Dublin

It's just a big city. Sure there are a few things to see but 1 day or even just half a day of walking around is plenty. So many more great things to spend time seeing and doing in Ireland.

I'll go ahead and pile on: Asian tourists* are the worst. Rude, oblivious, move in a swarm, and spend more time looking at their camera than anything else. The only good thing is, since they move so fast working to check boxes, if you just wait a bit, the swarm will normally pass you by.

*I probably should say "tour groups".

schmendeler said:

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mine has to be san Francisco.

food was not great. I did a ton of research of top places and none of them impressed me when we went.

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I got really lucky. On my first business trip to San Francisco in September 1998, I spent the week staying with a childhood friend who lived in Pacific Heights. He and his identical twin brother showed me around the city including Marin Headlands and a drive down PCH to Santa Cruz and then Monterey. We came back up the 101 through Silicon Valley as the dot.com boom was in full swing. It was really just an amazing time.

I've been back to the Bay Area 62 more times for work since then. Not all of them have included San Francisco but, I do try to make it up to "The City" at least once a year.

I'm sorry your trip was less than impressive.

htxag09 said:

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P.C. Principal said:

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Bondi Beach in Syndey - It's very pretty and cool to see. But it was also very crowded and in general just feels overhyped. Plenty of other great beaches in Australia worth visiting.

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We had a great time at Bondi Beach, sure, it's one of the more touristy beaches, but didn't think it was overhyped. I actually rented a bike in Sydney one day and road out to Bondi Beach, the climbs and views were amazing.

A couple days later we had an airbnb a block from the beach for two nights. Got to swim in the famous Bondi beach pool, which was worth it in itself, the pictures my wife took while I was swimming are incredible. But other than that, the walk along the beach path was enjoyable, weather was perfect. And the food may have been a little overprice as it is touristy, but we still enjoyed everything we had.

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That's a good take. Bondi is great. But, it does have a lot of hype.

Personally, I like Manly beach but, Bondi is spectactular.

BenFiasco14 said:

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drewbie08 said:

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I grew up in Boerne and while that area is very nice, I dont get the Fredericksburg hype either.

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When the vast majority of visitors to Fredericksburg are people from the urban jungle hellholes of Houston, and some from Dallas, it seems like a paradise to them. Those of us who live somewhere where you actually see changes in elevation and scenery besides concrete and strip malls can like Fredericksburg a lot but realize it's not the second coming. I live very close to it so go all the time.

Overrated tourist areas I've been: DisneyWorld. Ugh. Los Angeles/Hollywood.

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I always cringe when I see people near Hollywood/Highland taking pictures with the costumed "street performers" because I know what's behind the costume.

And yeah, the Hollywood Walk of Fame - major disappointment due to all the vagrants.

Out in Left Field said:

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That was funny. And yeah, I have to agree. When my Aggie daughter and I went there in 2013, it was kind of like the scene out of that Seth Rogen / Barabara Streisand movie - "So how long are we supposed to look at it?"

GCRanger said:

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Dublin

It's just a big city. Sure there are a few things to see but 1 day or even just half a day of walking around is plenty. So many more great things to spend time seeing and doing in Ireland.

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I like Dublin. What I have found really disappointing about Dublin is the Guinness "Brewery Experience."

You don't feel like you're at a brewery. Rather, you're in some weird overdone corporate house of worship. It's like the Globo Gym in Dodgeball, except worse. Like they don't even let you see the gym equipment.

I just find it weird and disappointing if you're actually interested in beer.

The sky lounge or whatever it's called is cool. But way way way overcrowded.

I mentioned Iceland on the other thread but our only bad experience there was.....you guessed it.....Chinese tourists.

Specifically, we did a glacier hike. This requires some level of instruction since you have to wear gear in order to do it. Naturally, the dumbass Chinese women in our group didn't speak any English and refused to pay attention to our guide. We actually had to cut our hike short because the guide was concerned one of them was going to get hurt or killed if we went any further.

They would wander off trail which can get you killed. They were not keeping up because they would stop and take pictures literally every two steps and were just generally oblivious to everyone and everything around them.

Premium said:

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Just checking in, are there any good places to visit or should I just keep working for the next 50 years?

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Croatia, Hungary, Belarus, Savannah GA, Georgia (country), Faroe Islands

Premium said:

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Just checking in, are there any good places to visit or should I just keep working for the next 50 years?

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Vietnam, certain islands in Indonesia, Portugal, Spain, Tuscany, Chile and Patagonia, Colombia, Oaxaca.

I haven't really seen anyone "pinpoint" the reason for the Chinese tourist being in such a hurry, and taking so may pictures. Is there some sort of Chinese Facebook over there, where people obsess about where they're at, what they've done, etc, that's even worse than ours? At least they're not stopping long enough to shoot the photo of their feet facing an ocean (the max obnoxious American photo on FB).

New money and a lot of it. Brand names are unbelievably popular in the Chinese upper class, so think of destinations and "bucket list" places as brands. It's more stamp collecting than traveling but c'est la vie I guess.

Speaking of click-clicks (I don't care if it's racist, it's accurate) we were in Edinburgh on Christmas a few years back. The super touristy stuff on the royal mile was open but nothing else was. It was also drizzling and the wind was blasting. I've never seen so many confused Chinese people wondering why their umbrellas were useless, almost all of the shops and services were closed, and why the few westerners that ventured out (bundled up and ready for the elements) were giggling at them as they tried to wrangle selfie sticks.

Lucky for us, the Christmas market was open (click-clicks don't venture that far) and our hotel had a legendary scotch bar that opened around 4 on Christmas Day.

Edinburgh was for sure a cool place, was just funny to get to see the isolated population of Asian tourists that didn't understand the effect of Christmas on anywhere other than major global cities react to the situation they were stuck in.

I've met plenty of solo travelers from China (usually from the big cities on the east coast) that were great. I even befriended a couple in Thailand and we hung out several days in a row.

It's the tour groups from mainland China that are the problem. With the growing middle class, more and more of them are traveling. They just don't know yet how to behave. That sounds harsh but its the truth. They believe that because the are traveling in a group that they can just do whatever they want. They generally don't have any respect for the culture that they're visiting. Oblivious is a good word for it.

Hopefully this will change with time and experience, because it is really changing what used to be great destinations in SE Asia.

I'm guessing they get pimped out by some costumed character slumlord

Disneyworld
I wouldn't go there again even if you paid me.

My wife bought a week's worth of tickets. My kids didn't want to go back after 3 days, they wanted to go to the beach. We went to Cocoa beach and gave away the tickets to a family standing in line.

Leaning Tower of Pisa
Didn't expect much, but it was still lame.

Vatican
I am not a catholic and don't want to start a religious war, but there were many idols in the museum that were disturbing. It is more of a war chest than anything.

Mona Lisa
80s pop culture reference but not a decent piece of art.

The Forbidden City across the street is pretty cool, but Tian'anmen Square is nothing. Imagine the biggest parking lot in the world with no markings and no cars.

schmendeler said:

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a week at disney is a punishment.

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Seems everyone I know that wants to go and goes, says it's because their 2-4 year old "loves Disney".

Be honest. You never got to go as a child and are using this ridiculous excuse to go as an adult. The kid would be just as happy at the playground down the street, and will never remember this trip anyway. Then, they always come back and tell me "it was tough with the kid". Of course! You're having to deal with strollers everywhere, it's hot, the lines are long, and the kid doesn't want to be there anyway.

Haha, rant over!

Tombstone

Can I chime in on the Chinese tourist groups? We generally use the euphemism "you know, the worst tourists" when discussing them.

Worst experience was the preikestolen hike in Norway. It's a few hour hike and was drizzly, making everything a bit slippery. In narrow passes, these individuals were hiking 2-3 abreast WITH umbrellas out on the trail. We finally make it to the top and my (clearly pregnant) wife waits her turn for a picture near the edge of Pulpit Rock and one of the Chinese tourists walks over to her saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry" and shoves her out of the way so that she can get her picture taken there.

CDub06 said:

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Can I chime in on the Chinese tourist groups? We generally use the euphemism "you know, the worst tourists" when discussing them.

Worst experience was the preikestolen hike in Norway. It's a few hour hike and was drizzly, making everything a bit slippery. In narrow passes, these individuals were hiking 2-3 abreast WITH umbrellas out on the trail. We finally make it to the top and my (clearly pregnant) wife waits her turn for a picture near the edge of Pulpit Rock and one of the Chinese tourists walks over to her saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry" and shoves her out of the way so that she can get her picture taken there.

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That's actually ****ty for the chinese tourist to do.

I did something similar to some girls in Prague at a old chapel (the first church in the Prague Castle) where people were waiting in line to see the crypt under the pulpit. It was down a little case of stairs and through a closed gate where you could see the crypt. They were in front of me in line and they stopped at the top of the stairs waiting for the people in front to finish, instead of doing like everyone else and just following the line down the stairs to take your turn to see and take a picture.

Once the people in front of them left, one girl goes down to the gate while the other stands at the top of the stairs taking pictures of the girl who is posing and looking at the camera with the crypt in the background.

After about the 4th pose, I just walked past the girl taking pictures and went down to the gate to take pictures of the crypt standing next to the girl posing. They were not happy and just looked at me like I had farted on them.

We were in Dingle, Ireland in 2015 and one of their attractions is a dolphin named Funghi that hangs out in the bay and comes up to the boats.

We were sitting on a pub porch having a pint or 10 and saw a bus pull up and a group of predominately white senior citizens gets out and every damn one of them had their digital camera held out in front of them, ready to take a picture. They all headed for the bulkhead along the bay and stood there for about 10 minutes with their cameras out.

I guess the tour guy told them to have their cameras ready and they took him way too literally.

We spent a couple of weeks in Italy a few months ago and I definitely agree on the Asian tourist groups, especially the constant "instagram posing" by younger females and their selfie sticks and older folks bumping into you so they can click and leave.

As far as Pisa, we did what the first person to mention it on Page 1 suggested. We were on a train from Monterosso to Florence, stopped in Pisa, checked our bags at the train station, walked to the leaning tower and took a lap around the square taking pictures, then headed back to the train station. We were probably there about two hours, we wanted to see the tower and basilica but nothing else in town really interested us.

I travel to San Francisco quite a bit for work and like the city overall (although the growing homeless problem is somewhat testing), but I would include Fisherman's Wharf on my list of most underwhelming destinations. Far too touristy. Seeing a Ripley's Believe it or Not right in the middle of it ruined it for me right off the bat.

Well the thing about Pulpit Rock, is it's a massive stone with plenty of places to have your picture taken. It's not like we were blocking their way. Unlike they had been doing with their stinking UMBRELLAS WHILE HIKING

https://instagr.am/p/BWcZ4Szj0x-

I saw behavior like yours with the Chinese at the Harvard statue. I wasn't about to wait in line to take a picture of that dumb statue, but dozens of others were. Meanwhile, the Asian tourists just walked to the front of the line and flashed their peace signs.

O.M.G this thread SERIOUSLY delivers.

Seems to be a correlation with feature disappointment and Asian tourist.

I did some Norway hikes with a buddy, including Pulpit Rock, and we got stuck behind the Chinese tourist on the trail. Umbrellas and taking up the width of the trail like you said. The hike wasn't too hard, so we decided to haul ass past them any time we got the smallest chance to do so.

Thankfully the tour bus skipped the harder hikes like Trolltunga and Kjerag.

I think I just broke out into a sweat looking at those people within a few feet of the edge of that rock.

Cliffs of Moher in Ireland were similar. These dudes just sat on the edge. It's just a 700 ft drop in front of them.

Premium said:

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Just checking in, are there any good places to visit or should I just keep working for the next 50 years?

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Japan is amazing.

Just remember the word "sumimasen" when moving through crowds. If the asian person doesn't bow and politely move out of your way then they are Chinese and you can just use your superior American strength and shove them out of the way. They won't even take offence they're like plankton and just move with the tide.

Quote:

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Disneyworld
I wouldn't go there again even if you paid me.

My wife bought a week's worth of tickets. My kids didn't want to go back after 3 days, they wanted to go to the beach. We went to Cocoa beach and gave away the tickets to a family standing in line.

Leaning Tower of Pisa
Didn't expect much, but it was still lame.

Vatican
I am not a catholic and don't want to start a religious war, but there were many idols in the museum that were disturbing. It is more of a war chest than anything.

Mona Lisa
80s pop culture reference but not a decent piece of art.

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This was essentially my list but with minor comments.

I would personally narrow it down to only Disneyworld - EPCOT. The rest was amazing especially during Christmas time. Star Wars and Pandora areas are absurd.

Pisa stunk

Vatican is saved by the Sistine Chapel otherwise it stunk

Mona Lisa stunk but just a room over is the amazing Coronation of Napolean so some good came of the Louvre.