I feel that I must put in a word or two in support of Mount Teide. People complain of cloud when they reach the summit - surely this can't have come as a major surprise to them ?- It's a bl***y mountain, and a lot of mountains tend to poke through the clouds at their summits, if they didn't they'd just be hills !!
As for it being a waste of money - it's part of a national park and it's free - how can it possibly be described as a waste of money ??.If you walk to the summit and back down again ( a full day but well worth it,although you'll find the air a little thin the nearer the top you get ), it won't cost you a single euro and you'll get spectacular views for your troubles;only drawback is that, when you reach the summit, you tend to come across a lot of people moaning about it !!

Sagres, I think people have taken my post the wrong way.

I was dissapointed because as I fainted, I didn't get to see it. Going up in the lift was awful because it was swaying a lot but we did see some spectacular views. I will have to go back one day but heed the warnings about taking it easy and getting climatised. There is no way on gods earth i could walk up there I suffer from low blood pressue you see so am prone to fainting from time to time and that would be one of them. The drive up to the park and down the other side wa s amazing, to experience heat of 80 degrees then having it drop when we went down the other side to 50, honest, and foggy and torrential rain was just weird, not so good when all you had on was a pair os shorts and a vest!!!

Tenerife is a lovely place, perhaps i should of worded my post a bit better.

and the flying midgets and tall grasses slapping against your face

"flying midgets"....?!

Sorry,Cazz -I was aware that you had passed out and wasn't directing my comments at you.According to my friend who climbs Teide almost every time he's in Tenerife, he only gets a clear view from the summit about once in every four times he goes.
The walk to the top gives great views 'til you reach the cloud, but the problem is that you have to carry (or wear) more clothing than you need at the start of the climb to be able to cope with the drop in temperature as you climb.That,together with the fact that the thinness of the air at higher altitude does make it harder to breathe, is possibly why the authorities don't seem to advertise the footpath option(-we only got to know about it through one of our friend's climbing magazines -) - they wouldn't want people wandering the mountain in shorts and flip-flops!!.I'm glad I did it once, but wouldn't dream of trying it again.

Well I for one loved Mount Teide. Driving through the thick clouds with headlights on was very exciting , if not a bit scary..... Once

through the clouds it was very, very cold up there (in April) but wonderful views at the top. You can see many of the other islands

from up there.The scenery was wonderful, just like I imagine the moon to be like. Coming down the other side into North Tenerife

was an other experience, everything so lush and green, and the windscreen wipers going ten to the dozen!!!!!

Amazing. Denny

I've "done" Teide once - on an organised trip with no time to go on the cable cars to the top, but even without the cable car ride it was a fantastic experience - the sheer scale of the Caldera de las Canadas crater (a long-collapsed ancient volcano, which was would have made Teide look like a little hill) absolutely breathtaking, especially as we'd seen it from our plane a few days earlier when arriving on the island. It was a blazing hot August day and our guide told us we probably wouldn't be able to see the other islands because of the heat haze. However, I have seen Teide poking through the clouds in the very far distance whilst flying over Lanzarote, approaching Fuerteventura last Easter

I will agree with the vatican, a long queue & then when I got inside, hustle, bustle, noise, packed in elbow to elbow. I am not Catholic but I expected a peaceful, calm sanctuary, above all religious! It could have been a railway station for all the reverance most people paid to it. I really did feel so sorry for the nuns & others who were making a pilgrimage only to be trust into what felt like the church's version of a theme park.

I do hope I haven't offended anyone with these comments but obviously they are just my opinions & I am fully prepared to respect anyone's religion, I just felt so many others weren't!

As to the clock in Prague - we were warned & sat outside the bar just opposite with a glass of wine & had a good giggle at the people waiting & the reaction on their faces.

Oh dear, don't have good memories of the bar near the clock in Prague. We'd only just arrived and a friend had her bag stolen

I remember it well.
Future travellers to the area hang on to your handbags with both hands.

Funny, I felt really safe in Prague & never worried about getting my bag stolen. However I did have it stolen from a restaurant in Covent Garden! From between my feet, believe it or not, as I had been warned about the area. They must have been real pros! (and I wasn't drinking).

Would agree with the Dalyan mud baths. What a s*** hole, I couldn't wait to leave.

My hubby refused point blank to get in them.
He hated it there and couldn't wait to leave.

Lands end!What a dump.

I was reading in the paper this morning that some bloke has written a book along the lines of 100 things to do befroe you die..but this is entitled 100 places you should not be @rsed to visit!.

In it..he lists the disappointments of visiting the Pyramids..showing the picture that all the tourists see..but then the wider picture of the slums of Cairo that totally spoil the image. He also shows THAT famous photo of Princess Di sat outside the Taj Mahal..but then says that she probably had that look on her face due to the smell of the River behind her where 57% of all waste is dumped! Then it showed the photo from the air and how close the river is. There was a little bit about Thailand too but I cannot remember all of it.

This got me thinking..is there anywhere you have really really wanted to go and then been disappointed when you got there? Was it not all it was cracked up to be? They don't have to be world famous sites such as the Taj Mahal or the Pyramids..

The Taj Mahal is on my list of places to visit..but now I am not so sure. maybe sometimes the fantasy is better than the reality.

Venice....
supposed to be one of the most romantic cities in the world.

My experience of it was, that it was dirty,smelly and a rip off place.
We went quite a few years ago, I think around 20 years and the ponk coming from the canals was enough to make you puke.
We sat down in a cafe in St Marks square and just wanted a drink, as we would be heading back on the bus to Lido de Jesolo for evening meal in our hotel, and we were refused.
On further investigation, none of the cafe's would let you sit down and just order a drink, you had to be ordering food.

St Marks Square.? a rip off place full of pigeons and pigeon poo.
Rialto Bridge...nice architecture, but over rated and nothing to go woopppeee over.

Venice left no memorable thoughts , except a smelly tourist trap that I never want to visit again.

Sanji

I must admit visiting the pyramids and Cairo was a huge disappointment to me as well. After the initial awe of seeing the pyramids and the sphinx, it was a real let down.

Cairo itself was dirty and to be frank, slummy. I think the point when we seen an open trailer containing raw meat drive past us followed by a huge swarm of flies was just disgusting. Its no wonder so many people suffer from stomach upsets and the like if thats the way food is treated.

I dont know what I expected from Cairo and the pyramids, but I was truely disappointed.

Sarah

I'm afraid it was Malta. Mega disappointment, some parts very nice, walk round the corner and it was like downtown Beirut!

i have to agree with sanji and srhjnmgn both these places were a disappointment for me too, venice for the same reasons it stunk again like sanji it was over 20 years ago i was there .

in egypt, the pyramids i didnt expect to be off a main road, i expected them to be miles in the desert, also on the train from cairo to luxor i saw many people cleaning their pots in the nile with someone near by squatting in there, that really turned my stomach, the toilets in the train consisted of a hole onto the track or the carriage floor grrr . i hated seeing animals tethered up in the heat with no drink and skin and bone with flies all over them ,shame i have such bad memories of egypt again this was over 20 years ago, but i would like to return to the sinai now and see how thats changed over the years as there was nothing there 25 years ago

Has to be Benidorm for me cheap nasty and tacky bit like Blackpool with sun.
Never been again and never will.

I'm afraid it was Hong Kong that did it for us. We have travelled all over the world - some brilliant places, some good, some ok and some awful, but the only place that we would NEVER return to was HK. Hell on earth for us. Jenny x