What famous thing surprised you when you saw it in person?

In My Humble Opinion
201

A couple of other places I’ve been that are hard to describe if you haven’t been there, are:

Standing in the middle of Saskatchewan, between Regina and Saskatoon. There is absolutely nothing from horizon to horizon in every direction. Not even a tree. It makes a person feel very small.

On the Trans-Canada Highway through British Columbia, at a place I can’t remember, if it even has a name, there is a waterfall that comes down the side of a mountain, from up in the clouds. It goes under the road and continues down a slope so far down you can’t even see the bottom. You can pull your car over and stop there. So we did. And we climbed up the side of the mountain to see if we could see where the water was falling from. After awhile, we could see through a hole in the clouds that the water was falling off of a ledge that would have taken all day to reach, and the mountain kept going up from there, up into a higher layer of clouds. That was probably the most awesome thing I have ever witnessed.

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Not to hijack, but what impression do people have of the French Quarter? It is just a neighborhood. It’s about 12 blocks by 12 blocks. It’s about the same number of square blocks as our Central Business District.

Now, here’s my input…I always thought of New Orleans as a big city…until I went to Chicago and Toronto. I now realize that it’s just a small town. I still can’t even begin to comprehend the size of NYC. Hope to make it there someday.

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Wait, are you also zagloba?

:confused:

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I loved N’arlens, and though it is a small city, there was a lot going on.

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The first time I went to NYC I was blown away by the sheer size of it. I grew up around Boston and figured that was about the size of a big city. Little did I know Boston could fit in the shirt pocket of New York.

I just remember seeing it on the horizon and assuming we were almost there, and then it kept getting bigger and bigger even though it was still miles away.

OTH, I found (like several people here) that the Statue of Liberty was much smaller than I expected.

Outside of the Statue, everything in NYC suprised me with it’s size. The Commons, for instance, have NOTHING on Central Park. Even walking down the street was a trip, with the buildings shooting endlessly into the sky.
Elsewhere, I was also suprised at how enormous the St Louis Arch was. I found myself beneath the arch one night and was awed by the sheer size of it. That is, until I was kicked out of the park for inadvertantly tresspassing…

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Strangely, my surprised impression of the St. Louis Arch was that it wasn’t nearly as big as I had expected. Of course, I come from a city where the most notable local landmark is the tallest thing ever built, so I am spoiled on tall things.

I agree with seriousart, though, in that I was also kind of blown away by the size of New York City. What a wonderful place.

Another one that really blew me away was the Hoover Dam. I expected to be impressed, but it was just astonishing to see something that colossal, built into solid rock. What’s amazing about it is that, since one side is five hundred feet of nothing and the other side is Lake Mead, the two separated by only eighty feet or so at the top, you can stand at the top of the road or the parking garage, and actually SEE an entire lake, zillions of tons of water, being held back by something built by men. It’s just fantastic.

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Crater Lake: It’s huge. No, it’s GYNORMOUS. I can’t even imagine an eruption that size. Oh, and it was freezing and we were there on July 4th.

Yellowstone: We went there on a whim for a week in Sept '01. I was expecting the hoards of tourists stopping to see a glimpse of a bear or elk, road blocks, the usual stupidity. I wasn’t prepared for the utter beauty of the park. I also enjoyed seeing the old hotels still there. Never have I ever felt so mortal than when we were flyfishing at a lake for grayling while a grizzly bear fed on an elk a couple hundred yards from us. We couldn’t see him but we sure heard him. That park awestruck me and I cannot wait to return. (That’s where we were on 9-11…)

Mount St Helens: A couple of years ago we were on our way to Portland and decided to detour around the volcano. How haunting that place was! We were completely alone up there (beginning of May) and drove right up to the highest turn out where you could hike up close to the crater. I was so enchanted I went out and bought a hiking guide to the mountain and we planned on returning for some real exploration. Looks like that’s not going to happen for awhile.

Dachau: Others have said it better than I can. Sobering place. I wasn’t prepared for it, I didn’t know we’d were going there until we arrived. Wow. Even the photos were dark and depressing.

Postojnska Jama: I never had the urge to explore caves but this place was enthralling. The most vivid memory was being in a huge grotto with a crevasse beside me, then the lights went out. Everyone was instantly silent. The darkness felt so heavy.

And another vote for how much the fence sucks at Stonehenge.

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Jeez, am I the only one who actually liked Mount Rushmore? Okay, I agree that the sculpture was smaller than I’d expected, but I was really impressed with the idea of the Hall of Records (the plan was to build a tunnel behind the sculpture and use it to store important documents from American history). It was like somebody took one of those farfetched science fiction ideas for rebuilding civilization after an apocalypse and actually did it. (Unfortunately, they didn’t actually do it anywhere near the extent that was intended, but dammit, they made a start!)

The thing that weirded me out most recently was Mount St. Helens, when I finally visited it last summer. I was up around the Johnston Ridge observatory, looking at the grit and the little flowers and hearing the insects buzzing around, thinking This is it? What’s the big deal? Hell, it’s not like I haven’t seen deserts before. Grit, check. Rocks, check. Little flowers, check. Insects, check…Waitaminnit. This is supposed to be old-growth forest. Holy shit.

Also, looking from Johnston Ridge toward the crater, you can’t really tell how far it is, because the eruption obliterated the landscape enough that there’s nothing there to really give you a sense of scale.

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I’m not sure if this counts as “famous” but the baby pandas at the Washington Zoo. When I came around the corner and saw them, they’re just so unusual, they looked like big stuffed toy animals at first. It wasn’t til I saw them move that I realized that this was THEM, and no some sort of fanciful display before you got to the 'real" pandas.

Such darling creatures!!!

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My wife and I went to Ireland in December of 1995 for our honeymoon.

Now it’s the “Emerald Isle” and so you think “green” of course. But leaving cold snowy Chicago and flying into Shannon, I was still a bit surprised at just how green it was.

Slea Head at the tip of the Dingle Peninsula is absolutely breath taking. Seeing the Blasket Islands off in the distance…even some of the Irish visitors from other parts of the country were blown away.

The Ring of Kerry is more famous…but the Dingle is better IMHO.

The Cliffs of Moher were kind of neat as well. It was cold, rainy and windy…but I sneaked up the edge on my hands and knees to get a sense of the height.

When we visited the Rock of Cashel, normally a big tourist stop, we were the only people up there…kinda cool that way.

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I didn’t see this one here yet…

Washington Crossing the Delaware. I turned a corner, and there is this HUGE painting. I’ve only seen it in textbooks at this point, and the size (21’ x 12’) is staggering. Fortunately, the kind staff of the MET had supplied benches in front of the monster, else I may have had to sit on the floor to catch my breath.

I’ll go ahead and second Australia. I spent a bunch of months living in an Adelaide suburb, plus got over to Melbourne and Sydney. Beautiful country, beautiful people, I loved every minute of it. I’d move there in a heartbeat.

The Tower of London and the Crown Jewels. Maybe it’s just because I’m an American, but the idea of all these jewels for a monarch just boggles me, in a good way. And the tower - so damn old! Hell, there are still roman walls there. Amazing!

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It seems like practically everyone disappointed by things finds them to be smaller than they had imagined while those who were impressed find them larger than they imagined. The moral to the story must be that if you want to impress people with something make it big.

I’m having a real hard time thinking of anything that surprised me when I saw it. I guess I’m good at picturing things. I’ve seen lots of things people were surprised at in this thread and all of them were what I expected. This takes some of the fun out of traveling though I think.

WWII submarines were very, very tight. I will say that. Anyone more than 5’6" 140lbs would have a very hard time getting around in one of those. I don’t know how surprising that is though.

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**The White House ** – less impressive than I imagined. I had a tour of it when I was 11 and was suitably impressed, but then had another tour when I was 21 and found the residence to be kind of shabby. I was disappointed. On the other hand, a few months later I was lucky enough to get a West Wing tour and that was pretty impressive. It was certainly different than I expected. It’s not too fancy, more like very dignified office space.

**The Capitol ** – I worked on Capitol Hill for four years, and every time I was outside of the Capitol it never failed to impress me. Seeing pictures simply doesn’t do it justice.

Graceland – as others have said, shabby. Huge waste of money. They didn’t even show us the death toilet.

**New York City ** – I grew up in a rural area and had lived in D.C. for a while before I went up there. I thought myself relatively city-fied by that point, but when I got to NYC, it blew my mind. It’s so big and so busy and there are so many people. It was unreal. Nothing could have prepared me for that experience.

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I was amazed that much of the white house is, as it seemed to me, a shell where the tourists go from room to room while the important parts are in the other wings.

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Arkansas - The state really gets a bad rap–it really is a beautiful place. Eureka Springs and Hot Springs National Park are great tourist-y places with lots of history. And the countryside in spring and fall is gorgeous.

Newport RI Mansions - I had seen them on the “America’s Castles” show, but there is nothing like seeing Marble House, The Breakers and the rest in person. They are breathtaking! Hard to believe many of them were in disrepair in the 60’s and 70’s. Even harder to believe that people actually lived in these places!! And to the owners they were considered “cottages”…amazing.

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After TheLoadedDog mentioned it, I would have to say I was surprised at how impressive the Sydney Opera house is. All those teeny tiny tiles! Gorgeous site. A real “LOOK AT MEEEEEEE” quality.

Ugly as shit inside though.

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As a kid i was smitten with the ocean and exploration of it.
As an adult i found myself at the foot of a pier at submarine base point loma CA. ready to report for duty on my first “boat”. At the foot of that pier was the trieste up on a rack in all her glory painted fresh with orange and white. I could walk right up to it and rub her belly! That was 1981 and if anyone can tutor me on getting photos from my scanner onto the this board , I’ll be happy to share. but each of you can look at them once, for twenty minutes.

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It’s very 70s of course, but I quite like the Concert Hall. When I’m in there I’m normally sitting in the choir stalls, behind the stage, or on the stage itself, so I get a different view of the hall from that enjoyed by the audience.

The backstage areas are all pretty dowdy and could do with a good spruce up though.

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A TV Studio: my memory is kind of fuzzy by now because I went for a class field trip in the second grade. It was a bit smaller than I thought it would be, but it was a local childrens’ show and not a huge ordeal. The only people I remember seeing there running the whole show were the host and two or three camera men.

Keiko, the orca whale, otherwise known as “Free Willy.” I got to see him when he was still in the Oregon Coast Aquarium. He was pretty huge. Apparently he died a few years ago (how come I never found that out until today?)

Thurgood Stubbs From “The PJs” (Remember that show?) I had a clay animation art class in high school. The teacher arranged to have spokesmen for Will Vinton Studios (located in Portland, not far away) come and talk about the company and the industry. They had a bunch of the props that they used in the show, including several models of the main characters. They were bigger than I thought they’d be, and incredibly detailed. The metal skeleton underneath the foam is pretty elaborate. One thing that surprised me was when they said that at any given moment while they were filming, they had 6 different sets going at a time, often with different copies of the exact same character being animated. What an interesting job that would be, eh?

I’ll second (fifth?) Yellowstone, and I’m in the “bigger than I thought it would be” category. I went on a road trip with my family a few years ago. At the time, everything I knew about the place came from Yogi Bear. I thought it was just going to be this little park; you go in, take a few photos, get some crap at the gift shop, and maybe if you’re lucky you’ll see a buffalo. I saw hundreds of wild buffalo, a bear, and a moose with her child (What do you call young moose? Cubs?) What really took me off guard was just going out onto the plains and looking out…there was nothing but nature out to the horizon. I think I’m too used to sitting in front of a computer monitor all day (reading message boards), so that I don’t ever get out in nature, but it’s the first time in my life I’ve been anywhere where there was no sign of civilization to be found other than the main road. I’m so used to seeing power lines, radio towers, farm buildings, a fence, anything, but Yellowstone was just wide and open and nice. Fresh air. A very peaceful experience for me, especially watching the sun set.

I saw Gary Coleman at the Electronics Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. He kind of took me by surprise. He was about the size I thought he’d be (heh) but I just didn’t expect to be standing in line and then to turn my head all of a sudden to see him walking around with a couple of booth babes checking out the other booths.

One of the few other famous people I’ve seen in person was Jane Goodall. A few years ago she gave a speech at my high school. She came across as this nice old woman who could’ve been one of my mom’s friends. I really found it funny how she was so well-known throughout the world, and yet she was giving a speech in the same gymnasium where I had gym class.

Other things that I haven’t seen myself, but have heard that there is no way to get the full experience without seeing it in person:

I’ve heard the postcard-sized images you always see of the Sistine Chapel doesn’t really do it justice.

I had an art history teacher last year who said that seeing Un dimanche après-midi à l’Ile de la Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat was literally one of the most profound moments of his life, and moved him to tears when he saw it. I really want to see it now, but somehow I suspect my expectations have been set a little high.

This same art teacher also said hearing a live performance of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” is something everyone should experience. Can’t speak for this one personally either, but it’s on my list of stuff to do before I die.

Another thing on that list: See a rocket taking off in person (preferably something awe-inspiring like an interplanetary probe, not some lame-ass cable TV satellite. ;))

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On the same note, I was suprised by Marc Singer (of V and Beastmaster fame) at DragonCon. Not because he was different than expected, but because I was just pushing my way through a crowd and was surprised to suddenly have my hand shaken by a celebrity a vaguely recognized, pushing though the same crowd, smiling and shaking hands on his way.