When planning your next vacation, there are bound to be a few of the traditional travel destinations buzzing through your mind’s eye. These may include the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, Stone Henge in England, the Great Wall of China, and countless other highly promoted, traditional buildings and artworks you are expected to check off on your trip itineraries.

However, if you have ever felt severely underwhelmed when standing in front of a set of ruins or yawning your way through an hour-long tour of a gallery, you will know to be wary of unthinkingly planning your trips around the more cliched tourist traps.

Tips when Travelling and Picking your Next Travel Destinations

Below we will be looking at the most overrated vacation destinations in the world and detailing some interesting and unexpected places you could choose to visit instead.

The Most Overrated Tourist Destinations

Whether a well-known tourist destination is disappointing to a visitor can largely be subjective based upon a person’s interests and aims when they are travelling. However, there are certain venues and vacation destinations which have become known as overrated amongst tourists throughout the years.

1. The Mona Lisa in the Louvre

Visit the Louvre any day of the week and the painting you are unlikely to be able to get anywhere near is DaVinci’s Mona Lisa. The artwork is surprisingly small in real life and, unless you arrive as soon as the galley opens, you are likely to be reduced to hopping on your tips toes as you struggle to see the little picture over crowds six and seven deep.

For a more enjoyable and rewarding art experience, you should turn to the wealth of other astounding artworks and sculptures the huge museum has to offer. Unless of course, you find the Mona Lisa particularly stunning and interesting and worth the wait to get to the front of the crowd. But do you?

2. Stone Henge

For archaeologists and history buffs Stone Henge stands as a remarkable testament to the culture and ingenuity of stone-age tribes in England. For the underwhelmed tourist, however, it’s a pile of big rocks placed in a windy field next to a busy freeway. As with most of the vacation destinations on this list, whether Stone Henge is worth the trip to Salisbury will depend on your level of genuine interest in the topic. If you have no historical context for the landmark and have no real interest in learning about it, you may not find the trip particularly rewarding.

3. The Leaning Tower of Pisa

The Leaning Tower of Pisa has featured in literally thousands of social media pictures with tourists of all ages grimacing as they position themselves to look like they are pushing the slanting building back up. But once you’ve had your picture taken, what else are you planning to do? Research Pisa and check whether the leaning tower is enough of an attraction for you to devote the time travelling to this area of Italy. Are there other parts of the country with more to offer you than this architectural curiosity?

4. The Hollywood Sign in Los Angeles

As with the leaning Tower of Pisa, the Hollywood Sign is primarily known as a classic place to take tourist snaps rather than an enjoyable vacation experience in and of itself. Many visitors find the large sign pretty underwhelming in person and the sparse, rocky location doesn’t rank highest in terms of the best places to hike in the city. So perhaps leave the sign as an interesting sight to spot here and there as you travel through Los Angeles on the way to more interesting destinations.