Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Friday, August 30. 2013

Vacation Trips: An end-of-summertime Scientificalistic Poll

People always talk about the places they'd like to see or to visit. It's a big world. Most everybody has a bucket list.


We Maggie's Yankee sorts morally preen ourselves in our Go Go Hi Ho spirit of vacations and travel. We are not beach-sitters, and we all suck at golf. 


But today we present a different sort of travel poll.


What are some of the places where you would never, ever, want to go - even if you lived forever and if money were no object?


I'll start with just a few of mine:


Saudi Arabia
Las Vegas
Disney World
The Moon
Miami
Mexico City
Moscow
Uganda
Dubai
Detroit

Toronto
Glasgow

Posted by The Barrister in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 13:03 | Comments (30) | Trackbacks (0)

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I took a lovely vacation in Mexico City in the late 1970s. Great street food, charming cheap old hotel in La Zona Rosa. But I have to admit that every time I tried to return in later years it was not the same.
#1 Texan99 on 2013-08-30 13:02 (Reply)
I've spent extensive amounts of time in the top 3 - no desire to return to any.
#2 NJSoldier on 2013-08-30 13:12 (Reply)
Too many trips across the Pacific in a DC6 turned me into a homebody.

Motels are the same everywhere in the world.

I haven't been more than 30 miles from home in years.
#3 rhhardin (Link) on 2013-08-30 13:26 (Reply)
Vegas is a great place to live, but the live-and-let-live life isn't for everyone.

my won't-go-back/visit/live list starts with industrial quaint New England, and includes:

Moscow
Salt Lake City
New Jersey (anywhere)
Boston
Juarez, Mexico
Laos
North Korea
Darfur
Hubei Province, China
#4 wirraway on 2013-08-30 13:33 (Reply)
England--the level of surveillance weirds me out.
Italy--I've been twice, and both times I was appalled by the inefficiency and general attitude of the Italians. Nothing seemed to work.
#5 Park Slope Pubby on 2013-08-30 13:42 (Reply)
Worried about surveillance? Why are you singling England out? England has come to the US!
#5.1 mudbug on 2013-08-30 22:22 (Reply)
My no go list includes:
Any muslim country
France
Most of sub sahara Africa
Mexico
Most of South and Central America

I guess I don't want to go where I am not welcome.
#6 Blick on 2013-08-30 13:49 (Reply)
You beat me to it. I was going to say all of sub-Saharan Africa.

Paris is supposed to be nice as long as you stay in the city and never venture into the ring of slums surrounding it.
#6.1 Freddie Sykes on 2013-08-30 22:51 (Reply)
My sister and I took a nice trip to France last year, starting in Paris and looping through the countryside in the south. Everyone was uniformly nice to us. My sister has decent French, but they were even nice about my abominable version and tried hard to understand me and to make themselves understood.

I didn't get a bad cup of coffee or a bad piece of bread or cheese the entire time we were there, not even in airports or railway stations.
#6.2 Texan99 on 2013-08-31 11:21 (Reply)
I like to add the "when" factor for these "what if's".

Vegas would be cool to visit in the 1950's or 60's, but you couldn't pay me to visit there today.
I could probably say the same for Miami.
#7 LS (Link) on 2013-08-30 14:08 (Reply)
Too late for me. I've already been to all the bad places. Several time to a lot of them. (retired Air Force transport pilot)
#8 BillH on 2013-08-30 15:02 (Reply)
I think I'll take a vacation from this blog. This is a ridiculous post. Miami? Really? My wife, born and raised there, has shown me want a great town it can be. And some fool said "New Jersey", where I live and quite like thank you. Negativity isn't much of an attraction, but fortunately there are other blogs.
#9 MTF on 2013-08-30 15:28 (Reply)
New Jersey is astoundingly beautiful. I'm sure there are cities, and especially areas of cities, that aren't so great, but that's no surprise for any state. Nevertheless, the countryside is a knockout.

I've got no problem with Miami, either, though it's not really my style.
#9.1 Texan99 on 2013-08-31 11:25 (Reply)
It would be easier for me to list my go-to places.
Europe
Russia
Australia
North America
I don't care to visit any other part of the planet. At my age, I can be a curmudgeon and avoid cultures that don't interest me or 3rd world hell-holes.
#10 missred on 2013-08-30 16:08 (Reply)
International Falls MN in the winter
Yuma AZ in the summer
San Francisco (which used to be a fav of mine but is now too stinking liberal and inhabited by weird aliens from outer space)
#11 Agent Cooper on 2013-08-30 17:06 (Reply)
Wow.
Rome sucks? London, Kent, The Lake District?
Paris? Really? The Muse D' Orsay? Normandy, too?

Allow me to interject this thought. If they wiped Park Slope off the 'effing map, who the hell would give a shit?

Incredible.
#12 Scull an on 2013-08-30 17:17 (Reply)
Wow.
Rome sucks? London, Kent, The Lake District?
Paris? Really? The Muse D' Orsay? Normandy, too?

Allow me to interject this thought. If they wiped Park Slope off the 'effing map, who the hell would give a sh*t.

Incredible.
#13 Scullman on 2013-08-30 17:19 (Reply)
pretty nasty, and I'm a nice 63-year-old lady who teaches Sunday School. I just happen to feel that way, and surely it's kind of fun to stir the pot a little. You want to wipe me off the face of the earth?
#13.1 Park Slope Pubby on 2013-08-30 19:17 (Reply)
Oh please, enough. Really. Enjoy Brooklyn, already.
#13.1.1 Scullman on 2013-08-30 19:25 (Reply)
Have a good night!
#13.1.1.1 Park Slope Pubby on 2013-08-30 19:28 (Reply)
You're too harsh on Glasgow and Toronto.

My first visit to Glasgow I flew into Heathrow and took a Virgin train up the West Coast rail line. Got off in Glasgow station about 8 pm on a Saturday night.

The place was filled with young men in blue skirts, hooping and hollering. It was a bit disconcerting! Turns out Scotland had just won a big international soccer match and everyone was celebrating.

The big downside to any visit to Scotland is that locals expect you to try haggis.

Toronto was fun - Canadians are happy to remind Americans that we tried to invade THREE TIMES!

Granted I was in both towns during the summer.
#14 Whitehall on 2013-08-30 18:11 (Reply)
Canadians are happy to remind Americans that we tried to invade THREE TIMES!

Only when they try to rewrite history...

TC (The Canuck)

Ps. ..and lost!... ;-)}
#14.1 Garry on 2013-08-31 17:16 (Reply)
Toronto and Glasgow - please, do explain!?
#15 Charles on 2013-08-30 18:38 (Reply)
Permanently off my bucket list: Madha, Oman
#16 Agent Cooper on 2013-08-30 20:47 (Reply)
East St Louis.

But I prefer to think about places I enjoy. Go to Alaska in late June. Drive if you have the time and patience. The drive through Canada is incredible as is the drive through Alaska. Go fishing for big King Salmon on the Kenai river. Go out on the Cook Inlet fishing for Halibut. Fish for Sockeye Salmon at the confluence of the Russian and Kenai rivers. Fish for Silvers right from the rocks on Ressurection Bay in Seward. Drive to Denali National Park and spend a few days to a week in one of the most beautiful spots on earth. Drive to Fairbanks and get your picture taken under the Alaska pipeline (within inches of your head). Drive to Chicken Alaska and then take The Top Of The World Hihghway to Dawson Yukon Canada. Be suprised as suddenly around a blind turn the Yukon River becomes visible and you drive on to a tiny ferry to get across. On the way back through Canada head South on The Cassiar Highway Instead of driving the same route back over the Alaska Highway. A beautiful trip with wildlife at every turn (well some of the turns). I love Canada and Canadians. They are just like Americans but with common sense.
#17 GoneWithTheWind on 2013-08-30 20:50 (Reply)
I'd LOVE to be able to go to the Moon!

But after 21 years in the Navy, I've been 7/8ths of the way around the world, with not much desire to travel.

I'd live to visit Australia, Ireland and Scotland, but not if it meant I would have to travel to get there.
#18 Ken Mitchell on 2013-08-30 22:54 (Reply)
hmm, been to Moscow, Miami, Las Vegas, and very briefly Dubai (switched planes there, didn't even leave the terminal building).

Moscow is worth a visit, get a good look at the architecture, all the way from 17th century Russian classiness to Stalinist supersized kitch.

Miami and Las Vegas I agree, waste of time.

Would love to visit the moon, it would mean we're back and having a serious space program that can put people on the moon cheaply and reliably.
Even if there's nothing for me to do that alone is worth doing it for.

more places to not visit:
- Amsterdam
- Rotterdam
- New York
- Boston
- Paris
- Birmingham
- Manchester
- the USA (though if they dismantle the TSA and return the place to being the land of the free and the home of the brave I'll reconsider, but I don't see that happening in my lifetime, however much longer it turns out to be).
- Egypt (sadly, would love to see Abu Simbel and the pyramids, but as long as there's jihadis in power there...).
- Iran
#19 J.T. Wenting on 2013-08-31 07:06 (Reply)
I have been to Dubai twice for work and have no interest in ever going back. It's a playground for the rich with no history and it takes 13 hours to get there from Atlanta, after which you have to spend an hour standing in line to get through their immigration process, which uses the unfair multi-line, multi-server model, ie, you are always in the slowest line.
#20 class factotum (Link) on 2013-08-31 09:46 (Reply)
Aside from North Korea, I have interest in all things and all people. Can't think of a place, offhand, that I wouldn't want to visit otherwise.

My wife, however, will never ever go to anyplace in Asia or India.

For some reason, I have no idea why, I'm very interested in seeing places like Bangladesh, Pakistan and Kazakhstan.

Papua New Guinea would be extremely interesting.

Syria, Libya and Egypt - for the time being - would be off limits.
#21 Bulldog on 2013-08-31 10:18 (Reply)
Anywhere with snow or ice.
Alaska
Artic
Antarctic
Siberia
NK
Most of Canada

Precipitation should flow and run off in the gutters. It should NEVER lay around on the ground and pile up and foul things up. NEVER! I'm not going there. There's a reason that I live in Florida. Always have. I generally travel in the summer time or early fall. Never, never in winter. Why leave?
#22 Larry Geiger on 2013-09-01 17:19 (Reply)

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