Any votes for Salzburg? Not that I don't like Salzburg, and Hohensalzberg is wonderful looming over the old city. But they've toursitified Mozart so much it will make you gag. As someone said about Papeete, it doesn't live up to the descriptions as "magical." The service in the old city often rude, too, and I very rarely encounter rude service.

Not to mention those teeth. Yikes! :D

It's wonderful there for Mozartfest, and also try Bayreuth when they do Wagner ^

I don't think Tampa/St. Pete are overrated...every guide I've seem calls those two as they see it, which isn't terrible but not too great either. Best thing about Tampa is the airport. Bern's Steakhouse is pretty good. Rest of it is....blah. If I start seeing glowing reviews about Tampa everywhere, then I'll change my mind about its overratedness.

Most overrated: Orlando. Talk about a city that gets more ink than just about anything west of Paris. 98% of it is a complete cultural wasteland, a shining example of everything that's wrong about America, and the 2% of it that is semicharming is only so in a fakish sort of way (e.g., Winter Park). OK, about 2 square blocks of Thornton Park are genuinely interesting for an hour or two, but that's it. Look at it this way: Florida has exactly one thing in its favor - beaches. So why do people gravitate to a part of the state that is about as far away from beaches as you can get?

On the plus side, there is 1 pretty darn good Starwood there - the Westin Grand Bohemian. Oddly enough, it probably goes completely overlooked by most visitors.

Yeah, I don't think this city is rated, but I hate it anyways b/c it stole my appendix! :mad:

I was going to mention Orlando, but didn't want to pick on FL too much :D

I admit I've never been there for Mozartfest. I love Mozart, but it seemed every little shop had a bookshelf compact system (one even a boombox) with Mozart playing, and often not a particularly good recording.

Wow! This thread is unbelieveable. I've been to most of the cities that are so called "overrated" on this thread and like all of them. Sydney? Are you kidding? That's the easiest town in the world to womanize in. I mean the Sheilas are really quite loose despite of their enormous calf muscles and broad backs :p

L.A., Bangkok, NYC, Orlando, etc. ? C'mon folks don't you know how to have a good time?

I've spent about six weeks in London, cumulative/lifetime. The first 10 days or so was as a standard American tourist, and I have to admit that by the end of that trip I was pretty soured on the place. You can only take so many Towers of London, Portrait Galleries, Palaces, and stores selling kitschy souvenirs of the Tube logo, Big Ben, phone boxes, etc. After that trip, it would have been high on my "overrated" list. It felt like a tourist trap in the worst way.

But after that, when I was living elsewhere in the UK, we would go in to the London area for long weekends and stay with friends who lived in other neighborhoods. (Think those Tube zones 3 and higher than most tourists never see.) I really came to enjoy London's neighborhoods, markets, and eccentricities a lot more after I had a little bit of local guidance around the place. London definitely has a lot of gritty neighborhoods that aren't easy to get to know well, but I came to enjoy those weekends greatly. I think you could spend years there and always find something new to do on any given weekend.

I know...I know...you were out for a hard night of drinking and were about to go home with two hotties...next thing you know, you wake up in a bathtub full of ice and written in lipstick on the mirror is "Call 911"...


...not wait, those are kidneys. Never mind. ;)

OK, I'll bite: where are the hotties in Orlando? ;)

I mean PDX, but I like PWM too.

Oh c'mon! :eek: How could that determine the quality of the town?

Did you try getting a ticket to listen to chamber music in the palace before you went there? Did you do any research in advance of visiting the monastery carved into the rock below Hohensalzburg, or any of the other very cool architecture? How 'bout dancing and gambling with some Heidi, or SO, at the Winkler casino that looks down over the city? How 'bout fruhstuck in the morning at a nice cafe? Salzburg rocks! I have had lots of happy trips there.

I want you to go back and do it over again! :D This time do it better.

M8

Try Ybor's martini bar downtown, for starters.

M8

Yikes! :eek: That happened to me on a Thanksgiving night.

M8