What's so special about the USA, that tourists won't be able to get elsewhere

In My Humble Opinion
81

The Grand Canyon is damn unique, I can’t think of any desert canyons anywhere near as majestic. You’d definately miss out if you pass it up

Yes, there are many film settings to visit, good point

I think you condradicted yourself, Mexico isn’t part of the US (at least not yet :))

As for sports teams, you are right, tens of millions of non-Americans idealise USA-based basketball teams, though they often tour internationally, so I can only let you have “world-class basketball matches” . No one really cares about gridiron through, and Japanese baseball teams are at least as famous as American ones, as professional baseball is only really big in the former Japanese Empire

I hadn’t thought that through… Sure, Brazil’s Christ the Redeemer is roughly as iconic as the Statue of Liberty, but some one would definately miss out if they couldn’t go to America.

Isn’t it just a cheap 山寨 ripoff of London, even Sydney, my current city-of-residence has all the things New York is famous for. Sorry, I had a friend who lived there who couldn’t stop negatively comparing it to London.

Yes, you are right, this is what I should have wrote.

True, but I was more asking what individual things one would miss by boycotting America. Not everyone has the same interests.

I am in Australia and I grew up in the UK with some time in Asia.
I am not looking for recommendations, I started a “Great Debate” about how bad it would be to never go to the UK.

Yes, the US civil war was very important in the history of warfare. It was debatably, the first modern war.

Macao,

Yes, I think, with the possible exception of China and India, and the EU if you count it as one country, America is the best country for tourists to visit.

82

San zhai? Could I interpret that as “ersatz”?

No, New York is not these things. I know it’s only an opinion, but still, your friend was just flat wrong.

New York is pretty much the most amazing city mankind has ever seen. Unless you’ve been there, you won’t get it. It has a special feel to it: it hums with energy, as if the streets and buildings are alive. It’s so iconic that just walking around your brain keeps going “this isn’t real!”

I’ve spent time in Sydney and was born in London, and am lucky enough to have visited most of the other great cities in the world. They all have incredible stuff going for them, but nothing on earth compares to New York. It’s truly unique, and kind of the Socratic ideal of a city.

Also, better deli sandwiches than anywhere else on earth. :wink:

83

Yeah, well YMMV. It failed to wow me substantially more than say Tokyo, Paris or Rome. It is a great city but in terms of buzz, diversity and culture London is easily the equivalent (and with better architecture and museums…but that is another thread anyway) So I don’t think it counts as something unique to the USA. (except in the most literal sense).

I think the real selling point is having such natural diversity so easily accessible. It is pretty much the worlds largest theme park. And though (Grand Canyon excepted) you can get bigger and “better” elsewhere, you are hard pushed to reach those sites without real…major travel and logistical nightmares.
Of course it is a huge country and long travel is unavoidable but if you wanted to plan a trip that takes in a canyon hiking, sailing, skiing, surfing, shooting etc. then you can hit a load of world class sites just within the borders of the USA. Perhaps not the very best in the world but in terms of bang for holiday buck and accessibility I think it scores very highly.

84

As a Floridian whose heart is in Upstate New York, I feel the same way about New Jersey. It seems like a weird blend of upstate, NYC, and Florida. The small communities have a sense of civic pride like in Upstate NY, it’s flat and full of suburbs like Florida, and the accents and ethnicities are somewhat similar to NYC.

85

Got a cite for that claim? I know I’m not exactly a typical American, but the whole “Americans can’t find X on a map” meme always bugged me.

86

The version we hear over here is that Americans are just ignorant about foreign countries but not tha they don’t know their own.

87

Well, except for New Mexico :slight_smile:

And really, there are many people all over the world who think Jografie is a four-letter-word, but the Spaniards I know who are like that behave differently from Americans when they leave home. They have a greater tendency than Americans to either:

  • not go very far and always to the same place. Whether they go from Zaragoza to Salou or from Madrid to Valencia, don’t ask them to place Oporto in a map because they don’t realize the spirits are named after a city.
  • on their honeymoon they may go to some place more exotic, but they go to one of those touristy hotels. They’re the kind of person who spends 2 weeks in Cancún or Puerto Vallarta without leaving the hotel once.
  • if they ever go for another option, it’s of the “if it’s Tuesday we’re in Brussels” variety, always behind a tour guide with a brightly-colored umbrella.
  • they know that people abroad speak foreign (for purposes of this item, “Latin America” is defined as “only sort of abroad”).
88

Provincialism is provincialism. I loved loved loved Catalunya but remember a friend telling me, “don’t worry if you can’t speak Catalan, they’ll speak Castillian if you press them.”

Which did not help me, especially when I was mugged twice in the same night in Barcelona. Still, the food and culture were great and I made do. And – having family in Valencia – I agree that the paella eaters there don’t talk so much with the anchoa eaters in the Barcelona market. (Yum). Or the Costa Brava people in San Celoni (one of the five best restaurants I’ve eaten at – El Raco con Fabes).

The U.S. is well worth any international traveler’s attention not only for the natural sights, which can be astonishing, not only for the ethnic and regional foods, which can be delicious, but because – hey, you’re stuck with our culture as the dominant global culture – for better or worse. I want to know more about Spain as the development of Spain significantly shaped New World history (visiting the Archivos de los Indies (sp.?) in Sevila has been a longstanding goal, as they have crazy comprehensive records of the treasure ships from 1500 on). I am sure smart Spaniards want to know more about how Spanish policy played out in Texas, Florida, wherever. My Mexican friends are on the same page.

The U.S. is a fascinating Creole culture. The British Isles influence alone (Celtic vs. English vs. Scots Irish) could and has filled long books, putting aside the African, French, Spanish, German, Asian history here. Our folk music alone (tracing the Anglo-Saxon vs. Scots-Irish vs. black origins of country music and rock and roll) can and does fill volumes. Much like my fascination with whether Galician music is Celtic in origin (my gosh their food is good, either way).

89

Archivo de Indias.

Galician music is “celtic in origin”, yes. The word celtíberos covers the majority of the tribes/nations which lived in the Iberian Peninsula in pre-roman times; celtic influence is greatest in Galicia and Asturias. Tradition here has it that the Celts travelled from Galicia to the British Isles (the Canción de Breogán, or Bregan’s Song).

90

If “a similarity with any other country in the world” is the standard for visiting a country then there isn’t a country in the world worth visiting. No place is totally, utterly unlike any other.

91

Namkcalb, what exactly are you trying to ask, or perhaps I should say prove, here? People have mentioned dozens of intersting and unique trhings you can find the U.S. and nowhere else, and the unusualness of having it all in one (large) country. Amazingly, the humans in the U. S. of A. are , in fact, human. Amazingly, like all humans, the things which set us apart are reflections of the similarities.

Heard the term Insane Troll Logic? No, I am not calling you a troll. I am saying you stretch logic well past the breaking point to claim the U. S. isn’t culturally unique, and that there’s nothing here you couldn’t see elsewhere. Yes, we in the U. S. eat food, except for the Breatharians, and they don’t not do it for long. We go to rock concerts and sit in classical music halls. (As a matter of fact, we invented the former and made massive contributions to the latter.) There’s history, environments, cuisine, sports, and culture you just won’t find elsewhere.

Yes, it’s true that you can also find unique cuisine and cultural opporunities elsewhere in the world. Yeah, that’s kind of how unique things work: they’re not all the same. You are managing, with immense effort and gross lack of charity, to say is that Americans are, in fact, human. Which is true, but really, really trivial and rather pointless. Was this somehow in doubt to you? Would you be more interested in a society of robots?

Hell, I lived in Knoxville for 15 years, and I still never exhausted all the unique sights just within the city, let alone within the East Tennessee region.

92

Well, there’s also music and music history. The fascinating Mississippi Delta region, where the blues was born. Detroit and Motown. New Orleans and the best jazz in the world. Nashville, country music, rockabilly, and good ol’ fashioned rock n’ roll, the devil’s music!

93

this seems somewhat appropriate following smiling bandit’s post:

94

Forgot to mention this in my last post…

Yes, there is amazing music all over the world. But there’s only one place you can go and stand in Robert Johnson’s footsteps where, according to legend, he sold his soul to the Devil in return for mastery of the blues, and that’s at the crossroads of Highway 49 and Highway 61 in Clarksdale, MS.

95

I started this thread because I thought it would be an interesting topic to debate, I mean no slight against the people of your country.

96

Oh, I didn’t know Sydney has an Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Times Square, Broadway, Brooklyn Bridge, Wall Street, Madison Avenue, Central Park, Harlem, Dereck Jeter, the best pizza anywhere, the best bagels, the Guggenheim, the Met, the MOMA, Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center, Jerry Seinfeld, and a Duane Reade on every corner (that’s just convenient).

97

What another poster termed “the obvious landscape stuff”.

And food. Them Euros cain’t do barbecue nohow.

98

Empire State Building, Sydney also has skyscrapers
Statue of Liberty, +1, but Sydney has world famous landmarks too
Times Square, QVB and many other shopping areas
Broadway, +1 New York, Sydney has many art/theatre festivals, but no stage musical district
Brooklyn Bridge, Sydney harbour bridge is way more iconic
Wall Street, **We are talking about tourism **
Madison Avenue, What?
Central Park, Doesn’t compare to Hyde Park
Harlem, What?
Dereck Jeter, In Australia, rounders is only played by little girls.
the best pizza anywhere, the best bagels, I’m looking out of my window and I can see restaurants from dozens of countries. **
the Guggenheim, the Met, the MOMA, Sydney has worldclass galleries/Musuems too
Radio City Music Hall, Sydney Opera House
Rockefeller Center, Sydney has brothels too:)
** Jerry Seinfeld, and a Duane Reade on every corner Who are those?
**Now, add on Taronga zoo, the harbour and native cultural and somehow I think we can’t say New York wins significantly **

Now, if you wanna compare it to London, then there’s a five-page thread doing just that floating around.

@Jackmannii - I’m pretty sure the Koreans and Australians would disagree that good barbeques are limited to the USA

99

No he is talking about barbecue, the American cooking style, not just things that are cooked on a grill. It is one of the few American cooking styles that is widespread in the U.S. and almost impossible to find true examples of elsewhere. You may not know what I am actually talking about for that reason because there are a lot of misconceptions about what barbecue actually is and Australians stole the word without replicating the style. That’s OK, people in the Northern U.S. make the same mistake but real barbecue is a difficult and extremely time-consuming cooking technique that you can’t find anywhere else.

100

One other thing I like about visiting the US is you can go to many places and not encounter any or many other foreign tourists. I feel much more immersed in the place than I do when I visit Spain or France or Germany even though I have friends in Germany I can visit. Obviously that’s partly to do with no major language barrier.