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Milan
I am CRAZY about Italy, but after seeing the ancient and medieval wonders of Rome, Venice, Verona, and Florence...well... there is not much in Milan outside of the Duoma and Castle Sforza. I didn't care to stand on line to see the Last Supper, or go to the lake, as we have plenty of those in the US. Milan is a big, modern, fashionable and self-important place. I don't care for any of that, and about the biggest thrill that I had was running into a nice statue of Gieseppe Garibaldi.
Las Vegas
I love going to the desert for its infernal beauty. Then you get to Vegas, and are assaulted from all angles by a tacky sort of anti-elegance which just is not good for the soul. Does anyone really have a good time losing their shirt gambling? I am not into meth, hookers, or glitzy shows either. You can have it.
LOS ANGELES
What the hell exactly is Hollywood, anyway? A sign in the hills, an amusement park tour, and a sidewalk with stars all over it? Other than that, drug addicts, perverts, gang members and other assorted deadbeats give it its character. What a dump.
THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING
Has just lost a lot of its significance. Last time I went to NY, I stumbled onto it and did not even realize that I was looking at it.
TIME'S SQUARE
My wife did not even believe that was all there was to it--some glittzy signs and people running around in costumes.
PORTLAND, OREGON
This has all the makings of a beuatiful, unique, sleepy and yet vibrant little city with its own local color, and it has some of the best food I have ever eaten. All of that is utterly ruined by the hordes of meth-heads running around causing trouble. Far from dissuading them, the locals seem to think they make he place avant-gard or something. A part of me adores this place, but I just can't patronize a completely lawless city.
I have a few others, but I would love to hear some of yours instead!
Portlanders think they're god's gift to America and will stop at nothing to make anybody and everybody understand that. It has all the "makings" you described but really falls short of doing anything with them. Really it's a dirty, smelly, braindead, drug-addled wide spot along I-5 where the locals' lot in life is to get up, drink some beer, think about taking a shower, drink some more beer, post some propaganda on social media, drink some more beer, remember that you earlier thought about taking a shower, say "sod it" and drink some more beer, pass out, rinse and repeat. You can sometimes replace the "drink some beer" with "shoot some meth" and it'll have the same effect. I used to like Portland [sic] 20-odd years ago when it was not as provincial, arrogant and jerkoffish as it is today, but that ship has sailled and there's no turning back. Its days of quiet charm and joy are long behind it.
Potland is the dump where all your drug addicts, perverts, gang members and other assorted deadbeats who couldn't make it in the City of Fallen Angels end up.
I take it you didn't see Gresham? That'd run a very close second on my disappointing places and sights list next to Potland, if not a photo finish.
Aberdeen/Hoquiam/Cosmopolis, WA. Take everything that depresses or disappoints you about Portland, combine it with the trashy redneck ambience of Gresham and Tigard, wrap them altogether in a big smelly wad and ship it all out to the Washington coast. Need I say more? The Ghettodeen area at least has the advantage of being NEAR the coast rather than along a dirty-ass river that doubles as the local sewage treatment facility when a passing shower hits. The same can be said about Ocean Snores with the exception that they're actually ON the coast instead of just along the bay.
South Bend, WA. Give me Raymond any day. You'd never believe it from just driving through but it's actually the county seat of Grays Harbor County. Seriously.
Goldendale, WA. I guess it was once a fairly thriving small community before the mill shut down and it's been slowly dying ever since. The only thing redeeming it is the mountain viewpoint and the motocross track just outside of town. I'd give it maybe another 20 years before it completely dries up and dies. Outside of a little bit of new development on IIRC the west and south ends the city looks and feels like it hasn't seen any renewal since maybe the Kennedy administration.
God, I mean, it's this whole region has just gone down the S'er over at least the past 20 years or so. You can at least go to Gifford Pinchot or somewhere like that to escape into peaceful bliss for a while but there's dreading the reality that you have to leave eventually.
I've not seen Times Square in person but people have told me basically how you've described it. It's like "oh, uh, yeah, I'm in Times Square. Um, whoop whoop. Ba ba ba-da-dum, ba ba ba-da-dum?"
Disappointment is often a reflection of the mind of the beholder. I regularly run into situations where people gripe about how insignificant something is when I found great significance in it, and similarly I often am caught off guard by situations that people gush about that I had found insignificant.
I'm not saying that everything has great significance. Rather, what I think is safe to say is that anything anyone highlights as significant is significant even if we all don't see it (that is, unless that person is highlighting significance for their own personal gain).
Stonehenge. Waste of a day in a country with so many other things to see and experience.
Hawaii. Sorry - we visited four different islands and both sides of the big island. The beaches were narrow in width and most of the islands are commercialized AND expensive tourist havens. Want a beach in the US? I'll take Florida. Want a rainforest? Costa Rica.
Talliesin, Arcosanti, Sedona (downtown only - the rest is beautiful) and the Heard Museum in Arizona.
Never been to portland, and now you've kinda turned me off.
Dallas. -hot weather....aristocratic arrogance. Melded with gun toting gotta an attitude misfits.
Been to all coastline beaches....the new England states seem to have a bit of character to them.
Florida...entire beach lines are filth after enjoying the likes of South Pacific and St Thomas. Looking forward to Spain and Greece. ..doubt they'll be a disapptment ...Florida left the bar pretty low...
Other than that, we've been incredibly lucky in picking lovely places. One place I do like is Prague. But this is mainly because haven been there a lot on work assignments, and I've found the parts of the city that are either pretty empty of tourists, or have a festive atmosphere. We just got back from there and enjoyed a hide-away B&B behind the Castle and, actually, the Christmas festivities in the Square around the Clock Tower at night.
We also used to go the Abruzzo region a lot, but the small towns where we have stayed before have almost become completely uninhabited, only a few old people left.
Except for Paris and Prague, almost every place we vacation in Europe is rural and small.
Times Square and Hollywood Boulevard for the same reason. They may have been iconic in past times, like maybe the 1930s, but today they are both just tired tourist traps with strange people, "actors" I suppose they like to call themselves, dressed in strange costumes trying to earn a living by accosting tourists and trying to make them pay for the "privilege" of seeing a modern day faux Marilyn Monroe or C-3PO.
Las Vegas, although honestly, I didn't go into it expecting it to be great because it is everything that I normally avoid in life. It was even seedier than I thought it would be and the R-rated rolling billboards advertising women for sale were completely repulsive.
Leaning Tower of Pisa
Not sure what I expected. I just thought it would be bigger, but there's nothing to it. It just .... leans.
There is the history of it, though.
BTW: The most impressive was the North Rim of Grand Canyon. I stood there with my camera in hand wondering how I could possibly capture enough of it to convey to others what I was seeing.
I have seen wonderful things in all my travels. I am actually almost never disappointed. I have driven through 49 states, worked in several countries and visited several others - 20, in all.
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