5 MOST OVERRATED TOURIST DESTINATIONS

There's a legend that says that kissing the Blarney Stone will give you the gift of the gab. However, with so many people kissing it every day, it is more likely that you will leave the place having contracted a communicable disease.

For you to get to the rock, you will have to endure long lines and vertigo-inducing climbs. In addition, you will be tipped in both ways over a ledge unceremoniously so as to smooch the Blarney Stone.

Alternative: Avoid the long queues and instead discover the nearby Blarney castle grounds. You are likely not to come away with a disease.

Once you have taken the required photos of this tower in Italy, there isn't much more to do apart from encountering the large numbers of hawkers in the area. If you are coming from Rome, it is quite a long journey.

Alternative: Visit a Romanesque cathedral with plenty of artwork known as Duomo di Pisa. It will provide you with something else to engage in rather than simply staring at the tower.

The five blocks of the Times Square in New York are renowned for chain restaurants, flashing advertisements and large numbers of lost tourists checking out maps. New York residents try as much as possible to avoid this particular area because it is very congested.

With this being the case, it is hard to understand why people have to travel to New York to stare at billboards, dine at one of the many olive gardens and buy candy at the M&M's World store.

Alternative: Visit the Museum Mile in New York along the fifth avenue. It comprises several museums and there are less crowds and more interesting things.

Probably you are looking forward to going out to the quiet desert to see the Pyramids at Giza Necropolis. Before you do so, ponder again. The setting of the pyramids is against a KFC's backdrop and loads of litter since they are found in one the suburbs of the downtown of the City of Cairo. In addition, the touts are highly aggressive and it is today impossible to go up the pyramids' sides.

Alternative: Visit the pyramids at Dahshur which have fewer crowds.

If you are planning to visit the equator, also known as the ‘house of lies’ just stop. Most tourists take and pose for picture at the Ciudad Mitad Del Mundo, a park that features a painted line and monument, which claims to be at the center of the world, latitude of 0 degrees. But the equator is not located here. It is actually hundreds of feet from there.

Alternative: If you are the kind that enjoys straddling lines and taking pictures, go the Greenwich Meridian in England. It is at least at the correct place. However, you mark a longitude of 0 degrees rather than latitude.

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