrong I still thought it was a great city. But it had been so hyped up-I think the problem was that even the Catalans had started to believe the hype! Also I witnessed more drug use here than I did in Amsterdam! (maybe we went to the wrong areas) and I have to say the Gothic area was more smelly than Venice-I think they have a drain problem!!!

Fred

The Peaks district in England was rather flat,bland, and boring. However, the Cotswalds more than made up for it.

Linda

Art, somehow I feel that with your sense of adventure and love of seeing new places, you wouldn't be disappointed in North Dakota either. (This is neither a put down or a build up of ND, just a comment on how I perceive Art. So, please ND-ans, no flaming!) No matter what its detractors say, I somehow feel you would go away thinking ND is a fantastic place to visit, too.

xxx

Boy oh boy, whoever posted this doesn't ever want to go to the carribean. <BR> <BR>I have been to Scotland too and loved it. Thought the people and the people in the pubs were great even in their language. <BR> <BR>So strange you found it cold. I wonder why? I guess you wouldn't like Alaska either. <BR> <BR>Don't even want to touch the bit about the accents. GADS!!!!!!

GiveMeSteak

Is this the same MeatLoaf who brought us "Post Your Bio, here's mine, I'm VERY Upper Class"? He didn't like foreigners for not speaking English in their own countries, etc. <BR> <BR>Wakeup call to MeatLoaf: Many of the things that disappointed you in Scotland are what make Scotland ... uh ... SCOTLAND!! Yes, it's up North, so DUH it can get chilly at times. You'll find that most drinks in Europe are not served ice cold. Personally, I think Scottish accents are charming. <BR> <BR>GET A LIFE or, alternatively, DIG A HOLE, CRAWL INTO AND STAY THERE!!!

pam

Get ready for an earful... <BR>Guadaloupe. <BR>When I was younger so much younger than today, I listened to the advice ot a person who raved and ranted about the Club Med in Guadaloupe. <BR>Here are some of the highlights of that trip: <BR>Spraying for bugs every night began at 5 and continued for half an hour. Our first night there, no one warned us about it and in through the windows came something reminiscnet of the crop dusting scene from "North by Northwest". <BR>My 9 month old baby was choking after this. <BR>Some other things we weren't told: <BR>They were closing this club med up as it was so old and run-down that they needed to refurbish it. <BR>ON Thursday (we were scheduled to leave on a Sunday) the entire kitchen staff and the chef got on a boat and left with the rest of us simpletons yelling "Where are you going"? <BR>Don't ask what food we ate for the next few days. <BR>The they started dismantling the ping pong tables and every other bit of outdoor equipment there was. <BR>The last little "highlight" I'll leave you with happened on our second night there. <BR>Our baby (you know, the one that was choking earlier) was now recovered and my husband and I thought we would try dinner together and alone and so took advantage of what was described in both brochure and through the "reference" as lovely nannies who stroll under the trees" with you baby. <BR>The "nanny" arrived on time and we left her in the room with the sleeping baby. <BR>Being a typically nervous mother I went back to the room about 45 minutes later and there was no one there!! <BR>My husband (usually quite calm) started <BR>running through the hotel looking everywhere...you know the panic that we felt, don't you? <BR>An hour later (after we called security, police and had visions of this "nanny" spiriting our baby away in a cab to parts unknown; we found her and the baby under a tree about a mile down the beach with all the other babies and nannies. <BR>It was 'break time". <BR>Yeah...Guadaloupe. Don't go to Club Med. <BR>

nomon

Jamaica, what a hole. Sure there's pretty spots, but the poverty and third world BS you must put up with was just too much; other carribean nations are wealthier, safer, closer and prettier. Plus my friend and I couldnt even use our hotel beach bc of the constant harrassment from locals assuming we were there to 'get our groove back'. ugh. <BR> <BR>As for the poster on Scotland, no need to attack him. He didnt say how dare they have accents, he just said they were hard to understand, which many peoples of the world are even though they are speaking English. It can be very frustrating. period. that is NOT a judgement. He was telling you how it made HIM feel, so get over it.

eric

Yes, as an AMerican I find the accents in New Orleans and the North East, ie Maine and Vermont, very hard to understand esp. when its very thick. Just the facts, no judgements.

xxx

Nomon: 3rd world BS? Shame on them for inconveniencing them with your 3rd world BS.

Kathy

Discovering that my ticket on Ryan Air from London to Frankfurt involved a bus ride of 90 minutes. "Frankfurt" isn't exactly Frankfurt. Ryan Air uses an old US Airforce base called "Hahn" and it's 90 minutes by bus outside the city of Frankfurt. <BR> <BR>Second most disappointing experience was the walking tour of Bath, England. 90 minutes of a lecture on archtecture and no visit to a "Bath" included. Boring...

StCirq

With absolutely no judgments regarding Third World countries, a few of which I've been to and in most cases reaped many a reward from, I'd have to nominate Carthage in Tunisia. This was YEARS ago, so if things have changed, forgive me, but we made an especially bumpy and hair-raising ride out of Tunis in a rented jeep (and that's another story in itself) to see it. I don't know what, exactly, I expected, except maybe to feel SOME sense of history and awe, but to be confronted with what looked like a South Bronx playfield of rubble with three ancient robed male "guides" asleep under a tree was to say the least a bit startling. For a small amount of money, one of them woke up and wandered around in this wasteland pointing at bits of rock and tree stumps and saying things like "And here Caesar's colony was founded." It was extraordinarily surreal. <BR>Second to that was Sidi Bou Said, billed as a resort town, which it was, replete with old automobile parts and scraps of underwear and plastic Coke bottles lining the length of the beach. <BR>And then there was Ghafsa, "an oasis town," yes, that's the one, with a park the size of a Walmart in the center of town with four palm trees and the most noxious orange-colored fumes swirling round it and gangs of teenage boys yelling "You cowboys killed all the Indians!" when they found out we were Americans. <BR>And the two days I spent in the john watching dung beetles crawl up and down the walls after eating the conch salad at the buffet at a resort on the island of Djerba - that was memorable in an irksome kind of way. <BR>And looking out the window from our room at the Hotel Splendide in Khairouan and realizing the hotel just dumped its garbage out the window into a courtyard below that was alive with stray cats, rats, and other animals. <BR>As I said, this was two decades ago; perhaps Tunisia has changed. There were good memories, too

provincial

Biggest disappointment so far in my experience venturing out of my provincial world: the food on Air France. I know everyone said airplane food is horrible, but somehow I thought it would be different on the French airline (actually, I haven't found it really, really awful on other flights, but then again, I don't travel much), but the flight to Paris proved Them right. The dinner was horrible, the breakfast was truly inedible. It was all smoothed over, though, by the great and generous beverage service. Turned out to be a telling precursor to the week in Paris, gastronomically speaking. <BR>PS, the flight home was slightly better.

ohlord

I knew that was coming. Why can't anyone make a statement about something they didn't like in another country w.out getting attacked?!? Many of us dont like the stuff we have to deal w. in 3rd World countries, sue us! The poorer sanitation, feeling unsafe, horrid roads, cattle crossing the roads, and in Jamaica, goat eating. Surely you don't believe the 3rd world way of life is preferable to the west? <BR> <BR>But regardless, I have a right to express my disappointent. Thats what this thread is about. <BR> <BR>And one last point, Jamaica can't help its 3rd world conditions but they can damn well help harrassing tourists. I was very polite to those men and asked them nicely to leave us alone but they would not. THey even yelled up to us when we tried to sit on our balcony. There were dozens of them on a daily basis. They even followed me into the ocean! I finally had to get more forceful, only to be accused of racism. What a laugh! yes, i went to jamaica bc i hate blacks. <BR> <BR>As 2 women traveling together, we were made to feel unsafe on our hotel beach. That has never happened to me elsewhere in the carribean where our space was well respected. So don't tell me I don't have a right to complain. <BR> <BR>However, I wont let this experience keep me from ever visiting another 3rd world country, bc despite the inconveniences or frightening aspects, there is much beauty to be seen and much one can learn visiting there. <BR> <BR>Often times the differences one experiences abroad are simply so drastically different from what you're used to that you end up disappointed or unable to enjoy the trip b/c of them. When people express this on the board, don't attack them. It doesnt mean they are judging or feeling superior, it just means they didn't have a good time. period.

Gayle

For starters, I loved Scotland. But I live in Alaska so maybe it didn't seem cold to me! Torquay was a disappointment, kind of crowded, shabby, down at the heels looking. Mazatlan was a BIG disappointment. I've made several trips to Mexico over the last 30 years, but Mazatlan seemed the dirtiest, least interesting, drunkest and most nagging.