I only have one driving experience in Europe, but we did a Paris-> St. Michel -> Caen -> Rouen -> Paris loop in January in a day (and spent some nice time at Mont St. Michel and in the Normandy area sightseeing.) People we spoke to along the way were amazed at what we were doing. Yeah, it was a decent spot of driving, but nothing like the normal road trips I take (say, Denver -> Minneapolis or flying from Denver -> Cleveland, driving back to Denver). I think the whole thing was 600 or 700 kilometers. Back in the US, 800 or 900 miles in a day is a goodly trek.
Said only partly tongue in cheek, but I remember how terribly bent out of shape Texans were with the admission of Alaska in 1959-60, refusing to admit that there was a state larger than Texas! I can almost see this episode as a late episode of that denial of reality. 
People from small eastern states make this mistake all the time. I wish I had a dollar for everyone from back east who, when I told them that Santa Cruz was 75 miles south of San Francisco, asked me if it was near LA. The first time my parents came to visit me in Santa Cruz, they wanted to take a day trip to San Diego, until I told them how far away it was.
It’s even worse when you live in a big state in a big country, and should know better.
Most of the vacations that Mr. Neville and I take, other than to visit relatives, are to Europe. So when I was reading guidebooks for our trip to Australia last year, I caught myself thinking of it as being on a European scale a few times- considering taking a train between cities and being surprised when it would have taken two days, that sort of thing (we ended up flying between cities).
Oh, I’m well aware of the PCH – from many years ago I still remember the sign that showed “curves ahead, next 67 miles” (or some such), and damn, they weren’t kidding 
And yeah, in the case of the PCH, I didn’t exactly have an east/west problem; I was just remembering how stupid I felt when I used to have to think twice about which way was east and which west when talking about getting to NYC.
Then there’s the sign getting onto I-95 South in Warwick, RI that said New York City, and that confused me no end because we were about 180 miles away
The PCH is easy. If you’re afraid rocks will fall on you, you’re driving north. If you’re afraid you’ll fall off the edge, you’re driving south.
Seriously, though, people are geographical idiots. It’s downright frightening how little people know about geography, even of their own area. I’ll have to ask a friend who’s a travel agent for the worst stupidities she’s run across; I’m sure it’ll curl my hair.
Before we roll our eyes right out of our heads, I am referring not to people like you who are cognisant of the flexibility of Irish retailers wrt exchange rates - something that still exists in border areas, tourism hotspots (where they’ll take dollars too), and urban centres. I am referring to British people who thought that sterling was the currency of the Republic of Ireland, and were mystified to find it wasn’t.
I can beat that. There is a sign in eastern Ohio, near Youngstown, that says New York City Next Exit, pointing to I80. While that was true, it was 400 miles away. 
Nearly every time I read one of jjimm’s posts I want to move to Great Britain to learn the language all over again.
It amazed me in Israel how happy people were to be able to buy things in dollars. It was awkward for me after staying there a few days anyway, as I was just getting used to thinking of values in shekels and now I found myself converting from dollars to shekels back to dollars in my head – and of course I knew there was something a little sketchy about locals taking dollars anywhere other than the airport; I couldn’t imagine wanting to leave the exchange rate up to the vendor.
I got burned a couple of times anyway until I got it into my head that money exchange works a little differently over there. Once you’ve handed over that coin, don’t expect to get it back or get change for it!
My college roommate, a Texan, chose the University of Cincinnati based in part on its proximity to Cleveland, where she’d previously lived and still had many friends that she wanted to visit on a regular basis.
I remember one Sunday night, after the 8-hr-bus trip (lots of stops on that route) she said “They just looked a lot closer on the map.”
She transferred after a semester.
And I am too. I mean, how much time did you have in each of these three sites (St-Michel, Caen, Rouen)? I must assume you spend most of your day driving. Sort of a “It’s Noon, it must be Caen” trip.
Well, we had as much time as wanted at St-Michel, and used a lot of it. As a result, we got up to Pointe du Hoc just as the sun was going down, which actually made the whole experience very cool, since no one else was around. We have some pictures of the inside of the remaining bunkers and such that we didn’t really get to see until we developed the pictures. A great experience.
We actually got to Caen about 8pm or so, and hung out with some guys at a bar there for a bit, while I tried, with my non-existent French, to understand the explanation in non-existent English of map to a gas station. Plus we were all slightly tipsy. A good time. 
We just drove through Rouen, because we got on the expressway heading the wrong way. :smack:
We rolled back into Paris about 11:45 pm. We had picked the car up that morning at 7am.
I do love to drive, and that was half the fun for me, banging around those narrow roads in a diesel Focus. I tried to stay off the expressway for most of the trip, only taking it back to Paris from Caen.
I gotta say, I love driving in your country. The trip around the Arc de Triomphe (out and back) was worth the price of admission!
And, as an afterthought, I mjust say we made serious fools of ourselves at the toolboth at the expressway on the way back. “Insert card for ticket” the machine said. What card? What ticket? Finally the very nice tolbooth guy came over and showed us how to put our credit card in the slot to pay the toll. Um, OK, I’m a freaking idiot. Sorry guys. 
Swimming would be involved in getting to Newfoundland as well. We are an island with no trains.
I have had people ask me about the viability of building a bridge from Newfoundland to Sydney Nova Scotia.
My local transit system, or at least parts of it (including the line I use most often), runs 24/7/365 - and most of the lines that don’t run 24/7 are damn close. I’m not sure how they do maitenance (except rather haphazardly), but it probably helps that the Purple Line runs parallel to the Red Line from the northern city limit to downtown. (In fact, until a few years ago, the Red and Purple Lines weren’t considered separate lines at all - there was just one line, which stopped at Howard Street on the Chicago/Evanston border, with less frequent trains continuing into Evanston.) The Evanston train even ran 24/7 until a round of budget cuts a few years ago.
There’s a sign somewhere along I-25 that gives the distance to Chihuahua. I guess that means that if you stick on I-25 until it becomes I-10, clear the border in El Paso (how many border crossings are there in El Paso anyway?) and then get on the Mexican equivalent you’ll eventually make it to Chihuahua. But I can’t imagine having to make it through both El Paso and Juarez as traffic is just awful in both cities. Of course, there’s also the sign in Albuquerque that gives the distance to Denver.
For what it’s worth, when I was using the light rail/subway in Munich, Vienna, and Berlin, I gave up trying to figure out the zoning maps and just paid for an all-day all-zone pass. When most of your past experience was with the DC Metro system where it is pay by distance, trying to figure out zoning fees in a foreign language wasn’t worth it. I could read the maps, of course, and knew where I wanted to go, but I was just lazy and paid for it.
And there was the time the family from Pennsylvania, taking their son to college in either Tucson or Phoenix came in to the gas station in Albuquerque and asked for advice on the best way to get there. It was one of those “well, should we take I-40 to I-17 to I-10 or I-25 to I-10 or even US-60 all the way through” type things which isn’t, in my opinion, a stupid question. Honestly, I’m not sure which way I’d prefer without looking at a map first. What made it stupid was the mom’s sheer astonishment at how much further they had to go when we told them they were probably looking at another 8 hours of driving, depending on how hard they wanted to push it. “But they look so close on the map.”
Ignorance fought. Thanks!
Some of our friends booked a trip to somewhere in Mexico (can’t remember). Anyways, as the trip got closer, the predictions of the massive hurricane were made. My husband told them not to go, but they did anyway. That was not the worst part. The worst part was that they had one night in the hotel before the storm. When they were telling us the horror story that followed, we noted that at least they knew it was coming and could prepare. Their reply, “no we had nothing”. Now, you are going on a trip into the path of hurricane. You told me a story about eating dinner in the restauraunt the day before. Then, the next day, you have no water, food or blankets (extra clothes) when moved to an emergency shelter. STUPID!!!
If you know a hurricane is coming, grab some bottled water for God’s sake. Get some candy bars, power bars or something. THEY DINED IN THE RESTAURAUNT. Get some balloons and fill em up with fresh water. Pack some toilet paper in your coat. They were allowed to take one bag. They were stranded for 4 days. I would have easily had enough water, food and supplies for 4 days. What the fuck? It was hard not to be critical since they really were traumatized, but man, sometimes you get what you ask for.
And I was referring to Irish retailers who were happy to let the customers think a punt was worth a pound when it wasn’t. IOW, I was giving you a Roland for your Oliver - or, more precisely, for your “arrogant, ignorant English imperialist” I was giving you a “grasping, larcenous Irish rob-dog”. Except that I don’t live in Ireland and then go around complaining about my neighbours all the time.
Best personal story: A last minute, cheap holiday with my wife to Tunisia, for sunshine and outstanding Islamic architecture. Fat Mancunian family says “In Magaluf you can go to a McDonald’s with a lovely wooden veranda, beautiful. This is rubbish. It’s like Spain were [sic] 15 year ago … You can’t even get a decent bacon sandwich.”
Best heard-on-radio story: Japanese woman at Waterloo train station, London, wishes to travel through the channel tunnel. Asks for a return ticket to Turkey. Boards train, journey includes long-ish tunnel. 3 hours later …
…arrives in Torquay.
I was on a summer holiday in a mountain resort in Bulgaria a few years ago. One miserable guy (we nicknamed him Charley Chuckles) complained that there was “too much countryside”