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 I vaguely recognized, pushing though the same crowd, smiling and shaking hands on his way.
Wow, we had totally different experiences. I thought Mount Rushmore would be somewhat anti-climatic. I mean, you see pictures of it everywhere with this perfectly blue sky background and you just think that it can’t be that great. When I went there, I thought it was great! It was so pretty. The sky was unbelieveably blue that day and every time I showed someone the pictures I took, they asked me if they were postcards! And I thought it looked pretty big myself!
Also: the entire city of Washington D.C. and the Capitol Building in particular. It’s crazy to be inside the Capitol and look up and see the murals on the ceiling. It really doesn’t look like it’s that far above you but when you step outside and look at the dome again from the outside you realize that yes, its one hell of a tall building! And D.C. is so full of history. I don’t particularly like history but I had a great time in D.C… There’s just so much to see and do.
And lastly, Montana. Big Sky Country, whoop-de-do. But I got to to to Montana with my (ex) boyfriend and visit his aunt’s gigantic (we’re talking thousands of acres here) ranch, and it was nuts. The valleys and hills are amazing. They call them “coolies” and they’re like hills, but inverted. Instead of the ground coming up to form hills, the ground around sinks away so the tops of the hills are level with the rest of the ground. And you can see so far in all directions. We drove three hours to get to the ranch down this muddy dirt road and we probably passed 3 or 4 mailboxes with roads leading off to some unseen farm in the distance. 3 in the nearly 200 miles we drove down that road. That’s how spacious it is there. I loved it. I never could have imagined that it would be like that.
The Eiffel Tower. I always thought it was painted black (probably from seeing it mostly in black and white photos), but it’s really a brownish color.
As far as NYC goes, I have to say I was surprised that most of the buildings weren’t as tall as I was expecting. I mean there’s some real skyscrapers there but I thought every building was going to be at least 10 stories tall or more. Most of the average buildings were 2-4 stories tall. And I was expecting the Empire State building and the World Trade Center to be right next to each other. At least closer than they were. They were quite a ways apart.
And as a side note, I think this is the one of the best threads I’ve read here on the boards. If there’s a thread collecting the best ones, this one very much deserves to be in it.
Redwoods astonished me. I mean, I’d seen pictures and descriptions, but it’s hard to grasp until you actually see them. In fact, just the other day I was on a road in the Santa Cruz mountains, and off to the left there was a ravine 50 ft down full of redwoods, and they went up another 100ft over my head. It’s amazing to me that that’s a tree. They don’t have things like that back home on the east coast.
The the first time I saw Van Gogh’s Starry Night I remember being surprised at how vibrant colors were, esp. that teal color. It was so bright, like a peacock. All the posters I’d seen never got it right.
Versailles: I was unimpressed. I had high hopes. I expected something beautiful–something like several other French palaces. Instead, I got tiny bedrooms with 5-foot-square (that was sort of neat) beds and a Hall of Mirrors that was so old you probably couldn’t even do your hair in the warped reflections. It might have been because I had a bad tour guide, though.
The Alamo. I expected it to have more space around it, but it’s on a rather small lot totally surrounded by modern building, right across the street from a Burger King.
The inside of the Infomart, in Dallas, TX. Don’t know what I expected, but I expected something more impressive.
Several years ago I went to the annual air show here in San Diego at what was still at the time Naval Air Station Miramar (and is now Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.)
As part of the show lots of military and civilian aircraft are on display for visitors to walk around and check out. So, I walked up to a B52 bomber that was on display, and I recall thinking something along the lines of “But it’s so small!” My impression from seeing them on TV was that they were huge, but not so. I was flabbergasted.
A few I haven’t seen here yet:
The glaciers of Alaska. No, “glacial blue” is not just pale blue - and they really are that color, it’s not a trick of the lighting.
The National Archives, especially the exhibit at the time (twenty years ago?) with the Watergate picklock tools. History, gritty history, made real and matter-of-fact.
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Um, Las Vegas is fascinating in its own way (I’ve got family there, so I don’t much get to go as a tourist, exactly) as some kind of strange commentary on the human condition and just what we’ll do in the name of entertainment. It’s artificial, yes, but it’s so genuinely artificial it’ll make your teeth hurt.
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There may be parts of Canada that aren’t pretty, but I haven’t seen too many of them.
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The Grand Canyon is too big to be believed.
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No one’s mentioned Yosemite Valley?!? Beauty and majesty in every direction. Part of me wants to everyone to see it, and part of me realizes that there are too many people loving it to little pieces as it is.
When I visited The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, I was expecting utter cheesiness and tackiness. It is really a very well-laid out museum. There is a bit of tackiness, but it’s Rock and Roll. There’s supposed to tackiness. Nearly every exhibit had some sort of interesting tidbit. I was blown away by the Jimi Hendrix exhibit, which surprised me. I thought The Beatles and Elvis would get great displays, and they did, but the Hendrix exhibit is huge, and features some really great things. There are some of his drawings on the wall. He was a very good artist.
The museum is huge inside. It doesn’t look as big as it really is from outside. It doesn’t seem to stop going up.
Kennedy Space Center was even better than I had imagined, and I imagined something awesome. The launchpads, the assembly building, and the old mission control building make a weird and wonderful mix with the alligators and the wild pigs that populate the area. The coastal beauty is preserved fairly well considering what happens there. The Saturn V layout is dumbfounding. It goes on forever!
The conspiracy stories about Area 51 don’t do it justice. It is like an inverted skyscraper, but taller than any building in the world. It goes nearly 3000 feet underground and spreads for 10 acres. And there aren’t just a few aliens there. There are hundreds of Grays, Nordics, and Reptilians working next to the best, brightest, and most-secret people in the military and the occasional university person. The hangars are the most impressive part. What is seen above ground are just the doors of the real hangars. There are many cigar-shaped crafts, triangular crafts, pyramidal crafts, and of course saucer crafts that all run on anti-gravity. The operations aren’t only military though. There is a mind-blowing amount of research.
You can’t prove I didn’t see it. 
Hawaii looks so beautiful on the postcards, but there is more litter here than any other place I’ve been, and that includes NYC and parts of Mexico.
I don’t understand how people can throw trash out a moving car when they live in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.
jorn utzon, the architect, was fired or quit before the interior was completed, so he had nothing to do with the design. i believe his son is now working on a redesign, though.
The General Sherman Tree: I had seen the redwoods (truly awesome), and had heard of this great tree in Sequoia National Park, but the reality was way beyond my expectation. I sat on a bench about fifty yards from the tree and looked up . . . and up . . . and UP! I don’t think I moved for about half an hour. That any living thing could be so vast just stunned me completely. Its lowest branches are at least a hundred feet from the ground. I still remember the stats: 36 feet in diameter, 102 feet around at the base, top 275 feet up (and still growing).
U.S.S. Pompainito (WWII submarine): This Gato class sub is in permanant dock in San Francisco. I was surprised at how small it is. Movies of WWII subs make the inside seem much bigger, but anyone with claustrophobia would panic on just the tour.
Carlsbad Caverns, NM: This is one of the most spectacular sites (with the most spectacular sights) I have ever visited. The Big Room is over 700 feet underground and, IIRC, is bigger than the Astro Dome. The formations are utterly fantastic. Visit if you get the chance, but take a coat. If the temp above ground is 100 degrees, it’s still 50 in the cavern. I never saw the bats, but the cavern is one of the great sights.
The top of the Empire State Building: I know I sound like a rube, but looking down on the city of New York from more than a thousand feet and still standing on a building just blows me away. I think I was about 35 at the time, but I was as impressed as if I were three.
Oak Creek Canyon, AZ: This was a surprise. I had been to the Grand Canyon, as already described, one of the great places in the world, and was heading for Sedona and Jerome when I saw a sign on the highway (alternate 87?) out of Flagstaff. It simply said “VIEWPOINT.” I wanted to see as much as possible, so I pulled off. There was a parking area, and a low fence beyond which was obviously something “to view.” Stepping up to the rim and looking out I was flabbergasted by the deep canyon. Not wind and water cut like the grand canyon, but covered with oak trees. A serindipidy!
Suerat’s Afternoon in the Park. I saw it up close years ago, and would never have guessed the damned thing was about 12 feet tall. It’s made of itty bitty dots of paint, and you can’t even interpret it as a picture unless you look at it from across the room.
Same here on Milan. I would guess that most people think it is some glamorous city like Paris and New York because it gets mentioned so often with those two when it comes to fashion. Not so. It is not a bad city all things considered. It was just a big letdown from what I expected.
The first time I went to Europe, I flew overnight to Milan by myself. I was supposed to meet my wife at our hotel 5 hours after I arrived. I took the airport shuttle to the Grand something train station. I set out walking to our hotel several miles away. I had to pee badly shortly after I set out. I was worried where I could go when I looked up and spotted the Golden Arches. After that, I quickly found out that I was always within a ten minute walk of a McDonald’s. I even found one area that had two within a block of each other.
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New York City. I was born and raised about two and a half hours north but never had any cause to go down there when I was a kid; my parents don’t like city driving. I was 20 when I finally went down, and it was … strange. It somehow managed to be huge and busy and new and different AND at the same time be incredibly familiar and homey. Entirely like and entirely unlike all the other cities I’ve been in. I’ve only been there twice but I feel like I know the city - and yet I also know I don’t know it and never would if I lived there for decades; there’d always be something new. New York is almost a spiritual thing for me somehow.
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Dinosaurs. On that first visit, we made a trip to the Museum of Natural History specifically to see the dinosaurs. I was extremely underwhelmed by the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Certainly it’s nothing I’d appreciate being chased down the street by, but I was expecting a monstrous colossus of doom with a skull the size of a semi. It’s rather small and dinky. On the other hand, the ones with the flutes on their heads - Google seems to indicate they’re called Parasaurolophus - were HUGE. Their heads were as long as I am tall; I was dwarfed. I expected THEM to be about seven feet tall total, and they’re at least 20 I think. The only dinosaurs that were the size I expected were the Triceratops.
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Texas. Everything is really far away from everything and there’s nothing in between the towns but scrub and brush. However, the eastern half of the state, at least, looks nothing like “Texas” in that it is not a desert at all but a rich forest and/or fruitful plain. (The people are just like in King of the Hill, though.)
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WWII Watercraft. On our big roadtrip to Disney World last spring, Gunslinger asked to stop by the U.S.S. Alabama at its mooring in Mobile. I expected to be thoroughly bored - and I kind of was, on the battleship. But when we went on the submarine that’s on land next to the ship, I was floored. My grandfather served on a submarine of the same class as that one, and I was absolutely astonished at how tiny and cramped it was, and how hard to navigate. He got bonked but good on the head by a hatch when they were battening down and submerging (which is why he didn’t go down with the rest of the crew when they were sunk on their next mission - he was put ashore to heal his skull, so he was in hospital when they went boom-sploosh), and I can totally see how; I could barely walk through the thing and it wasn’t even moving and I wasn’t in a hurry.
The Hollywood sign. In the '70s you could still climb up to it, which I did. A friend wanted a picture of me leaning against it. She got a picture of me leaning against a huge steel girder. The sign was 30 feet above my head.
The Smithsonian. Its endless. I think I could just move in and wander around for the rest of my life, and never see it all.
The aircraft carrier, Nimitz. Its huge. It seems to define the word.
New York City. I’ve been there twice and have been amazed by what an armpit it really is. Yeah, there’s neat stuff like Broadway and the SoL, but overall, I am absolutely amazed that anyone would want to spend more than a day there.
The Grand Canyon, OTOH, is simply amazing. The last time I was there, I spent a couple of hours just sitting in one place and watching the colors changed as the sun moved. I then hiked it the next day. Unbelievable!
Unimpressive:
- Saint Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel. Having seen numerous other wonderful cathedrals and sacred structures around Europe, I was rather disappointed. Pompous, heavy, and dark. Very crowded.
Mixed review:
- Colosseum. Historically fascinating. But smaller than I thought, and stuck in dirty city surroundings.
Impressive:
- San Marco, Venice, and the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona. Wonderful and graceful – each in their own way
- Montserrat, near Barcelona. Cool rock formations and a wonderful little monastery clinging to a cliff that encloses an altar nestled inside a natural cave.
- Most of the sights in the western USA and Canada (mountains, canyons, ocean, etc.).
I agree about Dealy Plaza. It was…nothing. A lawn next to a bridge.
I was surprised and fascinated by King Tut’s Mask. It was fascinating to see how strangely crude it was, while not being so at all. By this I mean simply that when you see it up close, in person, you can see that it was simply human hands and basic tools that fashioned it. Marvelous.