10 Most Overrated & Disappointing Cities We’ve Ever Visited
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You’ve seen the glossy photos. You’ve read the glowing reviews. But not every city lives up to the hype.
After exploring more than 450 cities, we’ve seen how different a place can feel once you’re actually on the ground. Like most travellers, we’ve had trips we planned carefully and paid good money for, only to arrive and have the disappointment set in almost immediately.
In this post, we’re sharing 10 of our least favourite cities we’ve ever visited. It includes a European capital that felt oddly flat, a US city where traffic eats up half your day, and a Southeast Asian favourite where the stream of motorbikes turns crossing the street an effort.
These are places we arrived excited for, but quickly realised they didn’t offer the experience we were looking for in a great city trip.
1. Dubai, UAE 🇦🇪
We spent about a week and a half in Dubai during the World Expo, which gave us plenty of time to see the city beyond a quick stopover. And to be fair, the Expo itself was fantastic. That part alone made the trip worthwhile for us.
But outside of that, Dubai didn’t really click.
The biggest issue for us was how unwalkable it is. We’re used to cities where you can explore on foot, stumble across places, and feel the city around you. In Dubai, you’re almost always in a car, stuck in traffic, or moving between malls.
There’s very little street life, and that changes the overall atmosphere day to day. A lot of the city also comes across as artificial. Everything is bigger, newer, more luxurious, and more expensive, but not always more enjoyable.
Many activities come with high price tags, and the social scene felt transactional and status-driven rather than relaxed or spontaneous.
Add the intense heat for much of the year, and it’s not a place we’d be excited to return to. We were impressed by the Burj Khalifa, and we genuinely loved the World Expo. But unless the Expo returns, it’s a city we won't need to ever visit again.
2. Naples, Italy 🇮🇹
Another city that looks incredible online is Naples: Vespa-filled streets, laundry hanging between buildings, pizza everywhere, and Mount Vesuvius in the background. Social media makes it look raw and romantic at the same time.
We stayed in Naples for a few days because of that exact hype, and honestly, it didn’t land for us… at all! In our opinion, it easily qualifies as the most overrated city in Italy.
Instead of feeling charming, we found it ugly, dirty, and very chaotic. The traffic is aggressive, the constant honking never really stops, and the crowds are overwhelming rather than lively.
We were also far more aware of pickpockets and scammers than in other Italian cities we’ve visited, which makes it hard to relax.
One of the highlights of the trip was actually leaving Naples for a day. Our visit to Pompeii was fascinating and turned out to be the only part of the trip we kept talking about afterwards.
Italy has so many cities we genuinely love and would happily return to, like Florence and Rome. For us, Naples isn’t one of them, and it’s a place we’d personally skip in favour of somewhere else next time.
Skip Naples, and go to Florence instead: If you’re planning an Italy trip and want a city with walkable streets and a strong atmosphere, Florence delivered everything Naples didn’t for us. Check out our easy Florence 2-day itinerary!
3. Bangkok, Thailand 🇹🇭
We visited Bangkok during a five-month trip through Asia, so we weren’t rushing through or seeing it with fresh-off-the-plane eyes. We had time to settle in and experience daily life there.
On social media, Bangkok’s temples, street food, colourful markets, and buzzing nightlife look incredibly exciting. In reality, it was one of the world's most overrated cities for us. We really struggled with how exhausting it felt day to day.
The biggest issues for us were walkability, traffic, and pollution. Bangkok is not a city you explore on foot. Sidewalks often don’t exist, are broken, or are blocked, which means you’re constantly navigating traffic instead.
We tried tuk-tuks a couple of times, but the pollution made it genuinely unpleasant. Breathing in exhaust fumes while stuck in traffic wasn’t something we wanted to repeat, so we quickly switched to Grab (the Southeast Asia version of Uber) just to get air conditioning and a break from the smell and noise.
Traffic is intense and chaotic, far beyond what social media shows. Plus, there’s constant noise and a lot of areas where poverty is hard to ignore.
The cleanest, calmest places often turned out to be shopping malls, which isn’t how we like to experience a city.
There were things we did enjoy: the temples were impressive, and the people were kind and welcoming. But even in shoulder season, many of the main sights felt very crowded, which took away from the experience for us.
4. Los Angeles, USA 🇺🇸
We’ve been to Los Angeles several times, first on a West Coast road trip, and later for work events and visiting friends. So, this isn’t a one-off visit or a bad day opinion.
Online, Los Angeles looks unbeatable: palm trees, golden sunsets, beaches, Hollywood, and that endless sense of glamour. In real life, the experience is much harder work.
The traffic there is relentless. Even after living in New York, LA traffic felt next level. The city is so spread out that you spend huge parts of the day sitting in a car, often just to get from one neighbourhood to another.
There’s also no real centre in the way many people expect. Downtown LA is mostly office buildings and doesn’t feel like the heart of the city.
The places people want to see are scattered miles apart, which makes the city seem disconnected rather than cohesive.
And the homelessness crisis there is impossible to ignore, and it shocked us as visitors. The contrast between extreme wealth and visible poverty is jarring.
The shine wears off quickly when you factor in the air pollution, the lack of strong public transport, and how underwhelming major sights like the Hollywood Walk of Fame turn out to be.
We have to admit that some beaches are genuinely beautiful. But as a city experience, Los Angeles never quite clicked for us, and it’s not somewhere we’d ever plan to go back to.
It might be a great place to live in the United States, but it’s not a great tourist city.
5. Oslo, Norway 🇳🇴
We really wanted to like Oslo, but as a city experience, it fell short for us.
It’s expensive even by Nordic standards (according to Numeo's data, Oslo is one of the most expensive cities globally), and the city centre feels surprisingly underwhelming.
There are very few streets or areas that make you want to keep walking, and much of the architecture is grey, post-war, and fairly bland.
Oslo is also smaller than many people expect. The historic centre is tiny, and once you’ve seen it, you’re quickly surrounded by generic buildings that don’t add much character.
Walking around didn’t give us that sense of discovery we look for in cities.
There were parts we genuinely enjoyed. The Norsk Folkemuseum was excellent, and Akershus Fortress is well worth a visit. And to be clear, the locals were lovely. But those highlights weren’t enough to balance out how flat the city felt overall.
If you’re drawn to Nordic countries and love city travel, Stockholm or Copenhagen are far stronger picks. For us, Oslo turned out to be the biggest letdown of the Nordic cities we've visited.
6. San Francisco, USA 🇺🇸
San Francisco is one of the most overhyped cities in the US, especially considering how much you spend to visit.
The level of visible homelessness and drug use was shocking. In some areas, you’d walk a single block from beautiful streets to people openly using drugs, needles on the ground, and a general sense of unease.
The contrast between wealth and poverty is extreme and impossible to ignore.
The city was also quite dirty in many places, and everything was expensive, from food to accommodation, without the experience matching the price.
In terms of weather, we’re used to grey days in London (and don’t like them at all!), but San Francisco felt cold and windy much of the time, with fog instead of sunshine and constant layering needed.
Sure, the Golden Gate Bridge is iconic and very impressive, and some of the parks are genuinely lovely. But overall, we preferred other US cities, like NYC, Chicago, San Diego, and Boston, much more.
Want a US city that actually delivers? Here’s how to see the best of NYC in one day
7. Brussels, Belgium 🇧🇪
We’ve been to Brussels many times, both for leisure and work. Sometimes we stayed for a few days, other times we passed through for a few hours while changing trains to other Belgian cities.
And no matter how we approached it, the city never really worked for us.
Outside of the immediate centre, Brussels comes off messy and disjointed. Many areas are dirty, dull, or just plain grim, and the overall atmosphere lacks the charm you find so easily elsewhere in Belgium.
Even within the centre, the nice parts appear isolated rather than flowing naturally into one another.
That’s not to say there’s nothing worth seeing. Grand-Place (the city's central square) is genuinely stunning, even with the crowds, and there are a handful of historic streets we enjoyed. We also loved the Comic Art Museum.
But those highlights feel limited compared to how much there is to explore in other Belgian cities.
We genuinely love Belgium as a country, and Belgian cities like Bruges and Ghent have a lot of warmth and character. But in our opinion, Brussels is one of those tourist destinations that you won’t regret skipping.
Skip Brussels, but don’t write off Belgium! These Belgian cities are full of charm and totally worth visiting.
8. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 🇻🇳
Ho Chi Minh City (still often called Saigon) is home to more than 9 million people.
And traffic dominates daily life there.
Motorbikes are everywhere, the noise rarely stops, and crossing the street is genuinely stressful. Cars and scooters don’t pause for pedestrians. You’re expected to walk straight into moving traffic and keep going. People say you get used to it, but we never really did.
Air quality was another big issue. Between exhaust fumes and heat, daytime sightseeing often felt uncomfortable rather than enjoyable.
Walking around isn’t easy either. Sidewalks are often missing or taken over by parked motorbikes, which makes even short distances frustrating.
Visually, the city feels messy and chaotic. There aren’t many areas that are pleasant to wander around, and it’s not a place that rewards aimless exploring.
If you’re expecting charming streets, scenic viewpoints, or a clear historic centre, there isn’t much of that here.
The strongest part of Ho Chi Minh City is the food. Street food is everywhere, and it’s excellent. But beyond eating, we struggled to find reasons to keep exploring.
9. Dublin, Ireland 🇮🇪
Dublin never really worked for us as a city break. It’s small, fairly low energy, and once you’ve walked through the centre, there isn’t much that pulls you to keep exploring.
We’ve been a few times over the years because we have family there, so this isn’t a one-off impression. Even with that familiarity, the city still feels limited as a city destination.
The city leans heavily on pub culture. If you enjoy spending your time hopping between pubs, that can be fun. But if you’re not keen on drinking every day, the options thin out quickly.
And even then, other cities like London offer far more variety alongside pub culture (with an astonishing 3,500 pubs in the city).
Large parts of Dublin also felt quiet after work hours, which leaves the city flat compared to places where street life carries the experience.
Architecturally, there isn’t a strong old town or many standout landmarks that give you much visual payoff while walking around. Food is expensive, and the variety doesn’t really match the prices, which makes the whole experience harder to justify.
Public transport consists mostly of buses and two tram lines, and getting around often felt slow. And then there’s the weather: grey skies, little sun, and a damp chill that hangs around most of the year. Even coming from London, that part wore us down.
Ireland has beautiful landscapes and some genuinely lovely smaller towns. But as a city destination, Dublin is one we’d personally skip in favour of somewhere with more energy and depth.
10. Orlando, Florida, USA 🇺🇸
We were genuinely excited to spend time in Orlando on one of our East Coast road trips. Online, it looks colourful, fun, and full of energy.
In reality, we struggled to find much of a city experience at all. Orlando is built around theme parks such as Walt Disney World, Universal, and LEGOLAND.
Outside of those, everything is secondary. You need a car for almost everything, distances are long, and you spend a surprising amount of time driving between places that don’t feel connected.
The heat and humidity are intense for much of the year, and combined with traffic, queues, and crowds, it becomes tiring quickly. Even simple things like getting food or moving around feel more like logistics than enjoyment.
It’s also far from a cheap place to visit, especially once you factor in tickets, transport, and accommodation.
If theme parks are your main reason for going, Orlando delivers exactly what it promises. But if you’re hoping for a proper city experience, it falls flat and lacks soul.
FAQ: Overrated cities
After visiting 450+ cities, these are the questions we get asked most about overrated destinations. Here are our honest answers.
What is the most overrated city in the world?
For us, it's Dubai. Despite a genuinely impressive skyline, the city is almost entirely car-dependent, has very little street life, and comes with high costs that don't match the day-to-day experience. Bangkok and Los Angeles are close seconds: both exhausted us for the same reason. The reality never matched the hype.
What are the most overrated cities in the US?
For US trips, the cities we'd think twice about are Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orlando, and Las Vegas. All four overpromise and underdeliver as genuine city experiences. The gap between the hype and the reality on the ground is wider here than almost anywhere else in the country.
Las Vegas deserves a mention here, but it didn't make our top 10 for a specific reason: it largely delivers what it advertises.
If you go in knowing it's a giant entertainment complex built around casinos, gambling, and excess, you won't be surprised. The problem is that outside the Strip, there's almost nothing.
For us, it's not really a city in any meaningful sense, and as a travel experience, it wears thin quickly.
That puts it in a slightly different category from the others on this list, where the disappointment came from cities that promised something real and didn't deliver it.
Are Paris and Venice overrated?
Not in our view, which is why neither made this list. Paris has its flaws (parts of the city feel very uniform, and it's quite dirty), but it's one of those European cities you simply need to see at least once in your life. Venice is the same. Yes, it's crowded, and yes, it can feel surreal, but there's nowhere else on earth quite like it.
So, which cities are worth your time?
If this post made you second-guess a city, our guide to the best cities to visit in Europe will help you find the ones that actually deliver.
It’s funny looking back on this list because every one of these cities was a place we genuinely wanted to love. We arrived hopeful, ready to explore, and sometimes even convinced the reality would match the hype.
But travel has a way of teaching you what really matters to you as a city traveller, especially after a few cities you regret visiting because they took time away from places that might have truly clicked.
It’s a solid starting point for building a wish list of places that feel rewarding the second you arrive.
