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No one really comes to New York City to relax. If you find yourself here on vacation here, expect chaos, rats and lots and lots of noise. Because of all of these factors, it should not come as a surprise that a recent survey found that the most chaotic tourist trap in the world is located in New York and, yes, it's Times Square.
The survey was conducted by the language learning platform Preply, which analyzed more than 81 popular tourist attractions and surveyed thousands of people about which they thought were overrated, overcrowded and just generally not worth the time.
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We get it, Times Square is loud, stinky, and the Frozen characters posing for pictures are a little bit scary.
In the Preply survey, 1,761 people called the area "overrated," "underwhelming" or "a tourist trap." One reviewer wrote that they had "high hopes and expectations and high disappointment. Times Square to us was crowded, grimy and overrated." Tell us something we don't know.
Even though they're absolutely right about the area, we must admit that it's hard not to get defensive. New Yorkers don't step foot in Times Square unless they absolutely have to it's different when we're our own haters.
Besides, if you have such a big problem with Times Square, there's so many things to do in the city that are relaxing and decidedly not tourist traps. For example, you can take a Tiki Boat ride at Jamaica Wildlife Refuge, enjoy a series of free meditative experiences throughout the city or spend all day at a spa on an island that is about to get some major upgrades.
The other attractions that were considered major tourist traps by those surveyed was (in order from worst to best) Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin; the Eiffel Tower; The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen; Las Ramblas in Barcelona; Manneken Pis in Brussels; The Blue Lagoon in Iceland; the Hollywood Walk of Fame in L.A.; the London Eye; and the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.
You can check out the full list of the top 20 most stressful tourist traps here.
Preply also looked at the least stressful tourist hotspots in the world, and Switzerland's Lake Caumasee took the number one spot, followed by Uluru in Australia and Monastiraki Market in Athens.
Again, there's nothing surprising about us making the top of the list, so there's no use in trying to defend Times Square. All we're saying is there are many other things to do if you're not the type who likes crowds, so please be respectful of this great city of ours.