In the same vein of jsgoddess’s post, I think it’s safe to say that most Dopers take not living in a third world country for granted. And even if you don’t do that, many don’t realize we are still part of a privileged cognoscenti. As my sociology professor put it, “Most of the world isn’t up to Galileo.”
Snow, buying beer 24/7, casinos and whorehouses.
Washington, DC.
I’m actually quite fond of it for numerous personal reasons, but I can’t imagine a more mind-numbingly boring place to vacation. Some of the museums are cool if you can get into them, but the monuments? Meh…
Tall buildings. Living in Chicago for four years was enough to make even truly tall skyscrapers seem like not that big of a deal. I then moved to Seattle for awhile, and am now living in Columbus, OH, and sometimes my mom will ooh and aah over the buildings downtown here. I’m like, “What tall buildings? oh, that one…” They don’t even register with me as being tall anymore.
Right now I take quick beach access and warm weather for granted. Yesterday was a record low for the area. It was 51 degrees. I was one of the few people who opened their windows last night. Like other locals, I never go to the beach anymore. It’s too much hassle for something that isn’t all that special any more. Besides, all my friends are truly couch potatos who can’t be dragged outside at gunpoint.
Living up in Western North Carolina, I started taking the beautiful scenery and copious hiking opportunities for granted. Wish I had them down here in FLA.
Growing up in the DC metro area, I took for granted all the amenities of the big city: public transport, culture, diversity, late business hours, and an excellent public education system.
I live in America. There is a long list of things that I take for granted, that are just dreams for many people living in other parts of the world:
Running water
Electricity
Trial by Jury
Freedom of the Press
Antibiotics
Refrigeration
Hospital emergency rooms within driving distance
Free elections
Fresh vegetables
The freedom to worship in the place and manner of my choosing
Central heating
The Rule of Law
A reliable road system
Property rights
A working telephone system
An honest police force
Readily available medical care
Freedom of Speech
Decent education for my children
The ability to choose where I live
The freedom to choose what radio station I listen to at night
The ability to travel at will throughout my country without a ‘pass’
Flush toilets
Air conditioning
Novocaine
The expectation that all my children will survive past infancy
The list goes on…
I could add things such as HDTV, Netflix, DirecTV, Internet access, XMRadio…
Groundhog Day. I’m a Punxsutawney expatriate. Groundhog Day is certainly a big deal to the Punxsutawney Chamber of Commerce, and to the local merchants, but it is otherwise something that only folks from somewhere else get really excited over.
For rather obscure reasons, there’s also a small cult of people in Dallas who celebrate Groundhog Day.
Welllll, there are at least some in New York City that get worked up over things I take for granted:
http://www.palemale.com/
They’re red tailed hawks. I see 3 or 4 every day on my way to work (and home too, I suppose. If it’s still daylight). They’re fine by me as long as they keep eating the mice.
True. I’ve lived in Kansas nearly 30 years now, and I’ve only seen a couple of tornados. Although the electric storms are pretty impressive.
Take care,
GES
Ducked in to say this, so now I’ll just agree and elaborate. I enjoy the city and will always have a place in my heart for my favorite few museums, but I cannot imagine it as an honest-to-god let’s-take-a-few-days-to-do-this vacation destination. I grew up 45 minutes from D.C. and by the time I was 10 I’d visited most of the touristy things many times, because visiting relatives always wanted to set aside a day for the monuments and a museum or two.
I remember being astonished at the various “We’re vacationing in the nation’s capital!” episodes of Full House and the like–I had no idea that people actually set aside time to visit such an everyday place.
How odd… I’m the exact opposite. I love to drag visitors to Montreal to every little thing we have to offer, by force if necessary. No matter how “touristed out” they get, I’m still like, “…but you have to see Notre-Dame Basilica! And the cathedral! They’re amazing! Maybe the planetarium? Or the Biodome? Or the waterfront? Or the islands? What about this statue? Here’s everything I know about it!”
The only exception: the Underground City. It’s touted in all the tourist guides as if it’s this amazing, glorious tourist attraction, and yes, it is very useful, and the idea that we have the world’s biggest is interesting, but really, it’s a bunch of shopping malls. With tunnels. One of the tunnels has a Tim Horton’s in it. little finger spinney thing
So matt, if I ever end up in Montreal, I guess that means I can count on your as a tourguide, eh? 
Damn stray little r… that should be you
On a related note (kind of, I guess), I used to take being bug and rodent and snake free for granted, until I came here to the Dope and discovered what kind of infestations people in the rest of the world take for granted. We’re not exactly vermin-free here in Alberta, but we’re damned close. We have an occasional tiny spider inside, some people get an occasional mouse, there’s an occasional garter snake outside, an extremely rare rattlesnake, and that’s about it. Oh, you might get a tick if you go hiking in the mountains. Rats? Nope. Termites? What are those? Cockroaches? Very rare, and tiny when you do get them.
We’re also virtually extreme-weather and geological-event-free. THe worst we get is an occasional hailstorm or very rare tornado. I don’t take all of this for granted so much anymore.
Bricks.
When my sister came to visit from Los Angeles, she couldn’t believe that almost every house, from little bungalows to mansions, had some sort of brick facing. In southern California apparently houses are made from stucco, wood or some type of siding.
“Here” is St. Louis. Our soil is almost completely clay. Brick making was one of the area’s original industries. We build houses out of baked dirt. How impressive can it be?
Brick walls have a nasty way of turning into a heap of loose bricks in earthquakes, so they’re very uncommon in the LA and SF areas.
I grew up in Chicago and a few years ago went there on vacation. I’d been in California so long that the sight of fairly tall (3-5 stories) brick buildings was startling. There’s no way you’d be able to slip that past the building codes here.
I don’t live there anymore but when I did the I took the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta fo granted. Unless a balloon was landing in the backyard (happened twice) or the parking lot of school/work (happened alot) I didn’t pay much attention.
After a while it was just ‘Meh, so there are balloons in the air again’. Granted, it’s like 600 balloons in the air at once but it did get a little old after a while. Sad, really, but it was just a part of fall, like the leaves changing.
Slee
Civil War battlefields. There’s tons of 'em all over, and most of them are just empty fields. We also have a slave graveyard on my uncle’s property. Sometimes visiting Yankees act surprised to discover that antebellum homes aren’t all that’s left of the Old South, that there was a decidely darker and less glamorous side to life. Not everyone was Scarlett in her hoop skirt drinking mint juleps.
Alligators. Yes, they’re really wild. I wouldn’t advise getting too close to one. Just sayin’, is all.
Yes, I can’t buy chewing gum. No, I don’t really care.
Kinda reminds me of when I first saw snow, though. I went to my friend’s room, and we were ooh-ing and ah-ing out the window, and I was talking photos, and my friends roommate was muttering into the phone about the “crazy tropical kids” that hadn’t seen snow before. 
Well, consider that California is as distant and exotic for us just as Rome is distant and exotic for you…
Well, Rome isn’t really yucky, but I suppose you must have felt at home, right? Right? 
I lived in the area of Rome and studied in Rome for more than 25 years and it was an expensive, dirty, overcrowded, polluted, noisy home. And full of tourists that go oooh and aaah over any old rock lying around.