Yup. If I compare breaks I've taken in recent years to Berlin, Budapest, Zurich, Amsterdam, Dublin and Istanbul with trips I've taken to Rome and Milan, the Italian cities come bottom of the list for value-for-money, warmth of welcome, sense of security and quality of service. I can't speak for all of Italy, since I wouldn't judge the UK by London alone, nor France by Paris, but I'd avoid those two cities. I've also visited Genoa, and that was much nicer.
Yeah, principally beware of the honey traps (as in the more common connotation).
I find I get ripped off if I don't watch it, by just going to the coast of the next province, where I find the city of Granada itself and most of what's inland to be fair.
As a perhaps interesting sideline, shops down my way of the coast used to hike their prices for all goods, come tourist season. With many from Cordoba and Sevilla preferring milder Med. climes to the Atlantic, they owned holiday apartments here just for own (family) use. They pretty soon got wise to the scam and thus did two arrival trips.
First one with car loaded up with groceries from their local shops, second one with car loaded with family.
Shopkeepers went ballistic in protest when they realized it but scream as they might, they finally realized it was better to give up this disgusting practice. Of course the whole thing was primarily directed at the
guiris but they couldn't very well have two different prices in the shops.
I've had good and bad experiences all over the continent and the bad ones mostly due to not knowing the ropes sufficiently in the big cities.
Outside of those it wasn't so bad, a fair deal being more the rule.
Good point about London not being UK, Paris not France etc.
Like with Milan and Rome, getting some 20 kms out of 'em painted a different picture altogether.
