What's the worst vacation you ever had?

St Thomas. I was really excited for a chance to get back to the Caribbean. I should of realized I was really just going to tropical US. It was fucking horrible. Everything was SOOO ridiculously over priced. I was on a tropical island and couldn’t get fresh fruit anywhere. Worse than that, I couldn’t find fresh fish anywhere. Got up 3 of the days at 4am to go to the market and all they had was stuff that was imported. It was insane, lobsters flown down from Maine were cheaper than those caught 2 min off the cost. Salmon was also cheaper than red snapper somehow.

I spent the same amount in a week there that I spent in 4 months in C.A.

Two days in Paris with an autistic 8 year old boy and then knowing that my mother was dying of cancer thousands of miles away. As the holiday carried on, I managed to enjoy some time in Cannes. I threw a stone in the Mediterranean with a wish for my mother and lit a candle in an ancient French Catholic Chapel for her. My mother’s people came from France generations ago, so it had special meaning. It was bitter sweet.

I never had a bad vacation. Ever!

Gatlinburg, TN. It was my first time in the mountains. Most boring vacation of my entire life. I should’ve known better – the husband and I don’t go on vacation to relax or spend the whole time in bed. Having no kids gives us the luxury of not having to leave home or spend money in order to do either of those things. We go on vacation to have fun, and there was no fun to be had in Gatlinburg.

Never. Again.

We prefer to be big kids and go to Orlando, filling every single day with a different park, tanning it up, eating plenty of fattening foods, and returning to a nice, cool hotel room at the end of every evening. Relaxing? Psht!

Well, I was 6 months pregnant. Drove 13 hours to visit my husband’s family in Minnesota. Spent a week there. Got back on a Friday, and Saturday morning I got up and my sister and I flew to Georgia to spend a week with my dad. All that was very fun. I got back on a Saturday evening. Went to bed. Got up the next morning and promptly blew chow all over the breakfast table! That was not fun.

Last September was my Wife and I’s 27th wedding anniversary. We were going to leave on a mini-vacation. Unfortunately, my Mother (with Alzheimers) accused me of pushing her down and breaking her ribs. No bruising, probably caused by coughing or a bad sneeze (she is 83). I spent the weekend in Jail for being accused of Domestic Violence. By the time Monday came around, she had changed her story so many times, the prosecutor didn’t want to go to trial. But my city is a do-not-drop city. So I had to take a disorderly conduct. I am 6 months into my probation and no-contact. Actually it’s been pretty peaceful, but that mini-vacation never cleared the launching pad.

Disney World in Orlando Florida – this past May.

For years my daughter had zero interest in going to Disney. My wife and I went once over twenty years ago and I disliked it then, so I never pushed the issue. Disney is not really the problem, as I enjoy parts of it (Epcot in particular). It’s Florida and its disgusting weather.

Surprisingly though, this year, at the ripe old age of eleven, my daughter says she’d like to go to Disney. Weather in May looked okay (80s, 70% humidity), and we figured it’s now or never. Plus, we got a really good deal.

The day we get there, the weather shifts, and it was 97ºF with 100% humidity the whole week we were there. UGH.

We were miserable and cranky as hell the first two days. Day three we started to get used to it and had an okay time at Epcot. By day four, we were all ready to collapse. Day five we spent in the hotel room sleeping in the air conditioning.

It is the only vacation where I felt worse after the vacation than before.

I will never set foot in tat miserable state again.

runners up
A car trip to Montreal where the other couple we went with argued nonstop the entire trip.

A lovely four days in London derailed because I came down with the flu.

90 days in County jail when I was 18.

Thailand, Chang Mai and Chang Rai. The vacations was awful. But not because of the location. It was awful because my 5 year old son was sick and kept getting sicker as the days dragged on. We ended up putting him in the back of a pickup truck and driving to a local hospital in Chang Rai. The waiting room experience was terrible. People were in such bad shape, so many noises and coughing, emaciated people, and there was my son: no bones showing just lethargic. The doctor finally saw us and after an exam and a test or two said “This boy is very sick. He has a bronchial pneumonia and needs antibiotics now.” They gave us the meds and a bill and in 2 days he was back to normal. It cost 25 cents for the hospital charge and doctor’s visit, and $5.00 for the meds. That’s it!
We still have the receipt.

Probably the summer I was around 6 and was diagnosed with a mild case of polio. I had to stay indoors for weeks. No after-effects, in case you’re wondering.

Balaton. Cut my foot open on a mussel. twice.

@majorrich I’ve dealt with Alzheimer’s. What really happened to your mom?

Why would I want to retell and relive such an experience? You are cruel…

I haven’t had a bad vacation. It’s not work after all. But I had a strange one one year. I have to book my hotel rooms well in advance where I like to stay. So one year I picked September 14, of 2001. That was weird.

Where were you vacationing @Adirondackwannabe?

Where else, Lake Placid. The NY Islanders were in town for training camp.

@Dutchess_III we believe she got tangled up in her blankets and hit the bedpost, but was embarrassed to say that. Not enough drama. She got really mean all of a sudden last summer. She is now in a care facility.

My mom used to accuse people of crazy stuff too.

@livelaughlove21 AHHH f’ing Gatlinburg. My back yard unfortunately. Where else can you play count the mullets and run out of fingers to count with. It’s like a big flea market, carnival and time share sales pitch all rolled up together in one giant soul sucking piece of crap.

I have not had a bad vacation. They have all been good.

@majorrich It makes sense that your mother would have tripped and fallen while getting out of bed. But, is it possible that she had no memories of the incident? She might not have been going for drama, or trying to hurt you, when she made her allegations. They might have been very real to her.

Alzheimer’s patients misplace items and accuse friends/family members of having stolen them. They eat substantial meals and then rant about being starved to death. They’ll complain that they’re being neglected and ignored by caretakers, sometimes just a few minutes after receiving kind, attentive care.

My own mother is in late-stage Alzheimer’s. She recently told a nurse that I often grab her arms and repeatedly slap her hands and wrists (I don’t hit people, and I certainly don’t hit my elderly mother!). She tells the nursing home personnel that I haven’t been to visit in months, even though they all saw me there earlier the same day.

These things are just stops along the way on Alzheimer’s cruel path. What amazes me about your story, though, is that fact that you were arrested and held in jail. Surely, the police officers should been able to recognize A.D. symptoms and understand the behavior. It might have been reasonable to ask you to leave the house for a few hours and let the incident pass, but incarcerating you wasn’t the right approach.

They were pretty mean and kept trying to get me to agree to stories they cooked up somewhere. Even hooked me up to a voice stress machine. I wouldn’t take any bait and they got angry. Maybe that was where I went wrong. My attorney said I talked too much because I kept pointing out holes in their stories, as if taunting them.

Last year’s visit to a relative.

I became an unpaid babysitter for all the kids there.

That family was dysfunctional. The kids’ parents were always busy with their work, to the point that they seemed to have not much time for their kids. They could only keep the kids in one place using TV. But the kids didn’t just like TV. They wanted more. So when I came they got a whole lot “games” for me. To make the matter worse, they had an unseen “dirty” mind that only I could notice.

I am fine with kids, but those kids just drove me crazy!

It’s painful @majorrich. When my Mom was in the early stages she bought a sling shot for my son, who was only 13 at the time. He asked her to buy it because you had to be 18 to buy it because it was a weapons-grade sling shot, used for hunting. I had no idea she had done this, and my son had hidden it from me.
First time out he and a friend accidentally broke out a guys back car window. I just thank God they never accidentally hit another person.
To pay for his share of the damage my son had to give up all the money he’d been saving for a YEAR to get a bike.
I really blamed my Mom, more than anyone. When I broached the subject with her all she said was, “Well, that’s too bad. But that’s just the way it goes sometimes.” Her attitude was as though she had nothing to do with the whole situation. I sometimes wonder if she even remembered that she’d bought the damn thing for him. If I had pushed any further, she would have gotten very, very angry that I would imply that any of that could possibly have been her fault.

@Dutchess_III ^^^ That’s a very sad story. The first signs of dementia are loss of short-term memory and irrational behavior. If you mother has still been mentally healthy, she likely wouldn’t have done something so irresponsible as buying a lethal weapon for a child. And, she probably had no memory of having done so. During the early stages, most people can tell you about things that happened during 1945, and with complete accuracy, but can’t recall yesterday or last week.

Well….she’s never had the best sense of judgement. When my son was born, in 1987, she came to visit me. I ran a professional daycare and I was scheduled for an inspection. I busted my butt cleaning the house, etc. Finally everything was ready. Nurse knocked on the door and I brought her in. We walked over to the stairs leading to the basement…and my mother had thrown the contents of the dirty clothes basket down the stairs to be picked up and carried to the wash room later. That was a major hazard in case we needed to get to the basement because of a tornado.
I was written up for it.
I talked to my mother and she just said, “I just threw them down there to get started!”
I said, “I know why you did it, but I got written up for it.”
She said, “Well, that’s just stupid.” Never did apologize. This was 10 years before the sling shot event.
She often did exactly the wrong thing so consistently and at such critical times that I wonder if she had some subconscious thing going on.