The eight destinations everyone loves – except me
Some elements of travel are objective: everyone likes to escape the drudgery of the daily grind, to deviate their lives from the norm, to see a part of the world they do not usually call their own.
Beyond that, it’s everyone for themselves. There is nothing wrong with different people liking and disliking different places, and much of travelling is an intensely personal experience. As such, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, no matter how popular and prized a destination is.
Below, some of Telegraph Travel’s experts details a location that while some might dream of visiting, or extol without pause its many virtues, they could quite happily never return.
Disagree? Leave your thoughts on the destinations in the comment box at the end.
Bali
The ever-popular honeymoon destination and surfer paradise, or...
Annabel Fenwick Elliott
All the things I loathe rolled into one. It’s stifling hot but also exhaustively humid, and the air thick with pollution - absolutely ideal for mosquitoes. It rains a lot. You're never not sweating, dashing for cover or getting bitten. The roads are chaos, even in rural areas, and while the most convenient way to get around is mounted on a death trap (moped), it's a staggeringly dangerous transport method.
Your fellow tourists will either be raucous gap year hooligans, or, potentially even worse, sanctimonious Eat Pray Love wannabes. There's a lot of litter. A lot of noisy, half-finished building sites. Worst of all, animal cruelty at every turn - whether it’s the bleak birds in tiny cages hanging outside homes and shop fronts, the very public cockfighting, or the weary, long-suffering, close-to-knackered horses pulling carriages from dawn until dusk. The icing on the cake? It's almost as far from the UK as you can possibly get, so you'll have to endure more than 18 hours in transit to get there, probably with a plane load of hippies and hooligans. Yes, the rice fields are nice. No, they're not worth it.
Go instead: Costa Rica: It's less humid but more green, with plenty of protected areas, diverse wildlife (animals here are generally well treated), better value for money with significantly fewer hooligans, and hippies of a slightly less grating disposition. Broadly speaking, of course.
Paris
City of Love and one of the most romantic destinations in the world, or…
Oliver Smith
It doesn't surprise me that "Paris Syndrome" is a thing. Few cities put themselves on such a pedestal as a centre of high culture, top food and unbeatable architecture - but, in my humble opinion, it fails to live up to the billing. I've been disappointed by the food, brusque service and generally tired and shabby appearance of the city (while sitting in the Tuileries Garden I was treated to the sight of several rats dashing between the hedges). People wax lyrical about Paris - "one of the world's most beautiful cities" according to our expert - but after three trips I still don't get it.
Go instead: Seville. Europe's best city, hands down.
New York City
The city that never sleeps, where dreams come true, or…
Simon Parker
I love travelling in the United States, and I’d been building New York up in my mind’s eye for the entirety of a 4,000-mile bike ride across the country. But when I arrived from the comparatively serene Midwest all I recall is being left enraged by the incessant noise pollution and grime hanging in the air – mainly from taxi drivers moving lazy commuters tiny distances through gridlocked traffic. Attempts at sightseeing by bike resulted in following trendy cycle lanes that just vanished on a whim, plus for a city that claims to never sleep I found it impossible to hail a cab after midnight.
Finding food with nutritional values beyond sugary carbohydrates and heavily processed protein was equally difficult. If your trip to NYC happens to coincide with a monster hangover, then OK, but may I suggest portions that are half the size, half the price and perhaps the occasional lettuce leaf? I’ve never seen so much food being wasted than in this glutinous city – bigger is not always better. And don’t you dare slink out of that bar without leaving a tip – “$2 per $10 beer is normal”, apparently. $12 a pint? Get me back to the open road.
Go instead: Pittsburgh. 350 miles or so west - refreshingly open, quieter and cycle lanes that link up well with the rest of rural Pennsylvania.
Cape Town
The jewel in South Africa’s crown and one of the world’s most raved about cities, or…
Hugh Morris
In all the time I’ve worked at Telegraph Travel, Cape Town has sat at the top of the table of our readers’ favourite city, having repeatedly hogged the vote in the Telegraph Travel Awards. So when I visited earlier this year, it had been hyped up as quite literally the best city in the world.
While its natural setting is almost unrivalled - watching the “table cloth” roll off Table Mountain into sea at the point where the Atlantic meets the Indian Ocean is unutterably bewitching - I felt the city itself failed to live up to expectations. It seemed to have no heart or buzzing core to speak of and was instead more just a fairly grubby network of roads and suburbs before it stumbled into the thoroughly underwhelming V&A Waterfront. The new MOCAA was exciting and engaging, but nothing else in the city really grabbed me. Camps Bay was bland and the wine regions though beautiful felt sanitised. And there I am, at odds with 90,000 of our own readers.
Go instead: Wilderness. Yes, you’ll likely fly into Cape Town, but get out of the city and head east down the Garden Route to find somewhere with a little more character.
The Maldives
The paradise-on-Earth favourite for fans of their own island, or…
Penny Walker
For the first few days, the Maldives are idyllic - there's beautiful beaches, incredible snorkeling and plenty of downtime. But if you're on one island for more than the optimum amount of time (I would say around three nights), it can become very dull very quickly.
Ultimately, you're on a small desert island. On the equator. It's hot (very, very hot) and there's rarely any shade. You can't get to grips with the culture because the only link to the people is the staff. And they're not always keen to chit chat (I suspect they've been trained to keep tight-lipped). The food and drink selection can often be quite limited, too, and can quickly become monotonous (there's only so many buffet meals and sickly-sweet, diabetes-inducing cocktails a person can reasonably enjoy).
It's also expensive. Even if you've booked an all-inclusive resort, snorkel and dive trips are rarely included and do not come cheap. So unless there's a particularly good house reef, you can expect to fork out even more than the small fortune you've already spent on the flights, transfers (seaplanes are not budget friendly) and hotels.
Go instead: Mauritius. It’s packed with character, has plenty of land-based activities on offer and has a melting pot of cultures with a vibrant history. It's also home to some pretty good beaches.
Marrakech
Morocco’s most memorable experience bursting at the seams with life, or…
Greg Dickinson
Here are the good things you'll hear about Marrakech. Its labyrinthine medina is a shock of colour, sounds and smells. There is nowhere better to learn the art of the haggle (I did swap my Merrell sandals for a lovely rug, with the seller's flip-flops thrown in). It is an excellent base for exploring the nearby Atlas Mountains and the Sahara. The Djemaa el Fna night market is an attack of the senses - snake charmers and all. It may well be the place that gives the best feeling of "home is very far away right now" for under ￡100.
All the above is true.
Do you feel a but coming? The but is that Marrakech is somewhere to be dropped into, fleetingly, confidently, and ideally just once. It is not a place to linger, wallow or explore at your own pace. Because the city centre is so heavily built around tourism, the hassle of souvenir sellers and "I'll show you the way" guides feels on another level to other Moroccan towns like Fez, Chefchaouen or Essaouira. And as a result the city is one that demands the charade of walking with purpose when, really, you want to dawdle and take everything in. I was, if it's not a complete paradox, underwhelmed by Marrakech because of how overwhelming it all was.
Go instead: Istanbul. It has all the mystique and faraway magic of Marrakech (the call to prayer, the bustle of the Grand Bazaar) but is at the same time a living, modern city with jazz clubs, fine-dining restaurants and a large student population.
Dublin
Ireland’s party capital and a Unesco City of Literature, or…
Lee Cobaj
The city I don’t like that everyone else seems to love would be… Dublin. Too many drunks. Not the Irish, rather the insane number of hen and stag dos - but then I was staying near Temple Bar. Overall, though, I thought the city was pretty overrated too; a bit scruffy round the edges, expensive and not particularly friendly. I think I was expecting a kind of Irish Edinburgh but it was so flat and dull.
Go instead: Edinburgh, not flat and not dull.
Tulum, Mexico
A pretty resort town on the Yucatán peninsula, or...
Anonymous
Tulum is a truly Instagram-famous destination - never a good accolade, for life on the ‘gram, as we all know, differs starkly from reality. You certainly don’t see the sargassum (seaweed) that has blighted the pristine beaches of the Caribbean coast in recent years with increasingly devastating severity. But that’s not what’s wrong with Tulum. What’s wrong with Tulum is that it’s like a watered-down version of Mexico. It’s like an import of LA. And I really like LA - in California. Not in Mexico, which is so rich with its own fabulous culture. You can’t move for yoga, wellness and juicing in Tulum; the tacos and margaritas aren’t as good as in places such as Mexico City, Guadalajara or even still-touristy coastal towns on the other side of the country. And you pay a huge premium for this of course - particularly if you want to stay on one of those lovely barefoot-chic hotels on the white-sand beach. Oh wait…
Go instead: Puerto Vallarta, a seaside town put on the map by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the Sixties, where you’ll find fabulous fish tacos and lots of glam hideaways dotted around the coastline.