The underwhelming travel experiences that deserve zero-star ratings

Did the crowded souks of Marrakech induce a panic attack? Did that “must-visit” restaurant leave you retching? Perhaps your purse was pinched walking Barcelona’s La Rambla? Well, my friend, you are not alone. Travel experts have shared their personal “zero-star” experiences from a lifetime on the road.

The Mona Lisa, France

The Mona Lisa disappointment begins before you have even entered the Louvre. After queueing for hours, Australian and other non-EU visitors must now cough up €32 ($52) while European residents are charged just €22.

These days, all corridors in the Louvre are plastered with an A4 printout of da Vinci’s grinning subject, with arrows showing the quickest route to the artwork. It is a sad indictment of the modern world, and reminds me of the arrows in Venice that point to St Mark’s Square and Rialto Bridge, as if there’s nothing of worth in between. Yet 80 per cent of Louvre visitors do follow the arrows.

Once you get there, you find yourself in a room filled with sharp-elbowed tourists, 99 per cent of whom enjoy the artwork through their smartphone screen.

Even if the pit of raised arms and pouting selfie faces didn’t bother you, due to the distance constraints, and the small size of the artwork, and the bullet-proof glass in front of it, it is impossible to truly appreciate the intricacies of da Vinci’s masterpiece.

Standing before the world’s most famous painting should be a life-affirming experience. Instead, if you’re anything like me, as the Mona Lisa’s eyes follow you out of the room, you will be left feeling empty. – Greg Dickinson

Land’s End, England

Travellers love the edges of things, the ends of things, the extremities. They are goals. They signify arrival. They invite deep reflection on the journey made, and the next road to take.

Land’s End looks prominent, sharp, and remote on a map. When you walk, or drive, or cycle there, you are full of anticipation. Will there be a sense of finality? Will you feel the power of the Atlantic? Will your mind expand when only water lies before you?

What you get is a car park, a cup of tea, a scone, a shop selling fudge, a golf adventure (£21.50 [$40.57]), Wallace and Gromit (£16.50), and – new for 2026 – a fireworks and drone show (price TBC).

I’m sorry, but that’s not why I go to the ends of the Earth. What is it about the British and their naff theme parks and “visitor attractions”?

Cornwall is already far too “curated” and branded, with too many supposedly hip bars and restaurants, in-places and exorbitant boutique hotels. Land’s End should be given back to nature as a symbolic act of Cornish liberation. Cars should be compelled to pull up well away from the dramatic tip, so that people can experience it as a walk to the wild, weather-blasted limit of the land. – Chris Moss

Dining in the dark

“The first bite is with the eyes,” wealthy Roman gourmand Apicius is said to have opined in the first century BC (I like to imagine between mouthfuls of stuffed dormice).

It’s a truth that pertained from the dawn of human history until 1999, when the first tourist-facing “dining in the dark” restaurant, Blindekuh (Blind Cow), opened in Zurich, Switzerland.

Many other such establishments (Dans Le Noir, Nox, O.Noir...) sprang up, from New York to Nairobi. On the one hand, the fad is noble: to simulate blindness and encourage empathy towards blind serving staff. Its other aim, to heighten diners’ sense of taste and smell and thereby increase our gustatory pleasure, has always been suspect.

I have abidingly weird memories of calling for my waiter Wolfgang (“Volfgang... erm Volfgang???“) in Berlin’s Nocti Vagus, with a mouth full of something indistinguishably fishy and a sense of rising panic. In a world where the sight of sheening butter on baguette in Paree, and the jewel-like twinkle of a Sicilian granita, brings us so much joy, dark dining is a black night for the soul. – Sally Howard

Plymouth Rock, US

You have to be careful when offering even the most gentle criticism of American icons. People can become awfully defensive when you start saying unflattering things about starred-and-striped sacred cows. So a tin hat is required for this entry. But here goes...

Plymouth Rock is an enormous pile of nonsense. Actually, I’ll correct that: it’s a medium-sized pile of nonsense. I once spent a day driving down from Boston to look at what is supposedly the exact spot where the English settlers aboard the Mayflower stepped onto the fresh soil of the New World, in December 1620. What I found was an unremarkable lump of granite with a stodgy seam of cement down its middle – the result of its being broken and glued back together more than 250 years ago.

It sits below a grand, 16-columned portico in the Massachusetts town with which it shares its name. The contrast only helps to make this pale boulder look even less impressive than it already is.

Is it the very place where the Plymouth Pilgrims came ashore? There was no written reference to it until 1715, 95 years after the ship had docked.

So here is an impertinent suggestion: you’ve just spent 10 weeks on an unfriendly ocean, in increasingly wintry conditions. You have fled religious persecution for an unknown continent, with no guarantee of survival. Is your first statement going to be “Hey, we should keep a record of the precise bit of stone where we jumped off the boat, because it may be important, and our descendants are going to want to flog souvenir tat to tourists 400 years from now?!” – Chris Leadbeater

Beatles Ashram, India

It was July 2012 when my then-boyfriend and I arrived in Rishikesh – “yoga capital of the world”, old-school haven of meditation on the banks of the Ganges – after several weeks of backpacking through a frenetic India.

He was a life-long Beatles fan, and eagerly anticipating one of our trip’s major highlights: Chaurasi Kutia, the world-famous ashram where the band had lived and composed much of The White Album in 1968. Not technically open to the public, it was (and still is) a popular pilgrimage site.

We made the long walk in spectacular heat, eventually arriving at a set of gates, moss-covered and wrapped with encroaching jungle. Beyond them, dense foliage had retaken the site, suffused with an air of quiet unease and a lingering smell of urine.

Nevertheless, we began to slowly pick our way through the undergrowth towards the meditation caves – and then, the sadhus appeared. Naked, bedraggled and clearly squatters in the derelict ashram, these were some of the many impostor sages we’d already encountered in the town. They began to charge at us, wailing and waving sticks, so we fled – and decided perhaps we’d stick to Abbey Road and the Cavern Club in future. – Gemma Knight-Gilani

The equator

I had a mouthful of roasted guinea pig when my tour guide broke the news: this theme park to mark the middle of the world, he whispered, with its giant globe and equatorial line, with its model villages and street hawkers, with its ersatz cultural performances and day-tripping families, was built in the wrong place. The real equator, he said, is 240 metres further north.

But what about those demonstrations we had just witnessed with those excited children; the science experiments supposedly only possible on the equator? The water definitely ran clockwise and counter-clockwise down the drain, didn’t it? He shook his head. Fake, he said. A sham.

I felt deflated, tricked. Ecuador is named after the world’s waistband, the least it can do is get its location right. Still, GPS inaccuracies had done little to dampen enthusiasm for Ciudad Mitad del Mundo (“Middle of the World”). I looked around at the smiling families, the merry street hawkers, the grinning performers, and swallowed my disbelief for a moment with another mouthful of guinea pig. – Gavin Haines

All VR experiences

“Immerse yourself in the glory and grandeur of ancient Egypt!“, say the marketing materials. “Feel the thrill of true flight as you soar in safety above Iguazu Falls!” “Live and breathe the authentic experience of working atop New York’s tallest skyscraper!”

And then – $60 later – they strap a lump of Woolworthsy plastic to your head and inflict some 1980s home computer graphics on your eyeballs for eight minutes or until the juddering visuals start to make you feel nauseous, whichever comes sooner.

That’s if you’re fortunate enough to be spared the deluxe version, of course, which comes with a sort of high-tech jerkin. The one I tried at a Viking museum in Iceland realistically simulated the blood and iron of all-out Berserker warfare by... vibrating lightly every time an augmented-reality enemy impaled me with a spear.

VR? Very Rubbish. – Ed Grenby

The ‘Welcome to Las Vegas’ sign

Tourist traps are rife in Vegas. But one stands out above all as being more anticlimactic and inexplicably popular than any other: the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign.

The tourism bureau will tell you it’s iconic. Perhaps that might have been so in the 1960s, when the sign still represented the end of your desert drive and the start of Sin City. These days, it’s a crappy little relic on an unremarkable part of the Strip, where first-timers queue for 45 minutes in order to get the same photo as everyone else.

It’s also a haven for petty scammers who politely offer to take your picture before going into loan-shark mode as they demand a $US40 ($55) tip. Also, don’t forget your sun hat: with zero shade, the time in the queue makes you feel like the poor little ants who get blasted by the magnifying glass of a sociopathic child in some vintage comic book. – Robert Jackman

The ‘Venice of Peru’

The guidebook we had been following as zealous young backpackers painted Belen market in Iquitos rather romantically. A floating market? On the Amazon River? Selling rare fruits, herbal remedies and traditional handmade crafts? We couldn’t clamber into the boat-bound for “the Venice of Peru” fast enough.

What the book did not mention was that in the low-water season (of which we were in the middle) the market sat, sinking into a muddy riverbank. It was while navigating the slippery passages between stalls that I was hit by something slipperier: some caiman guts that had flown off a meat cleaver.

The book had been accurate in one way by describing it as colourful. It must have been referring to the lumps of yellow-footed tortoise or the pink dolphin testicles, which we continued to dodge as they journeyed through the air. And if by “buzzing” the writer meant “with flies”, then credit is due there too. – Nuria Cremer-Vazquez

Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin

Overtourism is a disease that usually blights beauty spots, but in Berlin it’s a modern eyesore that’s overrun by sightseers with selfie-sticks.

After the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in 1989, the most famous crossing point Checkpoint Charlie became a natural focus for celebrations and commemorations. Initially, the mood was upbeat yet suitably respectful. But now this iconic site has become a victim of its own success.

Today Checkpoint Charlie is besieged by coach parties and tour groups, and loads of souvenir stalls and fast-food outlets have sprouted up around it. The atmosphere feels completely wrong for what should be a sombre memorial to the many Berliners who died trying to cross this cruel border.

The authorities have tried to stem the tide, clamping down on actors in fake uniforms who pose with tourists (for a fee), but so long as this replica booth remains (the original was removed in 1990), this site will be a tacky tourist trap, rather than a place of solemn reflection. – William Cook

The Telegraph, London