A lot depends upon your approach, your expectations and your state of mind. The single place in this list that I visited is Stonehenge and it was a wonderful experience. Then again, I know both the history and legends of Stonehenge. Also and by great good fortune, the trip there was able to watch the August sunrise and actually walk and touch the stones in a small 30 person group. However, even without that special treatment, I know I would have valued my trip there.
If I were one of the people I see who are wedded to instant gratification through their electronics and expect these places to entertain them, nothing outside the various amusement parks will do. I hope that as these people age, since they are mostly ‘young’, that they too will learn the internal entertainment that comes from experience and learning.
We wee very fortunate toured Paris for 5 days with French friends. 2 bedroom apt and good local neighborhood, bakery, store, Metro etc. We saw more than I would every planned and good local flavor thanx to them. I would suggest go to Paris use local guide for yourself or companions. I would go back anytime. been twice.
Venice doesn’t care if you come or not. Won
t see many ads. They have enough tourists. We went in early December and no crowds also avoided the high tide for two days. Bucket list recommendation. Go once for the experience. Unique.
My favorite: “[–]Noneerror 210 points 12 days ago
Gibraltar. It really is just a big rock and not the country it technically claims to be. The hotel sucked. A car had washed up into the swimming pool. That was despite a very clear sign that you weren’t supposed to throw your car off a cliff into the ocean. The food was disgusting and I wasn’t the only one who refused to eat it. Everyone who decided to eat it anyway got sick. I also got peed on by a monkey.
You can see everything Gibraltar has to offer in a few hours. We were stuck there for a week. Then we got stuck there after we were supposed to leave due to bad weather. Thick fog meant we spent 18 hours waiting in the airport while periodically watching our plane attempt to land and abort each time. Each time it almost crashing horribly in a new way that would have blocked the only road out of Gibraltar. The runway and the road are the same bit of asphalt.
“
I used to do Computer field service and would walk among the tourists everyday in Boston and would always ask myself who in their right mind would spend hard earned money to visit THIS place.
This was also during the Big Dig when the entire city was one big construction mud hole.
I’m going to disagree about Paris. Yes, the locals can be a bit surly. I myself did not find them to be excessively so. Let it be said that if these “reviews” were written by people thinking that an entire city should be sort of waiting around for their entitled selves to be shown around in pampered kind of way, disappointment is likely to result.
I visited Paris twice in 2005 for a grand total of about 4 hours each. I was working on a cruise ship which docked at Le Havre, from where we had to take a 2 hour (each way) fast train ride to Paris. You miss the return train, end of story. So one time I joined with 4-5 much younger folks who had mapped out a blitzkrieg high-velocity precision walking tour of the Tower, l’Arc de Triomphe, buzz by the Louvre, and some Seine walking. The other time I just hung out, wandered around in a small circle near La Gare (train sta) and looked at old buildings, wandered into a perfume museum, and sat down for a coffee.
Because of my absolute time limitation, not to mention poor funding relative to how freaking expensive things are in Europe, I nevertheless had a great time wandering around looking at old buildings and shops and sensibilities.
I also got a haircut there (much cheaper than on the boat, even w/my discount) and had a great conversation with the barber who cut my hair about GWBush and the state of things in the world at that time. I was initially a tad concerned about expressing a generally pro-American viewpoint with someone who held a blade near my corotid artery, but found the man to be a nice guy and rather pro-US.
It’s a city. Get over it. People are there to earn their livings, and some of those livings derive from outrageously wealthy people who think nothing of spending $300 on lunch. If that ain’t you, you won’t feel comfortable. It reminded me a lot of NYC. Stuff to look at everywhere you look, new, 100 years old, 200, 300, 400, 500 years old, juxtaposed together. You don’t go there expecting a nature preserve.
Having spent two delightful weeks in Paris in 2012, I have my doubts about the accuracy of this list. I could go anywhere easily; order in English, experience great European history and generally found the Parisians to be friendly and helpful. The list is pushing stereotypes.
You may enjoy the post from FactualPedantic as much as I did, search on the name or look for a long post starting with the following two paragraphs :
“One day, all traffic throughout all of Seattle will halt - I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet. The cause will be that, somewhere, in some neighborhood, four drivers will all arrive at a four-way stop simultaneously. They will each begin waving at the person on their left: “nono, after you.” Traffic will begin to pile up behind each of the four drivers, first a little, then for blocks in each direction.
A crowd will develop to watch the spectacle, and some of the drivers will finally decide to stop waving at each other. None of them will move, however - Imean, look at all the people on the sidewalk, standing within 5 feet of the curb. One of them might want to cross. Slowly, the drivers will begin to wave at the pedestrians to let them know they are visible and safe to cross. This waving at pedestrians will start at that one four-way stop and ripple outward across the now one mile radius of completely stopped traffic, followed shortly afterward by an aftershock ripple of pedestrians waving back at the cars to tell them the cars should go first.”
My own personal favorites are:
1) Anchorage and Seward, Alaska, for the first week of July. Direct flights from the lower 48, 20 hours of sunlight a day so you never want to sleep with perfect temperatures, green everything that isn’t in bloom (Anchorage has a ‘flower theme’ each summer). Animals everywhere (we have pigeons, they have eagles). Good Bed & Breakfast accommodations (you need to book six months ahead). The land is gorgeous, and the sea is both fisherman Heaven with big fish everywhere, and Hell because it can turn rough quickly. A first class state run railroad to Seward, that is still lovely but has a more classic “rough hewn” look around the edges, but with streetcars. Just DO NOT go for a walk on the beach silt or you WILL die. They mean it.
2) Antigua, Guatemala. The country just South of Mexico. The North half of the country is dense jungle preserve, and you will see beautiful animals and plants that do not live in the US. A short hop flight from the capitol to the big ancient city of Tikal, which is about a 4-1/2 hour walking tour.
Every city in Guatemala looks different. Antigua, Guatemala is Spanish colonial, surrounded by three jungle volcanoes. Perfect weather (mid 70s) year around. Very couple oriented, the town’s business is teaching Spanish to Americans. Also big on horseback riding. It is the regions weaving capitol, and bright colors predominate. The people either look like ancient Mayans or ancient Olmecs. The major downside are the buses, which are horribly overcrowded and nightmarish. The best comment was that “If the Germans ran Guatemala, it would be heaven, except for the Germans.”
http://i.imgur.com/TDwjADH.jpg
3) Kauai, Hawaii. They filmed Jurassic Park there, but the vast majority of the island is unoccupied. Best toured by helicopter. Some great places to stay. The rainiest place on Earth is on one side of an ancient volcano that collapsed, and now acts like a catcher’s mitt with the humid breeze from the ocean. Hundreds of little waterfalls. The biggest downside is that a long time ago there was a storm that broke open the chicken coops, so now the place has an abundance of feral chickens. Noisy feral chickens. So hey!, free chicken.
Ours was Wilmington Delaware. My sis-in-law said she’s had a great time in Wilmington. Turned out she was in Wilmington North Carolina!
We saw a man being arrested on the street, there was a black out in our hotel in the middle of the night (and this was not too long after 9/11 so we were terrified and it was the Sheraton), what a complete dump.
After that excursion I am no longer allowed to plan vacations!
You can have your pyramids, your your grand canyons, your caverns, your Mt. Rushmore's and all that other ticky-tacky touristy stuff.
These days, I like to keep my vacations simple. Just give me a sunny beach, a cold margarita on the rocks, a good book to read and I'll be happy.
Uber-Bayern uber Alles.
Ok:
1. I lived in SoCal, and did both the tourista, and the native look-e-loo thing.
Before a **&^%^5^ vandal burned it, the solitary little home of a human, made from bottles, in the Big Bear Lake area, was fascinating to touch, look at, and wonder about.
Though it was owned by the Knott family, the idea of a ‘glory hole’ mine in the middle of the Mojave Desert was intriguing, even with the tourist-trap miner’s town.
In Barstow, and those who are rail fans might know, was a very large railyard, with a large part of the business, coming and going from FT. Irwin, which had a prominent place, as the site of the major tank conflict, in the Cinerama movie, “The Battle of the Bulge”.
In Bloomington, I stood on a catwalk about the railyard, on a day where the Southern Pacific Daylight train, in it’s orange and black colors, ran beneath me, and I was baptized in it’s smoke.
Out on the dry lake beds of the Mojave, there were many times where the then-new phenomena of ultralight aircraft, were being developed, assembled, and flown.
In a place called Lytle Creek, I learned about the finer points of fly-fishing, and scoring a few 15-inch rainbow trout in the process.
In the years before the 1984 Olympics, I used to frequent the gun range that was used by the Olympic competitors, north and east of Redlands.
A visit to Mojave Narrows, the head water of the underground Mojave River that flowed north, the various outcroppings seen in many a western movie, and a few Star Trek episodes, and the wonders of sitting near the precipice of a 4000 foot drop to the edge of the Lower Desert, below, and the natural grandeur provided by the ever-busy faultlines of Southern California.
Lastly, a visit to a street six blocks up from the forever-moored Queen Mary, with the long drives from first, Victorville, and later, Rialto, to my then-alive grandmother, in her small apartment and her Murphy bed.
These things might not be on some folks’ itinerary, but they are part of the California heritage.
I love visiting the U.P. in Michigan, a bit far from California tho’...and luv, luv, luv going to Macinac Island. You can tour the Grand Hotel for $10 (would love to stay there someday, but pricey). You can rent bikes on Macinac, or walk all over the place, or ride carriages, visit the fort, etc. During the revolutionary war, Macinac stayed British, was just turned over to the U.S. after the fact. We stay in the U.P. very reasonable rates, and always take the boat over to Macinac for one day, and schedule our air trip to turn in our car and return from the east end of the U.P. (if you take your passport, you can drive over to Canada from that end...it is a short drive). They also have casinos in the U.P. which can be fun. Henry Ford built a little village in the U.P. for his workers building his cars...early socialism. They now rent out these little wooden houses in the summer. We’re going to try it out next time we go.
Worth a look as a side trip from Salisbury Cathedral. Check out the Magna Carta original copy at the cathedral.
Stone Henge is just a monument to Sun-god worship.
So is the Vatican, but at least they have nice museums.
.
Some pain and disappointment could be avoided if people asked themselves seriously beforehand whether they really liked looking at rocks ...
L.A., the pyramids, and Stonehenge.
One these things Is NOT like the others.
For a fantastic vacation, may I recommend my adopted hometown of Toadsuck, Arkansas. Tell ‘em blueunicorn6 sent you and get 5% off at Bob’s Laundromat!