Poll of the Week: Disappointing Destinations

[SarahS]

What do you do when you're disappointed or underwhelmed with a new place? Vote in our poll!

[Host Bonjour]

I literally cried when we got to Berlin.....my friends booked a nice, clean pension but it was in the former "East Berlin" near the Berlin Tower on the Alexanderstrasse. I'd been exhausted after getting literally NO sleep in Rostock or Guestrow because I was expected to sleep on lawn chairs in both places, which were nice. I'd simply never felt at ease being in the former east; it is hard to explain. So I told my friends I had to go to a hotel, whipped out my guide, made a few calls and headed over to the West side of Berlin and felt much better. A bed, TV, affordable room service in a three star hotel I got for a DEAL, touring the city after getting some rest. Believe it or not, things got worse as we returned to France but that's another story. It had nothing to do with France.

Fiji...........my DREAM destination ever since "Blue Lagoon" came out. I researched like crazy but did not end up choosing the right place to be. Despite having an immaculate, gorgeous bungalow on the beach (complete with my own gecko in the fridge) I learned I was not really in the safest place for a woman traveling alone. Instead of relocating as I did in Berlin (Berlin happened after Fiji, I was a more experienced traveler) I opted to leave Fiji and return to Australia. Ironically, while Down Under (either in Oz or NZ) I bought Paul Theroux's "The Happy Isles of Oceania" which was a travel memoir (he's awesome!!) because I'd finished my mobster memoir. Theroux's book turned out to have been what I'd have needed to have chosen the best place to go for my South Pacific adventure and that would have been The Cook Islands (though there were many awesome choices) but I'd not had that book before departing, while planning. Since that time, travel memoirs have always been a BIG part of my planning, along with IndependentTraveler.com, which I found when researching that entire trip, so these boards sure helped a lot too

No regrets though, it's all a part of who I am now as a traveler and much like life, not everything will always be peachy on a trip. Coping with it is something we all learn to do with experience, near or far.

I *do* hope I get a do-over in the South Pacific, though! My Kiwi friends sent photos of their trip to Rarotonga last winter (The Cooks) and I simply MUST get there. The other interest, from the book and related to the art question in another thread, are the Marquesas, where Gaugin lived out his days. More remote, but very intriguing. We'll see......