I went to Pwllheli a couple of years back for the first time in 30 years. If it was bad then, it’s worse now. At least there’s some nice places to visit around (and Abersoch is a better town). Agree re: Blackpool, although Skegness (Skeggy to those who grew up with day trips to this God-forsaken place) deserves a mention, as does nearby Mablethorpe (why anyone would want to go to a field near the sea that’s full of caravans is beyond me).
As for the worst? I would probably give that accolade to Cleethorpes. Truly hell on earth. Why did NASA waste that money bombing the moon, when they could have cleared England of this wort, once and for all.

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Pakistan.

My Dad took my brother and I on a slightly misguided pre 9/11 family holiday to Pakistan. We flew up to the Khyber pass (on Fokker Air, seriously) on the border with Afghanistan and then travelled back down overland to Islamabad. While it was certainly an adventure (so much so that we got a guy with an AK47 thrown into the deal), being 14, underdressed and ill in rural Pakistan was not the greatest fun I’ve ever had.

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Without a shadow of a doubt – Siberia

I went to Lake Baikal in November, not through choice, my company sent me there to check the place out – Sounds like a great perk? Yeah well it did at the time.

After four days on the train from Beijing, I spent three nights in the home of a local family sleeping in the spare room on a child’s bed under a Rubert the Bear duvet cover. The outside temperature was about -100 but the inside was heated to sauna like temperatures meaning you were never really comfortable. The family didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Russian or German and I was so knackered and depressed that communication was limited to smiles and waves.

My guide started every sentence with “Frankly speaking….” to the extent that a violent rage started to well within moments of meeting her and the only discernable attraction was the Lake. Call me a philostine but it is just a big lake, it really is. There are big lakes in the UK and you don’t have to sleep in a sauna to see them. Other than the lake, I saw every church in Siberia, twice, and the smoked fish market.

On leaving Siberia for Moscow (which I do really like, honest), I felt like I’d been paroled, never, ever again.

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Worst and best are extremely subjective terms in music, food and art etc. Travel destinations are no exceptions. What constitutes paradise for someone is hell on earth for another.

Your choice of Blackpool (which to be fair does have an appeal for a certain kind of visitor) reminded me of two incredibly urbane New Yorkers I once met. They told me about all the obscure places they’d visited in London, places that probably the average Londoner would never even heard of, let alone visited. They then told me that they HAD to visit Blackpool because a British person they once met told them it was the place to go, and they would love it! I told them they’d probably hate it.

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Playa de las Americas – Los Christianos Tenerife.

Geriatrics in leopard catsuits with oxygen tanks as a purse. Drunken Blackpool skanks in hallways of hotels at 4am, looking for another drink to take the lights out of their pathetic lives.

Harley Davidson cafe to poke eyes out of people who can never afford it. I did not know how fast to drive my rental up that Teide vulcano and soak up the sulpher fumes to cleanse myself from the horror down there.

Rest of the island is quite beautiful, just stay away from the southern part, where all that’s tacky musters. Unless that’s your game.

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Cancun – at least the Hotel Zone – is truly bloody awful…

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St poulten in Austria will always stand out as somewhere I hated to be. In all fairness it probably has it’s good points, but I remember grungy streets, industrial fog in the air and a lack of good restaurants to take the edge off things.

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Sunny Beach, Bulgaria in August! Full of loud, drunk, obnoxious young Europeans on holidays in search of cheap alcohol. Music blaring out from anywhere all the time.

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Gran Canaria for me – Booked a late deal some years ago, accommodation allocated on arrival. Just so happened I was allocated a bit of a stinker. Area completely over commercialised and tacky…plus I got felt up by a transvestite…not my best holiday memory… Although we did escape to Maspalomas a few times which was beautiful.

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Ireland. Yawn. It was about 15 years ago, though. Maybe it’s better now. We went in spring, and it wasn’t green. It was brown. Brown landscapes, brown villages. The only good bit was Kinsale. We went from Dublin south, all along the southern coast, then back up the west. The Beara Peninsula was wild and interesting in a windy, wind-swept way – for about an hour.

And Dublin? Pubs, Guinness brewery and that book. And that’s it. Didn’t even like the pubs much. If you like doing anything other than walking, golfing or horse riding, I’d avoid Republic of Ireland. Dullsville.

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Dahab, Egypt … just because its depressing to see a place just before it is going to be engulfed by the neighbouring resorts of Sharm .. the tackiness creeping in.. shame.

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Vegas baby! Massive hotels, almost entirely artificial, driven entirely by rampant materialism and greed. It just isn’t pretty. It’s a bunch of bloody slot machines. Why is that interesting?

At night it’s like that utterly disappointing New Year’s Eve where everyone is bouncing from place to place looking for the party and never finding it, that look of “Are we having fun yet?” slowly drawing across their features.

The thing that really gets me. Really, really gets me is that Vegas is surrounded by some of the most beautiful National Parks anywhere in the world (Grand Canyon, Zion Canyon, Bryce Canyon).

Why would anyone go and look at a slot machine or Celine Dion instead of these places? It doesn’t make sense.

And then, to add insult to injury, nobody in the States (I’m generalising for effect here) ever says “You have to go to Zion Canyon” My wife’s from North Carolina, has lived across the States and further afield. Has very diverse and interesting sets of friends and acquaintances and yet nobody had ever told her about Four Corners and the landscape and parks near Vegas.

On the other hand, all her life she’s heard about, been told about and people have raved about Vegas, telling her “You have to go!”.

Well here’s the truth. No you don’t. I’ve been three times and it’s at least two and a half times too many. Fly there if you must but then get out of dodge and go see something that reaffirms your belief in the beauty of the world. And I dare the tourist board to talk me out of this one…

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Weston-Super-Mare. Weather? Drizzly. Scenery? A few nice Victorian terraces sadly hemmed in by the concrete and neon lights of Mr B’s Fun Factory. Despite being the ‘sea’side, you’ll be lucky if you see anything but mud. Weston must be the only beach with no sea anywhere near it. Culture? See aforementioned Mr B’s Fun Factory. And the Donkeys. Dodging the donkey poo as you stroll along the sand is local pasttime. Cuisine? If you like your chips with chips, and some chips on the side, you’re in for a treat. However, watch this space… the reconstruction of Weston Pier after it burned down last summer promises give the town a Bright New Injection Of Cool. Ahem.

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Ayia Napa – an utter hellhole, like Blackpool only with hot weather & drunk squaddies

Also agree with you on Pwhelli, an utterly awful place.

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I’ll second Agia Napa. Truly vile.

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South Beach, Florida. Everyone raves about it, but to me it seemed like a bunch of plastic, rich superficial people. The beaches were nice, but you can get that in many other more authentic places.

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Blackpool and Margate go without saying to me. Agree on the Skegness, Mablethorpe, and Cleethorpes mentions higher up, but as I live in Lincolnshire I haven’t been on holiday to them.. they’re just day visits (thankfully!!)

Other than that though, Newquay. I couldn’t believe there could be a horrible town in otherwise scenic, family-friendly Cornwall, but there is. It’s like Ibiza-on-Sea.

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I would love to meet the person who wrote the Lonely Planet guide to Argentina. They say “Is Rosario the perfect Argentine city? You be the judge”. Based on that, I took a precious 2 days out of my two-week trip Argentina to check it out and after optimistically wandering around for a whole day looking for the promised touristic goodies.

I sat dumbfounded in the hostel wondering what the hell was going on. If you want to stare at an enormous brown river, an almost touchingly nationalistic monument to the Argentine flag emblazoned with the words “EVERY DAY I THANK GOD THAT I WAS BORN ARGENTINE” and the outside of the apartment building where Che Guevara was born (it’s privately owned so you can’t go in, at least you couldn’t in June 2007), then Rosario is great, but if not, give it a wide berth.

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I had an awful time in Costa Rica. We rented a car but there were no road signs whatsoever so spent the whole trip getting very lost!!

Stopped over in a place called Jaco which was full of junkies. My friend got violent food poisoning then our hotel room got robbed.

Disaster!!

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Have to disagree about Ireland, one of my fave countries on earth, suppose it depends what floats your boat. Worst places? Almost any small town in New Zealand. Sorry NZ, the scenery is stunning, but the small towns have some of the most eye-wateringly ugly architecture I’ve ever seen, and seem depressingly dated.

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If only people would look beyond the golden mile in Blackpool they’d see a lot of interest – it has a wonderful theatre in the Grand, a fantastic pleasure beach, loads of holiday things to do like go-karting , aqauriums etc and it is close to some of the countries best golf courses and it is surrounded by some lovely country side with beautiful villages to visit if the seaside palls. It has some of the best beach on the west coast.

Whilst I admit I’d rather be in the Lakes at my lodge, I do get a bit tired of people taking an lazy pop at Blackpool because of it’s stag parties

It’s a bit like saying that London is crap because you don’t like Oxford Street.

Look a bit further and make an effort why don’t you

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Though this can probably get me in trouble with the wrong crowd, I found Naples to be pretty overrated. And while Geneva is probably a wonderful place to visit, it’s fairly boring for a tourist.

Also, I would advise avoiding any place in (or near) the States that has a reputation as a popular “Spring Break” spot– Panama City, Florida; South Padre Island, Texas; even Cancun, Mexico. Seedy and gross and full of the sort of haunted air of regret that hangs over the co-eds that descend upon those places each and every year…

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Hey Darren,
I actually liked the few days I spent in Blackpool this summer! It’s run down and a bit tacky and my husband wasn’t a fan, but we stayed at the nicest B&B hotel (Windsor House) run by a gay couple and they were honest to God the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life! Pleasure Beach was a let down because I was expecting it to be more thrilling, but I’d still go back. And unlike Wml above, I thought lake district was BORING. Come to Canada and you’ll see much prettier lakes and pay a much more reasonable Canadian dollar…
My vote for worst part of our trip so far goes to Italy. Yes, the sights are incredible and it’s pretty and there’s good wine, but in 6 cities only encountered ONE Italian who was nice and accomodating. Everywhere we went it was like we were bothering them by going there and spending our hard earned dollars in their restaurant, hotel, store, etc! My friends went to inquire about a gondola ride in Venice and the gondola driver tried to convince them to pair up with another random two people for a cheaper rate and when my friends said “no but we want to go with OUR friends” the gondola driver had the nerve to say “you have friends? i don’t think so….” There’s no reason to be that rude!
Nowadays, I just get irritated when i see anything that plays up the wonderful vacation in Italy. After 9 months in Europe trekking around, Italy is one place I have no desire to go back to for a loooooooonnnnnnnngggg time!

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