Glad you had a good time. I can definitely understand how perception is everything with that one. My first trip to Asia had many more surprises than subsequent ones.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. Mark Twain