Most surprising travel destination or tourist attraction

In My Humble Opinion
1

Sort of the opposite of this thread.

Simply put: What country/site/place/monument/tourist attraction did you find met or exceeded all/any expectations you had before you saw it?
Was any place just as amazing as you pictured it would be or more so?
For me, by far, it was the Grand Canyon.
I mean, you already think and know it looks good via photos, but even those don’t do it justice. I could not even explain how much more great it was to see in person. In my opinion, it looked a hundred times greater than any photo of it in a book/magazine/postcard.

2

The Grand Canyon is, indeed, amazingly grand.

I LOVED Maine. I mean, I thought it would be nice, but I ADORED it. No billboards, it’s beautiful, the people are friendly, it’s easier to eat local there on vacation than it is to really work at it at home… if I ever make a ton of money I’m totally buying a summer home up there.

3

I’m going to start small on this one. MrWhatsit and I went on a road trip several years ago that more or less followed the route of the old Oregon Trail. It wasn’t strictly a history-thematic trip; we saw a lot of stuff on that trip, not just stuff related to the Oregon Trail, although there was of course quite a bit of that.

We were somewhere in, I think, Wyoming, when I saw one of those “historical site” markers on the side of the road. We were in no hurry, so even though this wasn’t on our list of stops, we figured, what the hell, let’s check it out. So we exited the state highway we were on, and followed the historical site markers to a county road, and then followed that for several miles. At some point during this expedition, we both started to feel like it probably wouldn’t be worth our trouble to keep going. I mean, we were a good twenty minutes and several miles off our original route now, and there was nothing to see. Eventually we actually entered farmland that looked like it might be private property, though there were no signs indicating it as such. But the road was now a dirt road going through farmland.

Just as we were about to call it off and head back to the highway, we saw the site in question. It was a little gazebo at the top of a hill. Great, we thought. There’s going to be some stupid placard up there saying, “Oregon Trail settlers camped nearby” or whatever, and that’s it. A lot of driving out of the way for nothing.

The thing is, though, you climb this grassy hill, and the little gazebo did have a sign in it that did say “Oregon Trail settlers drove their wagons through here.” It directs you to look out over the field. When you do, you can see in the rippling grass that there are faint wagon tracks, starting well behind the gazebo and carrying on just about as far as you can make out with the naked eye.

That just killed me. A hundred years, and those wagon tracks are still there, marked by this little out-of-the-way historical site that nobody ever goes to.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool.

4

For me, the Grand Canyon definitely qualifies.

I’ll also add Mount Rushmore. My parents took me there as a kid and my reaction was basically, “eh, whatever; it looks the same in person as it does in pictures.” I think this was because we probably stood on an observation deck somewhere nearby for a few minutes and then were on our way. (Dad didn’t like to stop in one place for too long.)

I went back as an adult, and walked some of the trails, got a much closer look, and saw it from some different and unusual angles. And only then did I appreciate its scale, and the almost inconceivable amount of planning and work it took to make it happen.

5

The Grand Canyon for me as well. I’ve tried to explain to people what it looks like, but I truly think that you must see it in order to understand. It’s so massive that it’s beyond comprehension…really the most accurate description I can come up with is “it looks fake”…because it does. Nothing that enormous can possibly be real. But that description somehow fails to captivate people :slight_smile:

6

I’ll say Devil’s Tower. Of course I saw it in Close Encounters, but when I was driving out to the monument and saw it off in the distance, it took my breath away. I’ve been there a couple of times, and even though there’s not a whole lot to the place, I want to go back. There’s something magical about it to me.

7

Chichen Itza. My then-girlfriend/now wife and I spent four days on Isla Mujeres, near Cancun. I’m into the whole tropical beach thing, so I was kind of bummed that she wanted to spend one of our very few days of the trip on this excursion. I’d never had much interest in the early history of the Americas.

Damn, it was cool. Both as a site of historical interest, and in a sort-of-creepy kind of way, considering how murderous the Mayans were with captured enemies and others. Actually, the cenote where they sacrificed virgins had no sort-of about the creepiness.

8

The Grand Canyon too. There is nothing whatsoever can be done to convey its grandeur and enormity, save for actual experience.

Add to that the Great Wall. Everyone knows it’s… great. But the vertiginous ridges it travels up are a wonder to behold - how the fuck did they get it to stay on the side of the hills? Then to see it rise over hilltop and mountain ridge again and again as it recedes towards the horizon - and to know that in various fashions it’s 3,000 miles long - and then to recall it was built, brick by brick, by hand, is simply mindblowing.

9

I’d say Tallinn, Estonia. It was a stop on a cruise ship tour and I knew nothing about the country other than the fact it used to a Soviet controlled country. Ergo, I expected a typical backwards communist country struggling to get by with a bunch of fat, lazy people looking depressed and all living in ugly grey dormitory style utilitarian apartments.

First off, every woman in that country is unbelievably beautiful. Every other one looked like she could have been a model and despite being a poor country, they all were very fashionably dressed, spoke English, and were some of the warmest and nicest people I had ever met. The architecture was very nice and I remember people went out of their way to each have very decorative doors, often with sculptures incorporated into them. Just taking pictures of the doors alone was totally worth it. And man, did I mention the hot looking women? Let me stress that again! They LOVE American men (even the mediocre looking ones like me). I guess the logic is, if you had the money to come to their country, you must be loaded, which made you a prize catch. I always assumed that ‘beautiful Russian mail-order bride’ thing was a myth until I went to that country.

At the same time though, this is exactly why movies like ‘Hostel’ scare the living shit out of me, because I totally would have fallen for this and been murdered in accordance with that movie if I had been single at the time.

That aside, the country really was beautiful and totally worth seeing. That is, the exact opposite of Finland.

10

<donning flame-proof suit>

Many have mentioned the Grand Canyon. I actually like Sedona, Az much better than the Grand Canyon. The Canyon is massive and hard to conceptualize, but the colors are muted and often muted even more by haze. Yes, the Canyon looks unreal. Sedona, on the other hand is up close, personal, and in your face. The colors are vibrant, rarely does haze obscure the robin’s egg blue of the sky, and the rock formations are everywhere. The blue of the sky, the red rocks and the green trees are visually stunning. AND you can get right up to it and touch it.

Of course, that’s just me. :slight_smile:
J.

11

For one small, specific sight, I would say that Brussels’ Grand Place, when seen lit up at night, especially after enjoying a few Belgian Trappist brews (and perhaps a little bit of Dutch herbal refreshment) is one of the most impressive things I have ever seen in my life.

Words just can’t describe how stunning this town square is.

To me, it’s the top man-made sight in all of Europe, more so than Cologne’s Dom, Barcelona’s Familia Sagrada, or the city view from Prague Castle, all of which are pretty mind-blowing in their own right…

12

Santorini, Greece

…words don’t begin to do it justice.

13

Blarney Castle. The wife and I went to Ireland 8 or 9 years ago, rented a car and explored the lower half of the island. We had to pass through the area anyway so we had it on our itinerary. Now, the castle itself is just a shell, and the kissing of the stone is sort of a cheesy tourist thing (although I totally thought it was cool.) The big surprise was the grounds. Beautiful, park-like setting with long walking trails and gorgeous gardens. All in all, what we expected to be the goofiest part of the trip was pretty enjoyable.

14

Machu Picchu. Just walking up the hill to thefirst vista. . . breathtaking- and I mean that literally. And it’s not just MP itself, but also the area around it-- stunningly beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.

My favorite thing though was the backside of MP. Sounds odd, but most of the tourists stay on the front face, since that’s where all the ruins are. I split up from my friend and walked down the back face a tiny bit (there are stairs), then sat out on a ledge. Looking out into that valley, I thought to myself, “The ruins over there looking nothing like they did when the Incans were here, but if I sit in this spot and look out at this valley. . . it looks exactly like it did then.” And I can say without exaggeration that it was the most amazing experience of my life.

15

I’ll toss in the national parks in southern Utah, mostly Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Arches. Incredible scenery. I want to go back.

16

Was that really surprising though?

17

I would agree on the Grand Canyon. When I was 15, my mom took me, my sister, and our 4 BFFs on a two week out-west tour (brave woman) and as we walked up to the canyon, we were all playing it cool, typical teenage crap, and we stepped out and saw it and I don’t think any of us said anything for about ten minutes. Just stood there with our mouths open.
Another one, for me, was the Basilica in Assisi. It was a stop on one of those bus tours of Italy (I was the chaperone of a bunch of high school kids this time) and I had only a vague idea of what it even was. But once I got there, my mind snapped back to my really very good High Middle Ages class in college because it was all there–that 12th century opening up of the intellectual and mental world, the shift from a cloistered clergy and Romanesque styles, fortresses of god against the world into a more open, curious, breathing sort of approach with the gothic style and the light. I knew all this, understood all this, had read any number of books about this and attended great lectures on this, but to see it spread out before me so clearly and to really understand what I was seeing–even though the guides and signs never went into that sort of detail–man, that made my liberal arts background seem worth it.

18
  1. Grand Canyon
  2. Painted Desert
  3. Salt River Canyon
  4. Arizona Rim Country
  5. Beeline Highway from Phoenix to Flagstaff
  6. Sedona/Oak Creek Canyon
  7. Meteor Crater at Winslow

We flew out to Phoenix and rented a Gold Wing. Put +2k miles on the thing in 1 1/2weeks. Fufilled a life long dream of mine; best vacation to date. Don’t know if or when or how it would ever be topped.

19

No question about the place which vastly exceeded all my expectations:

Sudan

My two weeks there was one of the best trips I have ever taken.

20

Another “I thought I’d be Clark Griswold” when it came to the Grand Canyon. It was awesome.

Paris surprised me in a great way. I know, I know, everyone says that Paris is awesome, but I’m cynical and also I don’t share most peoples’ tastes. The first time I went is because I thought that it would be stupid to be so close to Paris without going into Paris, so I did, and I loved it.