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

In My Humble Opinion
121

The Iwo Jima memorial is huge. The base is taller than I am.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I saw the Alhambra in Granada but that place is just beautiful. I would love to see it restored to its pre-conquered state.

The ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty is the most interesting part of that tour. The ferry ride from Algecira to Tangeir is better; I don’t think anyone realizes you can see the coasts of two continents while traversing the strait.

BrotherCadfael, I agree completely, but you’ve reversed the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials. :slight_smile:

There is nothing more incredible than watching 50 foot waves pound into Oahu’s north shore.

122

I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned the Grand Canyon yet. I was expecting it to be huge, but I wasn’t expecting it to be big enough to swallow a continent. :eek:

And on a personal geeky level, the original offices for Pixar Animation Studios (in Point Richmond, CA, just north of San Francisco) were dinky as hell. Given all the people they had at the time and the volume of work they were doing (I popped by in 1997), I was shocked that the place was little more than a half-dozen dinky office buildings in a strip mall, just spitting distance from an oil refinery. It was like meeting Albert Einstein and finding out he was a dwarf with attention-deficit disorder…

123
      • Two airplanes: some years ago I got to see a B-2 bomber up close during an open house/air show at a local air-force base. We have all probably seen pictures of it now on TV and in print, but these don’t allow any sense of overall scale of the thing. I had somehow thought it would be at least as huge as a regular passenger jet, but it was really quite small. Recalling how expensive they were and how critical they were supposed to be to the war machine, it was rather surprising to see how big it wasn’t.
        …
  • The other one was a reproduction of a WW I fighter airplane that appeared at another area air show, an airplane like what the Red Baron flew, like what Snoopy pretends to fly. These things overall are smaller and constructed far flimsier than I had imagined: something along the lines of “twelve beach umbrellas and a riding-lawnmower engine”. The thought that people went up in these things and pulled dogfight maneuvers while shooting at each other with machine guns was simply staggering.
    ~
124

The Alamo.
It is suppose to be out in the middle of no where.

It is smack dab in the middle of a city area.

It was a bit of a let down.

125

The Winged Victory of Samothrace in the Louvre. It is at the top of a staircase built especially for it. When I came around a corner and saw it at the top of the stairs for the first time, the sight of this eight foot high statue literally took my breath away. I had to lean against the wall and catch my breath.

126

rjung, several people have mentioned the Grand Canyon.

I can’t say I was really surprised by it, I’d always heard it defied description, and they were right. About a year later, I flew over the Grand Canyon and that was incredible. I mean, I’d seen it from the ground and it hurt my brain to absorb, but from the air, where everything usually looks so teensy and it was still hard to envision…wow.

I don’t know when y’all visited the Louvre, but when I was there in 1998, there were signs all over pointing you to the Mona Lisa, so it was impossible to miss. It wasn’t really on my trajectory, but my friend and I shrugged and followed the signs just to see it. I’d heard it wasn’t impressive in person and found that to be true.

OTOH, the David was amazing. MUCH larger than I’d imagined. My friends and I stared at it for about half an hour, at least. The artwork in the Sistine Chapel had a similar effect on me, descriptions I’d heard did not at all prepare me for it.

I was also surprised at how big the Gateway Arch is. I’ve been to St. Louis a few times, but it wasn’t til the last time that I was nearby it in the daytime and was impressed at its sheer size. And it’s really shiny, too.

127

Most of Venice , especially the Piazza San Marco , much more impressive in real life than I’d imagined. Ditto the Basilica.
When I think of the Rialto , though, I just think of the fact that it’s lined with perfume and clothes shops.

128

I can’t afford to travel like I’d like to, so all the little revelations and impressions from people who have travelled the world, meeting interesting people and notable places makes this my favorite thread in the SDMB right now. Keep 'em coming, please, please, please.

My impressions of people who live and work in Washington, DC from the news, from TV shows and from movies didn’t prepare me for the reality of how black the residential city is when I finally visited as an adult in college. I thought Atlanta was black.

129

My sister-in-law is from VA, like all my family; however, she had never seen the ocean until we took her to the beach when she was 25. Like you, she was pretty much dumb-founded.

I once started a thread about Michaelangelo’s David , and several posters said that it was one of those things that has to be seen to be believed. They all commented on how huge the thing is (20’, IIRC).

130

The statue itself is 17’ - including the pedestal, it’s 23’. Imposing, indeed!

131

The Las Vegas strip: That place is bright! Extremely bright! And gaudy. Caesar’s Palace looks nothing like it does on TV.

Downtown Chicago: I thought it would be a lot bigger.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway: Freaking huge. Yeah, I knew it was 2.5 miles around, but that place is just really big.

Lake Michigan: You can’t see the other side. It might as well be the ocean.

Washington, D.C.: All those famous buildings look surprisingly similar, to me. And on the White House tour, you don’t get to actually see any rooms that the President uses, nor the Oval Office. It was just rooms that some long-ago President used. Disappointing.

132

I was really shocked at how tiny the studio for Late Night with Conan O’Brien was. When we were first ushered in, I really believed that we were in some sort of mock/model studio and were going to be moved into the real studio when it was time for the show to start. It’s truly amazing how spacious they manage to make it look on televisoin through the placement of cameras; I’d say the band probably sits 10’ or less directly across from Conan; they’re practically in the audience, and are RIGHT in front of him. From other accounts here, people had similar experiences with other TV show tapings.

I was really impressed, though, by Stone Mountain in Georgia. It’s truly enormous, dwarfing everything around it. The carving is GIGANTIC, as well - it’s really the anti-Mt. Rushmore.

133
  1. The Liberty Bell was much smaller than I expected it to be.
  2. Notre Dame Cathedral was AWESOME. The day I was there they allowed tourists into the towers, so I got to walk up into the bell tower, across the the front by the gargoyles and down the other bell tower. When you’re up there looking down people look like little ants. It was so awesome. Plus I was able to go to mass there on Sunday, that was cool too. A friend of mine lived in Paris, and was never able to go into the bell towers, he’d never heard of such a thing. The marble stairs are worn down by years and years of friction and it’s like walking up stairs that sag really bad in the middle. It’s almost like walking up a ramp.
  3. I concur on the Mona Lisa. I’d rather have the postcard.
  4. and finally, maybe I just don’t appreciate rocks and such but a natural history museum is booorrrrriiiinnngggg. Here’s me at NHM… “Oh look, an amethest! Oh here’s anothter, and another, and another!” Now go to next type of rock… "Oh look, here’s a huge diamond!, and another, and another, and another. [repeat forever] That being said by the time I saw the Hope Diamond, I was not too impressed.
134

  • Kind of a big “thing”, but it was the first thing the OP brought to mind: Europe. After seeing all these maps and learning about all these battles and such that took place during WWII, the biggest impression on my first visit was “my god, it’s so SMALL !” I think you get used to a sense of size based on your surroundings. So when I found that Germany is only roughly the length of California (where I grew up), I was stunned. And to find the relative sizes of Italy and France, and also just how close England really is, it put things in a whole different perspective.

  • Many people have already mentioned the Grand Canyon. Seems to blow me away every time I go there. And hiking down into the canyon gives you a completely different perspective as well. It’s one of those you-imagine-it-would-appear-one-way, but when you are actually down in there, it is very different than you imagine (for me at least)

  • Mt. McKinley. Having seen the sierras, the rockies, some of the canadian rockies, and the alps, I thought I was prepared to see this big mountain. It took a couple days waiting for the clouds to part. And then one day my friend tells me to look “toward the mountain.” And then “keep looking up”. Through these little windows in the clouds, I kept seeing more and more pieces of the mountain. And when I finally saw the highest piece (which I would later learn wasn’t even the top), it felt like I was looking up at about a 60 degree angle - and we were some 70 miles away from the base !

  • Seeing Michelangelo’s works were surprizing for different reasons. I expected “big” for David, but not “spectacular”. One of those must-see-in-person works of art. And what surprized me most when I saw the Pieta in St. Peter’s was not how incredible it was (although it was even better than the pictures), but I was just shocked at wondering “how could ANYBODY take a machine gun to such a work ?” (as had occurred, which is why there were the huge panes of plexiglass surrounding it).

I can’t say that I was all that impressed by the Gateway arch. But since it has been mentioned so many times here, I thought I’d share my funny story about it. As I was flying into St. Louis (and I don’t know if they deliberately do the approach path just so you get a good view of downtown and the arch), I happened to remark about the arch. And the guy sitting next to me, a local, told me that the people on the other side of the river were going to build a giant croquet ball on their side. All I can think of when anyone mentions that arch !

135

Dealy Plaza: much smaller than I expected as others have noted. Lee Harvey probably could have killed Kennedy with a rock from that window.

136

People have already mentioned a lot of the stuff I was thinking about posting, so I’ll just second (or third or fourth) a buunch of stuff:

Surprised in a Good Way:
The massive, awe-inspiring splendor of Mount Rainier. I became obsessed with that mountain instantly when I first saw it years ago, and it’s never let up. Ice falls on the glaciers with crevices that would swallow the Sears Tower and you wouldn’t miss it, the size of the Douglas Fir Trees once you enter the park, the “Grove of the Patriarchs,” the pristine meadows, and of course the sheer bulk of the mountain itself.

The Grand Canyon. Yeah, it’s almost like that Douglas Adams description of the factory floor of the planet making company: it’s not really infinity, but it gives a better impression of infinity than infinity itself.

Viewing the North Cascades from an airplane: nothing but icy, sharp, white peaks as far as you can see. The North Cascades National Park features some of the most inaccessible terrain in the U.S. The Olympic Mountains are similar. The tallest of them are “only” around 7000 feet, but they start at sea level, and there are so many peaks your eyes get lost looking at them. The view from Hurrican Ridge is sensational.

Western Nebraska. I expected more of the same (driving east to west): flat, featureless. No sir, it’s corrugated and broken and very interesting. Not spectacular, but very interesting.

Chicago and its lakefront, with the park and musuems. I’m just so impressed that people had enough vision 100 years ago to preserve such prime real estate for the enjoyment of all Chicagoans. It easily have been developed into condos and iindustrial seaport, like Seattle’s waterfront.

Seeing England from the air. Streets in Europe aren’t like in America: they’re not all sqaures and right angles. Somehow this really hit me (“I’m going to Europe”) almost more than anything else.

Amsterdam. I knew about the “Red Light District” but not much else. Wow, is that one cool city! So much to do. I rented a bike for two days and wandered for hours, fascinated the whole time.

Upstate New York. I was unprepared for how beautiful it is, especially the Adirondacks and the Finger Lakes.

So much of the Pacific Coast, from Mexico to Alaska. Stupendous, and a lot of it is still open and undeveloped. Of particular interest: Big Sur, Muir Woods, the Redwoods, pretty much all of the Oregon Coast north of Coos Bay, the portion of the Olympic National Park on the coast in Washington, and so on.

Los Angeles. I expected the horrific urban sprawl and smog, but I was suprised by how many beautiful and interesting places there are as well.

Madison, WI. It has my nomination to be the coolest mid-size city in America.

Surprised in a Bad Way:

The city of Phoenix. Blah. Endless strip malls, cookie-cutter housing developments, and four-lane avenues. Everyone commutes to work in SUVs or pickups (at least, that’s the impression one gets: SUVs and pickups outnumber cars on the freeways but what seems like 10-1). I hate the place.

Niagra Falls. The Falls are tremendous, but the crap plastered up all around them is unbearable.

Seattle’s waterfront. Horrible: hardly anything is preserved in a way comparable to Chicago’s lakefront. There are great scenic spots in Seattle, and lots of them (Alki, Magnuson, Gasworks park, etc.) but the downtown waterfront is not among them.

Cleveland. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was worse than that. Yeechh.

137

I agree. I had always associated the Grand Canyon to some lame tourist attraction until I saw it in late one afternoon, just as the soon began to set. "The phrase “awe inspiring” is used too trivially, but I was literally awestruck when I saw the Grand Canyon.

Stonehenge, on the other hand, was a bit of a disappointment when I saw it as a seventeen-year-old. For some reason, I was expecting these really huge stones. Instead, they were about as tall as a tall ceiling.

I wouldn’t have wanted to be the one to move them and set them in place, though. :slight_smile:

138

Las meninas in the Prado. If I remember right, it was so huge it wasn’t hung on the wall, it was leaned up against it. It was so much bigger than I had imagined, and just awe-inspiring. I had seen it so many times in my books, and I thought I would be underwhelmed by the real thing. I wasn’t.
Bernini’s David was amazing - I was entranced by the detail; his facial expression, his hands…and seeing Carravaggio’s works for the first time in person - books just don’t capture the depth of color and shadow.
On a sunny day in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chagall stained glass fills the room with the richest, most cerulean blue light. It makes me happy just thinking about it. :slight_smile:

139

Well, technically it was a mission which was “fortified” in a very sloppy manner. I agree, though, smack in the middle of the city.

140

Bernini’s David outshines Michelangelo’s. While the latter is impressive in it’s perfection, David just stands there. Bernini’s version shows David about to do battle. The detail and tension in the piece is simply amazing.

I should have mentioned The Wall. Pictures of the Vietnam Memorial do not look all that impressive. When you come upon it rising up out of the earth and walk along those black walls inscribed with so many names, and perhaps come upon someone you knew, the futility of war comes home with a sledgehammer blow. It evokes emotions like no other thing I’ve seen.