3 Travel Destinations I Hated Visiting (Because They Suck)

When you’re enjoying neither the destination nor the company, but you have no poker face

In spite of my overarching nihilism, I’m going to tell you something that’s a bit painful to admit: I’m obnoxiously unwavering in my optimism. Despite how easy it is in this day and age to fully embrace misanthropy, I still genuinely believe that most people are good (albeit stupid… but good deep down).

And I believe, despite all my predispositions toward absolute travel snobbery, that there is beauty and wonder and culture and delight in just about every corner of the world.

I spend a lot of time raving about all the incredible places I’ve seen, all the wonderful experiences I’ve had, all the fascinating people I’ve met, and all the tantalising meals I’ve devoured. Based on this blog, you might get the idea that all my travel experiences are fantastical fever-dreams—that, aside from a few small hiccups, I manage to fall in love with just about everywhere I visit.

To be honest, this is mostly true—mostly because I know myself well enough to know where I want to go and what I want to do, and because I’ve gotten pretty adept at avoiding tourist traps and gimmicks and bad meals and boring-ass bullshit.

But even with my rose-coloured contact lenses, there is room for disappointment. There are still shitty meals (most recently, I had a Michelin-starred meal at Milan’s Anima that was extremely underwhelming, complete with ill-suited wine pairings and rushed service) and cities I hate and places that bore me half to death.

For the most part, I believe in second chances. There are places where I’ve had less-than-stellar experiences (like Tunis and Bratislava) that I would be more than willing to revisit with fresh eyes—because I recognise that my experiences in those places had little to do with the places themselves. (In Tunis, I spent the first day overcoming sea sickness in a filthy hotel, and the rest of my time was spent between a mix of inedible meals, boring strolls around a boring part of town, and rampant sexual harassment. In Bratislava, it was the dead of winter and I’d just recently seen the movie Hostel. If you know, you know.)

But there are a small number of destinations that I would never, ever be caught dead visiting again. Namely, these three cities:

1.      Bran, Romania

Does it look kind of cool from a certain angle? Sure. Is it worth a visit? Not in the slightest.

If you love history but hate all the ‘factual’ bits—if you make no distinction between real events from the past and shit like dragons and vampires—then whoooo, buddy, is Bran Castle the place for you.

I visited Bran in 2014 during a short trip to Transylvania at the end of a longer holiday across Europe. I was staying in the nearby city of Brasov which, although beautiful, is relatively small and limited in activities.

Most visitors to Transylvania will undoubtedly pass by Bran: somehow, the city’s prime (only) attraction, Bran Castle, has developed a folkloric connection to Vlad the Impaler (an actual historical figure who’s essentially morphed into the mythological figure Vlad Dracula). The castle’s been quite successfully marketed as ‘Dracula’s Castle,’ in order to attract the kind of visitors who think Africa is a country and whose favourite animal is probably a unicorn. (But I’m sure they’re very nice people.)

Hordes of all the other suckers like me (but you have to wonder: how many of them walked away thinking they’d seen something cool?)

Now, while I’m not quite dumb enough to fall for the Dracula bullshit, I did still fall for the idea that Bran was a place worth visiting. From the time I got off the bus in front of the castle to the time I realised my error, roughly two seconds had passed. Hawkers lined the sidewalks, each selling the same low-quality, overpriced tourist trinkets, all imploring you to buy into the bullshit that this castle has anything more than a tenuous connection to Vlad the Impaler (who maybe spent a night or two here once in his life) and urging you to blur the line between historical fact and mythological fiction. My ‘tourist trap’ alarm was going off like a tornado siren.

I took a quick tour of the castle, which was fine, I guess, but utterly unremarkable, and practically threw myself on the next bus out of town. (Had that bus been full, I might have been tempted to throw myself under said bus.)

The bus took me as far as Rasnov, where I wandered through the comparatively sleepy town and up to the fortress that sits above the city (MUCH more interesting and impressive than Bran fucking Castle). To leave town, I ended up having to hitchhike with a local couple, all three of us cramming in the back of some stranger’s beat-up, run-down sedan. That made for a much more memorable experience than Bran Castle—an experience that never would’ve happened if I hadn’t been so damn anxious to leave the hellhole that is Bran.

Skip Bran Castle; head here instead, to Rasnov Fortress

See? There’s always an upside to every place—even if that upside is leaving.

2.      Ayia Napa, Cyprus

The drive to Ayia Napa is lovely: if only I’d just kept on driving past it

Cyprus was my first real post-COVID holiday (although my first solo trip post-COVID was, of course, to Prague). I spent the pandemic stuck in Morocco—which, admittedly, isn’t such a terrible place to be stuck. I finally returned to Jordan in the late spring of 2021, went back to full-time work, and quickly fell back into my old life in Amman.

That summer, I started dating an old acquaintance, although it wasn’t long before I realised that we were utterly incompatible in most ways. (He would love Bran Castle, I bet.) However, when he invited me to join him on a weeklong holiday in Cyprus, I thought, hey… why not? My wanderlust had reached a fever pitch, so I agreed to tag along.

Although I’m not much for lazy beach holidays, the trip ended up being quite surprising in its variety: Cyprus is gorgeous and, along with its popular beach destinations, the inland parts of the country are filled with lush forests, stunning mountains, and idyllic little villages. (On top of all that, the country is also home to one of my all-time favourite brunch destinations.)

But there was one city we visited during our trip that I hated so deeply and completely that I couldn’t find a single quality to redeem it of its hideousness: Ayia Napa.

If you love enjoying shitty cocktails in trashy night clubs, you’re in luck

Ayia Napa is designed to appeal to 18-year-old Euro-trash dipshits who want nothing more than cheap drinks, crowded beached, clubs playing 20-year-old techno, and dirty markets hawking shitty tourist trinkets. (If you like to play Russian roulette with your chances of being roofied, Ayia Napa is the perfect party destination for you.) I cannot remember a single meal I had in Ayia Napa, and with the exception of one somewhat-decent cocktail bar, every other place I visited was painfully trashy, cheesy, or sketchy as hell.

Bored out of my mind on an overcrowded beach

I did, however, get to enjoy an afternoon at a crowded beach, where I spent the entire time pretending to read while not-so-subtly eavesdropping on the group of 20-somethings next to me, all sporting thick Newcastle accents and ample personal drama. As a lover of trashy British reality TV, this was the highlight of my time in Ayia Napa: my own live-action version of Geordie Shore.

3.      Mykonos, Greece

Yes, it’s still possible to snap charming shots like this in Mykonos: how else would the island attract so many visitors? (Not pictured: the hordes of tourists around every other corner)

I’ve never taken a more spontaneous trip than when I booked a flight to Mykonos 12 hours before my scheduled departure.

I hadn’t had any intentions of travelling: after all, I had a two-week trip across Central Europe coming up in a week’s time. But a friend and work associate of mine had abandoned a group yacht trip around the Greek Islands, ditching his travel buddies in Mykonos and deciding to spend the week at a resort. We were in the midst of a huge work project, and he suggested that I come join him in Mykonos for the week, where we could work on the project while simultaneously enjoying the seaside vibes.

I spontaneously agreed, and the next morning I was on a flight to Athens, followed by another short, turbulence-fuelled flight to Mykonos.

I’ll be honest: if I hadn’t had a ton of work to keep me busy, I would’ve been bored out of my skull. All-inclusive resorts are dreadfully dull. What are you supposed to do? Hop from one pool to another, from the pool to the beach and back, from one lacklustre restaurant to the next, sipping on cocktails until you pass out under the sun and end up roasted like a rotisserie chicken?

If I were any other travel blogger, I’d probably photoshop out the huge yachts in the background—or at least I’d fail to mention that, right behind me, you would’ve seen about half a dozen enormous, unsightly cruise ships

After a few days of this routine, I’d had enough, and decided to venture across the island to enjoy Downtown Mykonos—or so I thought.

I quickly discovered that Downtown Mykonos, while quite picturesque with its blue-and-white facades, winding alleyways, and sparkling seaside vistas, is jam-packed with tourists. And not just any tourists: cruise tourists, stopping in to enjoy a few quick, contrived photo ops and chintzy souvenir shops before climbing back aboard their floating shit-barges. Not my people. Not my place.

I might not be a beach connoisseur, but I’ve seen enough to tell you that this is one sad little beach (and, frankly, so was I)

I took pictures of street cats, got exceedingly tipsy off a couple glasses of ouzo at lunch (the squid was unimpressive, but the drinks were generous), and wandered about aimlessly until I felt sober enough to head back across the island, pack up my shit, and get the hell out of town.

The most entertaining part of my trip to Mykonos

Look, I understand that trying to gatekeep travel destinations is obnoxious as hell, and that eschewing a destination just because it’s popular is an idiotic kind of snobbery. There are lots of bustling destinations that I absolutely adore (Dubrovnik is a great example, as is Prague), because they still retain enough of their culture and character and ‘authenticity’ to continue being charming.

I’m just saying that the next time you plan a trip to Greece, consider the less popular, less visited islands over Mykonos; when you head to Cyprus, consider spending less time in Ayia Napa and more time in Paphos or even a village like Lofou (spoiler alert: new post coming soon!); and when you finally make it to Transylvania, spend more time doing authentic, road-less-travelled activities and less time falling for the gimmicky shit.

Unless the gimmicky shit is right up your alley—in which case, what are you doing here?

(I’m just kidding: I still love you, even if your travel tastes differ from mine. You’re objectively wrong, but I love you.)