What in your country/area is totally normal but visitors get excited for?

The lack of a speed limit on our highways. Some people come here just to drive on a boring frigging highway.

Bonus question to anyone who visited the UK - was there anything that fascinated you but I’d be taking for granted?

Double decker buses maybe. I found them pretty cool compared to the boring buses we usually have here.

Edit: Also, urban foxes. I saw foxes maybe three times in my life before going to London, where they're basically seen as a nuisance.

no speed limit is annoying as fuck. there is absolute chaos on the autobahn because of it. everyone drives at different speeds and dangerous manouvres (like tailgating, driving 200 kmh on a full road or in the rain) are common occurances. i hate driving in germany. we are an idiot nation when it comes to driving and cars in general
- Yeah, I could do without it. When it's really empty, it can be nice to go 180 for a bit, but more often than not, it causes the kind of problems you mentioned.
- Driving 200 kmh is also incredibly wasteful
- For the people who need the adrenaline rush we could reduce the driving speed on the Autobahn but add something dangerous to the car. Maybe add a random chance for the airbag to activate or tires to explode.
- it actually creates a lot of traffic jams too. The differences in speed and the goal to drive even faster produce hard braking moments which have a chain reaction. Especially in rush hour, where it matters, we really don't get anywhere faster.
  We are stupid for not limiting speed
- Imagine drivers 10x worse and that's the USA.
We had bendy buses for a brief moment.
- Now those wouldn't actually be exciting to me as a German, that's the type of bus I rode to school on. :)
- i NORCAL they are basically on the most of the lines that travel the longest routes.
Also, urban foxes. I saw foxes maybe three times in my life before going to London, where they're basically seen as a nuisance.
I didn’t know they were common in London but I also saw a fox when I was there. It just went through people‘s yards and stopped in the middle of the street to look at us.
Urban foxes are in every city. Foxes and coyotes. You just dont see them often.
- Coyotes are only a thing in the Americas, I'm pretty sure.
- Anecdotally I would say that London specifically, rather than the UK as a whole, has either an unusually high population of foxes or a unusually bold one. I've never seen so many out in the open as there

When I visited the US I was excited to see squirrels running around. We don't have squirrels where I'm from. We took pictures.

It must have looked like we were excited to witness a cloud in the sky.

I saw my first chipmunk last week and I totally screamed oh shit there's Alvin! in my heart.
Don't let your inner child die!
- I still remember my first chipmunk encounter. I heard the little guys before I saw them and wondered “who the f is out here playing laser tag in the woods? ”
I was a bit excited that the US squirrels are gray and large, we have smaller red ones in Germany.
- If you really want to see huge squirrels check out a US college campus. They're so fat!
- We have grey squirrels in the UK, although they're not native. They're responsible for the decline in native red squirrels, you rarely see them now unless you go to particular areas.
- We have different colored squirrels in some regions.
  https://wildlifeinformer.com/types-of-squirrels/
  You'll need and extra SD card next time you visit.
- American squirrels can be aggressive. I was eating an apple one day and I kid you not, a squirrel jumped at me and took it from my hand.
- and the german ones are really skittish too.
  Those i saw on the canadian campus just lay next to the side walk, chilling. Fat and grey
- I wonder where you visited! Grey squirrels are rare where I’m from in the US, 90% brown in midwest
I love when people see deer here in North America. You'd think they're seeing a unicorn, when it's just some plain ol' mule deer.
- Forest rats.
- Totally me in the US! Deers in Europe are stuff for natural parks!
- I've seen deer just wander through my yard in town
- I always lived in states where deer hunting was a pretty common pastime. The first time I went to a zoo in South America, I cracked up when we got to the display of white-tailed deer.
Chipmunks did it for me. They look and act so much like cartoon critters I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
- I love chipmunks! Such a big squeak from such a tiny body, plus I love their pointy tails :)
When I visited Canada from the US, my extended family and I drove in separate cars, thereby arriving at separate times spread out over a few hours.
Every group of us took basically the same picture when we arrived because we'd previously only seen brown squirrels and there was a solid, dark black one running around in the back yard.
I love this and was about to post something similar because my family met a family from Australia at Disney World and the little girl was SO excited about the squirrels. It was adorable.
I live in the Midwest, so squirrels are just always there.
- Used to work at Disney World. Can confirm the squirrel amazement. (And I worked at Animal Kingdom, the squirrels occasionally got more attention than the actual zoo animals. Although the local ibises hanging out with the spoonbills were still cool.)
I grew up in rural US, squirrels everywhere. Still fascinated by them! Moved to the southwest, was sad there weren't trees and squirrels out here. Then saw my first (closely followed by like a dozen more out in the area) ground squirrel! Some touristy areas they will line up all cute doing tricks for scraps of food. They've learned our oohs and aahs generate treats.
Oh wow. I saw a squirrel once in Catalonia. Wonderful sight.
I'd guess people from monkey countries feel the same way about them impressing us. They're in similar niches and everything.
Mirroring what others have said - at a nearby university that has (had? sigh) a large foreign student population, some folks actively feed the squirrels. For several weeks at the beginning of the school year, you could very easily spot new students by who was out taking photos and getting mobbed by these squirrels that are way, way too comfortable getting close to humans.
No squirrels? You from Greenland? Antarctica?
- Israel

These fellas

On the flipside, when I was in Japan some old guy mocked me for taking a photo of a no littering sign.

Hahaha that sign is so charming though
- And it's another example of "if you don't want me to do it, don't make it look so fun".
Someone Japanese said you were taking too many pictures? Haha, that's ironic given what they're like abroad.

I was visiting my friends in centrall europe and one if them wanted to show me the local speciality. We travelled 45 minutes by car and other 45 minutes by foot to look teeny tiny swamp. It was line 4m² and It was protectect area. My friend was really proud to show it to me.

I live in country where 26% of our landmass is swamps and wetlands...

Depositing bottles.

Put them into a machine, and it gives you money back 🤯

Honestly this needs to be more of things in the States. And the deposit cost needs to go up.
If companies were forced to retake their garbage, we'd see far less pollution.
- It's not just that, they wash and reuse the bottles (without melting them down or anything)! Amazing stuff.
  They're finally starting to put more stuff in them here opposed to plastic bottles, and I'm so glad for it.
- In Finland the deposit for bottles of one litre or more have a deposit of 0,40 €.
  (And what many foreigners don't understand is that we are not anti-recycling, so it's not a problem that the deposit is inside the prices you see in the shop. So, if you see 1,59 € as the price of a bottle of lemonade, 1,59 € is what you pay. Many countries have a system where the deposit is added to the price so that people would think more negatively about it and they'd sell more of the bottles with the text "NO DEPOSIT!!" on them, so people coming from those countries are easily confused by not having to add anything to the prices in their heads.)
Nun weiß ganz Deutschland, dass du hier bist
I'm in this picture and I don't like it.
But, yeah, seems like such an obviously good idea and it works so well. Why can't we do that?

The first time my cousins from FL visited Canada, it was July. They were surprised there was no snow. So, we took them over to the rec centre and they saw a small pile of snow out back. They were thrilled.

It was dumped out of a Zamboni.

Grew up in Ontario and it was always fun as a kid to grab some of the shaved ice behind rec centres to throw at your friends when it was like 33C out
My aunt is a teacher at one of the poorer schools in LA. She says every once in a while they'll arrange a plow to bring a load of snow down from the mountains and dump it in the parking lot for the kids to play in it for the afternoon until it melts

Bikes! I live in Copenhagen and they're everywhere of course. I love seeing people at a big train station taking pics of cycle parking being overfull

At a train station in Amsterdam, there were so many bikes parked you couldn't count them. And it wasn't a major hub. I just stared in wonder.
Same, im in The Netherlands.

Marble is expensive in places where there isn't already a lot of it simply because it's HEAVY.
- But it also isn't used in the fancy rich places simply because it's expensive, it's also because it's beautiful.
I grew up in a place that looks like Greece, but the rocks are red.
Same thing - amazing mesas and red rock plateaus and craggy mountains? See it every day. Meh. Crystal blue seas? I can't stop starting and being amazed that something that color is real.
Though, I have noticed that very flat and forested places give me a sense of claustrophobia. When you're used to being able to see 20-50 miles all the time, not being able to see anything more than 200 feet away is strange. It makes the world seem so small and trite.

Leaves.

Yes, tree leaves.

Each fall when they start changing color flocks of tourists come up to gawk at them.

This is what I was going to say.
In the late 1800s when Jasper Cropsey was exhibiting landscape paintings in the UK, folks didn't believe that his colour palette was accurate
https://collections.brandywine.org/objects/2656/autumn-on-the-brandywine-river
- Wait hang on, the UK has heaps of trees that go that colour every year
- Yup I live right near the Brandywine. PA gets beautiful fall colors! They're also great along the Delaware up near the Water Gap (but I'm biased because the Delaware is my favorite river) :)
When I was a kid we hosted two Trinidadians as part of an exchange in the Autumn and they'd never seen the leaves falling - they were worried that all the trees were dying off. This isn't a "stupid foreigner" gag, it was probably just the thing that shocked them the most. They loved the trains and the narrowboats.
- I had a similar experience with an exchange student who visited in february. She very worriedly asked why our trees didn't have any leaves and was amazed when I said that just happens in winter and they come back.
- They probably have foliage that always stays green until it dies.
  So I can kinda understand where that sentiment is coming from.
We visited DC in the fall last year. It took us close to 2 hours to walk from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial statue because my wife was taking pictures of all the trees along the way.
I just moved to New England and this will be my first fall here. My property is completely surrounded by 50'+ trees. I'm sure it will get old quick.
- Especially if you need to rake them up etc.
Michigan, or New York?
To be fair it's very pretty. I get that one
Every region is different in that regard.
Maybe youre just numb to the view.
Man.. I'm in east Tennessee.
Folks just roll up to look at the leaves.. and I'm like.
Eh. Not much rain this year so they are pretty drab looking currently..
But you still see tons of people taking photos on their phones that they'll never look at again. Haha

I moved to the midwest USA 15 years ago and I still can't get over the trees screaming at me. It's deafening but no one seems to care.

The trees are silent where I come from

Em, what?
- https://youtu.be/VEqtlaa5iWI?t=13
I live in Cincinnati and I care. I find the cicadas incredibly annoying. Not only the noise, they also leave their shells all over the place and walking down the sidewalk creeps me out. crunch crunch crunch
We have cicadas in Provence, but only when I moved to southern Japan did I understand the meaning of the adjective deafening. They must be a different species. I had to actually scream to my partner to be heard.
- must be a different species
  They are! Japanese cicadas are more shrill than the ones found in other parts of the world, and even the different subspecies within Japan have different frequencies they shrill at. I swear the cicadas in Okinawa were more ear piercing than the ones around Tokyo when we visited, but my family didn't believe me :')

I grew up in Portsmouth, England. Some my friends would come to school from the Isle of Wight on the hovercraft service. We all thought the hovercraft was pretty cool, but I only recently found out that it's the only commercially operated hovercraft in the whole world.

Is it still operating? For some reason I thought it stopped quite a while ago. Or maybe that's the one that used to cross the channel.
- Yeah, still running like normal: https://www.hovertravel.co.uk/.
- Yes it is! Costs £20 if i remember correctly
I grew up in Gosport and enjoy the looks I get when describing that we needed to get a ferry across the harbour if we wanted to go to a club like Walkabout. I hear the overnight ferry stopped running so you're screwed trying to get home late now.
I was in pompy 2 years ago and yes i found the hovercrafts cool. I didnt know that fact! Thanks! I wonder if my boyfriend from pompy knows that fact too.
Fratton is quite scary though ngl
There used to be one across the channel but it was discontinued some time ago. I took it once. It was cramped and noisy, but fast.

Lakes. My small city has 330 lakes. There are more lakes in Canada than the rest of the world combined.

Ontario has lakes bigger than some countries
Sudbury, Ontario?
- Yup. Geographically not north, but we get labelled north anyway.

To answer OP's question, I'm American but spent a few years in the UK. Things that fascinated me included:

How green it is (being from Texas this was the first thing that stood out to me)
The shear amount of history that is just everywhere (I remember eat lunch at a park and reading a sign about how it was the site of a huge battle during the war of the roses)
Pubs (man I miss going to my local. We really don't have 3rd places in the US anymore)

The history. Jesus fuck, it's the history. I swear in the south we talk about things from the 1920s like that shit is ancient. Meanwhile in the UK you're just casually staying at a hotel that was built in the 1600s.
Yes, the amount of ancient history anywhere across the pond is fascinating. You're walking in the same place as people from books and movies. I guess that we're writing somewhere near the beginning of the local historical record is interesting in it's own way, but there's just not as much to say about it.
- When I was a kid I got in the local library and looked at their copies of the maps of our city going back maybe 2000 years. A few things had been there that long, the high street and the cathedral, couple of other places. You could see how the town had grown, and sometimes contracted - it got hit hard a few times by plague, fire, and war. The maps didn't go back further but the place had been occupied much longer, way before the Romans came.

I'm lucky enough that I see these little guys on a regular basis.

The first time I went to London, the size of the Ravens caught me off guard. I couldn't get enough of seeing those things. We only really see Grackles in South Texas that regularly and they're half the size, so I'm sure I was the weird bird guy that day to many people.

Kinda the opposite of the question, but I'm a USian and I was super excited when I saw some European countries have public bathroom doors that didn't have tiny slot that you could see through while I was pooping.

What the fuck are we doing over here? Besides the letting fascists take over thing.

I live in the Canadian prairies.

One time I was flyin' down the highway and I noticed a man with car parked on the shoulder, staring out into a farmer's field of flowering Canola.

I stopped because I could think of no reason other than he's had car trouble, and is staring off into the distance trying to figure out WTF he's gonna do now.

He explained to me that he wasn't having car troubles, that he was on a visit from Hong Kong and it's the first time he's ever traveled outside. He told me that from the structure of the city and sky rise density, he'd basically never seen a patch of sky or open land. The biggest patch of sky that he'd ever seen would be about the size of a 2 packs of cigarettes held at arms length.

Woah.

And here we have the joke that the terrain is so flat and monotone that you can watch your dog run away for 7 hours.

Deer. They are so common in this area they practically press the walk button to walk across the street. “hi bob. You gonna eat some more grass today. Yup ok. See ya later.”

School mass shootings. For some reason the rest of the world loses their minds over them.

Raccoons.

The tourists visiting Mount Royal park in Montréal are often charmed by the raccoons. Enough so that they feed them and some even let the raccoons climb on them. The city tries to warn people but they obviously ignore the signs. So now we have gangs of raccoons begging for food near the two most popular view points.

I go camping in provincial parks and the same seems to happen there. It's obviously also locals doing this but, people feed the raccoons, they come back, they harass you for food, they can carry rabies, and it's annoying as hell. I watch people hiking and camping in other countries, like the UK, and I'm constantly jealous that they can keep their food and cook near their tents. Doing this here will result in frequent annoying visits from raccoons (if not bigger animals).

For your consideration.
I've seen raccoons and white tail deer in a zoo in Mexico. They are both nuisance animals in the PNW. But then again I loved watching Mexican racoons everywhere (coati). Guess we all like seeing new and different animals.
Rabies. Once symptoms appear, the result is virtually always death.[1] The time period between contracting the disease and the start of symptoms is usually one to three months but can vary from less than one week to more than one year.[1]
Symptoms can include:

anxiety seizures confusion hyperactivity hallucinations strange behaviour and general agitation fear of water (hydrophobia) fear of fresh air or drafts of air (aerophobia)
Once symptoms appear it's too late, you are fucked
I hate Trash Pandas. But at least in the West Coast of NA I don't have to worry about fucking the rabies. That shit scares the ever living shit out of me.
Exceptionally rare case below but still, holy fucking NOPE
Rabies with an incubation period of 19 years and 6 months.
G Iurasog, A Rosenberg, N Opreanu
A woman was bitten on the leg by a rabid dog in September 1945 and was admitted to hospital for antibiotic treatment, details of which were not available. In March 1965 she developed rabies, which began with pains at the site of the original bite. At autopsy no Negri bodies could be found, but there were inclusions in the cytoplasm and nuclei of the neurones of the diencephalon, glial cells and vascular endothelium. Rabies developed in rabbits inoculated with autopsy material. No history of a more recent animal bite could be obtained, and there was no rabies in the latter place of residence of the patient. The authors therefore conclude that this was a case of rabies with an incubation period of 19 years and 6 months. D. J. Bauer.

The locations of past atrocities (N. Ireland).

Not even joking. It's a huge part of our tourism industry. It's like those Jack the Ripper tours in Whitechapel. Living here, you barely even think about them, but visitors act like they're meeting Taylor Swift when they spot a bullet hole, bless 'em.

In Seattle there are tons of cherry blossom trees. People come from around the world to see them in bloom. Most the locals I know are like "fuckin cherry blossom petals getting on everything, making the bike lanes slick, getting all over the cars, have to clean them off everything, tourists blocking things to take pictures"

And like you get one week of blossoms and poof they agreed gone lol
I got the sense from being near the Hollywood sign that area residents would gladly blow it to smithereens if they could.

I'm originally from the Orlando area and worked for Disney for a while. Tourism folks there pass stories around and have their own folk tales of sorts. Your question reminds me of one of them.

Central Florida has anoles, little lizards, absolutely everywhere. A woman was working the front desk at a hotel, and a couple comes up to check in. She tells them the room number and hands then the key. A few minutes later the husband runs back up to the desk and tells her that "there's an alligator in our room!" "An alligator?!" She replies and they both rush to the hotel room, where she finds the wife screaming and pointing at the couch. "The alligator is under there!" The front desk worker lifts up one end of the couch and spots a four inch green anole. She catches it and sets it outside.

OP, I've never been to the UK, but don't you have hedgehogs? How common are they?

Not OP, but can confirm we have hedgehogs and they are adorable.
I typically see one about 4 times a week, no clue if its the same one or not, they all look pretty much the same.
Its very very very common to see them flattened in the roads though, which is a shame.
The anoles are one of the few things I miss about living in Florida. There are lizards here in Kentucky, but they're more elusive.
Hedgehogs are far less common than they used to be, unfortunately. I haven't seen one for years. A friend who lives in a more suburban area has one living under their shed, and she (the hedgehog) is such a creature of routine that my friend's family will often gather near the window to watch her potter around on her nightly walk
I nearly stepped on one the other day. They only really come out at night, and I was walking home across a dark park. You don't see them very often, I think I've seen maybe 3-4 in my life.
Other wild animals like squirrels are super common. I've also seen plenty of foxes and sometimes badgers.
I visited Tampa many years ago and I was the anole guy for the trip. I like reptiles and was completely elated to see them running around everywhere. My host for the trip didn't get my excitement.

Mountains. We got a lot of em

I've lived in and around the Appalachians my entire life, and didn't understand why people were so fascinated with them until I went to Michigan and realized how irksome it was to me when they weren't there.
Cute hills

Winter. I guess it's different when you only put up with the endless darkness, cold and snow a week once in your life.

Perth just had is coldest maximum temperature in 50 years: 11.4°C
- Also:
I'm originally from Florida and I moved to Minnesota as an adult. It blew my mind when I realized it was colder outside than it was in my freezer. I was in college my first few winters up here and the first good snowfall a group of freshmen from more tropical climates (mostly southern China) wandered outside in awe to play in the snow and even after my first winter I usually joined them because I know when winter stops being magical it starts being miserable and I'd like to put off the misery until February or so.
- I don't think I've ever been tired of winter, and I've lived in Ohio most of my life. That said I've never lived somewhere that gets enough snow that it starts crushing the things from the weight of it.
  Summer? I'm sick of summer halfway through Spring.
- It blew my mind when I realized it was colder outside than it was in my freezer.
  That pivotal moment when you drive home from the grocery store on a frigid evening and realize, "It's so cold, I don't have to rush to put away the frozen stuff. In fact, I could just leave it in the car overnight if I really wanted to!"

Italy. I've seen tourists (probably american by the looks and the words) cheering and in awe because, in cities, there are free public drinkable water fountains.

UK here. Various right-wing governments have discouraged and torn out almost all the public drinking fountains on the basis they were being used by the homeless (they were also being used by everyone else, but ignore that bit). I've not seen much of Italy outside Rome but the water fountains there are amazing; just a simple gesture of mutual respect between humans.
American here, I was over the moon when I visited Amsterdam and everywhere (even in stores) had water fountains that not only had clean drinking water to refill water bottles, but where so prominently displayed (we hide ours by the bathrooms, if we have any), and most where very artistic or at the very least matching the aesthetic of the store.
I did that in Ulm!! Fountain i took water from
People coming up staring for 15 minutes!!
Then i walk away and they, like a scared animal, walks up to the fountain and checked it out from all angles and took a sip.

Kangaroos, wombats and platypuses.

Kangaroos and wombats are dangerous when you're driving at night.

To be fair, I'm probably unique in my apathy toward, borderline dislike of, platypuses. When I'm out fishing and I see a platypus I pack up and go somewhere else because I know I won't be catching any fish.

The possums even more so I'd say, especially in the cities.
I'm actually not sure I've ever seen a wild platypus, and I haven't seen a wombat since I was very young, but I don't think I've ever lived in an area with them. Kangaroos were everywhere growing up in the bush though, in the backyard, school car park, sharp bend around a dark corner...
- I've been lucky enough to see a lot of animals in the wild, but platypuses always evaded me. I even lived by a river for a year, where everyone else saw them.
  About a week ago I finally spotted one in a nearby lake while going for a run. It was just happily swimming, diving, surfacing, repeat. I watched it for ages.
I remember I was maybe 8 years old and lucky enough to go out on my dad and uncle's fishing boat. They were commercial fishermen, netting sardines.
I was so excited when dolphins showed up, only to discover that not everyone loves dolphins when my uncle got the shotgun out. He didn't actually murder any dolphins that day but not for lack of trying.
Suffice to say, I think most fishermen have a healthy dislike for other predators.
- Platypuses don't eat fish. They eat worms and yabbies and insect larvae. I don't know why the fish stay away from them, but they do... Maybe the platypuses are territorial as they're competing for the same food? 🤷
Was at the RACV park in Inverloch (VIC) last weekend. Lots of kangaroos and wombats roaming around - one was being given space while it crossed over the bridge lmao. We love that everyone is chilled and everything was so quiet and peaceful.

The tides at the Bay of Fundy. Highest tides in the world but you have to watch it for 12 hours. Tourist flock there and the locals don't understand the appeal.

I peeked at a timelapse or two. Holy shit, 17 meters ? I've never heard of this. I remember from my holidays in Brittany learning that they have 6 meter tides, and here in Mayotte we have about 4 meters tops which already seems like a lot.
- The time lapse are cool, real time is freaking boring.

My Polish wife was thrilled to see fireflies in Kentucky.

I haven't seen fireflies in YEARS, but I was recently in Astoria, Queens, NYC, and there were fireflies all over the place! NYC would have been the last place I would have expected to see them.
- I heard that there was a firefly boom this year, I can't remember the cause though. It sure is nice though, reminds me of when I was a kid.
They must be bright if she can see them from Poland.

When I lived in the US, I lived in cities on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. People who weren't used to river traffic would get excited about riverboats and barges.

And people from other climates always got excited about snow. Even the slightest flurries were cause for celebration.

Now I live in the Andes, and the exciting things here that the locals take for granted (or even count as nuisances) are the volcanoes. I can see one from my apartment. Four years in, and I still admire it every day.

In the UK, the thing I thought was fascinating was just the sheer amount of history literally everywhere. Like, 2000-year-old stone monuments in people's sheep pastures. It made me understand how extraordinarily young my native country and my current home country both are.

Opposite: I (US-ian) was visiting friends in Germany and they took me on a bike ride in the woods.

“Look!!” (Bike sudden halt, stop and point into a tree with full arm) “a squirrel!”

Practically every house and apartment has (access to) a sauna. If not inside the apartment, there will most often be a shared sauna in the basement.

About the UK, I'm going to go a bit deeper and note that it was somehow eye-opening that there's a whole society that actually just daily drives English. For my whole life before the visits to UK and later US, English was the language of the internet and some specific international situations where it was most people's second language. Until well into my mid-20s, I basically didn't have real life contact with any community that would just speak English natively, despite speaking it myself fairly okay-ish.

Having young men and some women ride public transport in full military get up including their military gun.

I've often overheard tourists talking about them with respect or feeling alarmed something crazy is going on. The funniest one, was an older American tourist asking them for directions and talking very, very, very respectfull to them. The scene was just to comical seeing a boomer being so respectfull towards 18 years old boys.

Meanwhile for us here it's the most normal thing in the world to see a bunch of recruits going home from training or going to their base by train. If anyone feels anything towards them, it's pity. Because most of them are just there because they have to and not because they want to.

For the second question: I really liked the English houses with their red brick facade. Generally a brick facade it's not something I often see here in Switzerland.

This:

Photo was taken on the pin here, facing in the same direction as the camera. It is very pretty here.
(Note: I cannot afford the two commas it takes to live here, I live in the Portland metro area.)
- Let's be honest, that was a humble brag adding a picture of a State Park.

A statue of a dog pissing into a girl's mouth. It's a fountain. Not kidding either.

Ok. Need a picture of that.
I'm not putting that into a search engine on works WIFI.
- https://share.google/images/Js3ivIvqEVhrGQzqr
Northern Europe and bizarre statues, name a more iconic duo.

Walking to a supermarket, riding your bicycle to work.

(Mostly) very good public transit in big cities and even in some smaller areas.

I personally still love to see the mountains. I grew up in a place scraped flat by glaciers in the US and seeing the mountains on a couple of sides of me every day here in Japan still feels really neat and inspiring, even a decade in.

OP, I want you to know that you are not alone, I am also a Brit who loves seeing all the wee reptiles scooting about when he visits places that have them. We barely have any here and they're fun tiny little dinosaurs!

Edit: actually I do have a proper answer too. I'm in Scotland, which has different trespassing laws to the rest of the UK. In Scotland you have a right to roam under which you can enter any outdoor land, other than that with crops and the immediate surroundings of houses, provided you do so responsibly. There are other reasonable exceptions but the point is that you don't generally need to check for access here. The rest of the UK is far more restrictive and I have found that visitors find it incredibly weird to walk through a field of grazing sheep or similar when trying to get somewhere

The right to roam was something I found really charming and fascinating when I visited Scotland. We took a tour to see some standing stones and other ancient monuments, and I was shocked to find out that several of our destinations were in people's sheep pastures.
Our guide was really strict about our not littering (duh) or feeding the sheep (which I never would have dreamed of doing). He said that in some of the more popular places, the farmers have lost livestock to idiot tourists feeding them whatever junk food they have on hand.
- Thank you for adventuring responsibly! I'm glad you had a good time here

I'm in Tennessee. The smokey mountains. They are wonderful... But pigeon forge / Sevierville/ Gatlinburg is just a touristy blight now.

There's much better places to go than there.

Where would you recommend? We visited earlier this year and I found it overwhelming, though the abundance of family-friendly stuff was nice.
- Depends on what you want out of your trip.
  Townsend on the backside is nice. Cherokee (and has gambling) is nice Any small valley town in the range is going to be fine.
  But when I go, I tend to just go for the views and like one day in actual Gatlinburg. I'm from e.tn so the tourist stuff is oldhat for me.
  So I'll go get a cabin in the deep dark woods and just be "off grid" for a bit. But that's not what everyone does. There's a lot there to do that's not spend your money playing games / on trinkets.
But some people apparently really want fudge, pancakes, and old-time photographs!

Evergreen trees. I know they're a big deal to people who visit but I grew up around them and think they're kind of boring.

Just trees in general. I was ferrying around some VIPs from California once, and they were amazed at the endless miles of thick trees on both sides of the highway. Yeah, they're trees, they're nothing special. They grow everywhere, you don't even have to do anything.

I live in New York City. Apparently (based on how shocked they look) tourists come from places without: Gift Shops, Theaters, Rats, Black People, Buildings, or Walking.

I lived in London for a few years and it always amazed me to see foxes just roaming about. I still think it's cool.

I'm from another country, foxes are not really a thing here.

Whales, northern lights, reindeer

Lived in the UK for a while - Squirrels, and the fact that the church in the town we lived in was built before ANY humans set foot in New Zealand

It's not very common to see squirrels in Japan but they're all over the place in the states. I was hiking in the woods with a group and one of the Japanese people spotted a squirrel and told everyone so they could have a look. Where I'm from maybe you'd point out a deer or rabbit or something (although those are pretty common too), but it's pretty much impossible to not see a squirrel or chipmunk if you go outside.

cactuses

Cheesesteak sandwiches (Philadelphia area). It's just blocks of low-quality frozen meat fried up on a grill with some onions and cheeze-whiz (or provolone if you're not insane). The bread is good but god damn. I used to live across the street from one of the more famous steak places in center city and the line outside was almost always more than an hour long, even in rain and snow. It just made no sense. WE HAVE FUCKING MUSEUMS AND SHIT!!!

I wonder if the people in that line would have been so keen to get their horsemeat sandwich if they'd walked through the neighborhood at 6 am and seen the clear plastic bags filled with sandwich rolls just dumped on the sidewalk in front of each restaurant (yes, that is how Amoroso's delivers them). I went for a run early one morning and when I came back somebody had ripped open one of the bags and placed a roll under the windshield wipers of every car on South Street.

Trees which change color in the fall

Norwegian fjords. I live here, and to me it's mundane landscape.

Slartibartfast won an award for those.
- Didn't they go out of fashion afterwards?
Must be nice taking that beautiful scenery in for granted
- In a way yes, probably. But at the same time, it means you have one less awesome thing to enjoy on this planet.
Aaaah 🤯

The ocean! So fascinated by it! I love it, but it is always there, waiting. No need to go to it. It will get you eventually.

Mountains, Great beer and legal weed.

Niagara Falls. It's spectacular to visitors but for me it's right there so it's just a bunch of water falling off a ledge.

As a tourist I was fascinated by the colourful lighting of the falls and the amount of tall buildings around. For some reason I used to imagine the Niagara Falls as a beautiful natural site.

South East Queensland (going from when I first moved here from Tassie) - the weather, the wild parrots and other birdlife (curlew's cries still freak me out in the middle of the night). Also, I love my resident gecko bros: they keep the insects down, and their chirping soothes me.

Bonus answer from when I was in the UK - squirrels.

I feel like you could set the clock to birds here sometimes - Wake up = all the little birds, lorikeets
Lunchtime= plovers, as people navigate around them
Arvo= cockies and corellas
Evening = not a bird, but fruit bats
Random time during the middle of the night= the blood curdling scream of the curlews.
- There's also a bird I hear every morning I call the 'Austin Powers Bird' that does a call that sounds exactly like this . Anyone know what bird does that?
  I mostly recall the cry of the plover from the early evenings in Tassie.
  The cacophony from a lorikeet's tree at dusk is something else. There's thousands of them, and the poop scars the landscape.
For me in Queensland it was finding little green frogs everywhere in the camping ground toilet block - in the sink, in the shower, in the toilet. I learned to check the bowl first, but even then... I flushed and this poor wee frog came sliding down from under the rim, hanging on for dear life.

In Southern California it's got to be the palm trees. Nope, not the ocean, the beaches, the Hollywood sign, iconic neighborhoods and buildings. It's the palm trees. Out of state relatives and coworkers always gawk at and comment on the palm tree lined streets.

Dude, they're frickin' tall. Those Southern California trees are something else.
I was also fascinated by your beach-squirrels. I've lived near the ocean most of my life and I never saw beach-squirrels til I went to Ventura.
They're the most worthless trees and they're about to die, too. I hope we replace them with native trees in all but the most iconic places.

Outsiders are blown away when they see cattle/horses right along the highway and roads.

Canal bridges that open to let ships through for some reason? I often see tourist making pictures of that.

The Redlight district. Every city has/had them and for us it's just normal. As a kid I had to pass some of those windows to get to school.

Black squirrels. They're very normal to us but I find a lot of people who travel here, especially from the U.S. are shocked to see them lol

Whitetail dear. Don't stop to look at them. They are dear. Keep moving.

The Henrik Ibsen statue near my home, and also just about all street-facing buildings built before like 1960. People stop to take pictures but I’m just like, people live there. It’s a pretty row of houses, but have some respect. See also, Bryggen.

What in your country/area is totally normal but visitors get excited for?

This is so mundane fried chicken for me, just comfort food in the Philippines, but no thanks to some influencers, tourists flock to this specific fast food restaurant expecting it to be some culinary treasure.

I grew up near Oceana Naval Air Base. Only tourists look up when they hear jet noise.

I used to work in a building that had a room dedicated to testing weapons and ammunition at the end of the hall opposite my office ... They tested by live firing. When I started there, it got a good startle out of me the first time or two, then I subsequently chuckled at all the new hires being similarly caught off guard.
Sadly, one guy who came through was a veteran with PTSD. Even the plumbing banging in the walls put him on alert. Actual live firing weapons were (understandably) too much to bear and they didn't do it on a schedule so we couldn't just not be there when it happened. (None of the above is meant to make light of the situation; I genuinely felt sorry for the guy and tried to figure out a way to help the whole time he was there.)
There's a happy ending, though! He was only exposed to that experience 2-3 times (it wasn't frequent) before he found another job more suited to his needs - one that offered a pension, no less.
I've never not lived near an airbase, it'll be so weird to someday not hear planes overhead on a day to day basis 😅
Hell, I briefly worked in a building directly next to a flight line, you could feel it rattle the whole building
Ayo, VB ... Pause for jet noise to end ... represent.

All the castles and historical buildings. My city having a golden room. Old towns

I was born and raised in New Hampshire. The leaves turning in autumn is just another part of the season for us like pumpkins, apple cider donuts, and haunted hayrides. People from other parts of the US or even other countries, though, treat it like its a wonder of the world.

For some reason, Japanese tourists go nuts for PEI. Now I've nothing against PEI, it's a nice enough province in the beautiful maritimes. Good potatoes.

But I don't think it deserves THAT much hype.

I've heard that! Anne of Green Gables is big there too for a weird reason. There's an anime airing right now, even.
- We went to the mostly abandoned Anne of Green Gables theme park in Hokkaido, Canadian World, a couple months ago.
  The translation of the book was done particularly well, I think. It was prescribed in schools. And the setting was attractive to those stuck in big cities.
It's an island of farms. The economic and demographic statistics are predictably dire given that, too.
You get to vote 3 times, though.
It's definitely because of Anne of Green Gables, not necessarily the island itself. Anne is HUGE in Japan, visiting her hometown is like meeting your favourite celebrity.

I did miss lizards in England, they are so nice to have around. And the occasional alligator is cool too, I can only imagine how exciting for a tourist.

I was absolutely stunned to see such OLD things in the UK, we don't have the thousand year old buildings. And basements & the underground metro, places you walk down underground to get to are very uncommon here, would flood. The rain was different too, not a storm, you can just umbrella your way along, that was nice.

Fireflys.

The Bob Ross caliber view of the Rocky Mountains should be the answer, but tourists always go for the big stupid churches that just look like every other big stupid church.

I live in the US northeast coast in a touristy area. People have been surprised to see: white beach sand, seashells, docks, boats, seagulls, deer, opossums. I could go on. I get most people don’t live coastal, so none of these reactions surprised me except the white sand one. Apparently a lot of lakes in the mainland just have dirt at their shores. Never would’ve guessed.

I grew up in Ohio and we had shitloads of opossums. Also deer.
- Yeah I recently left and I miss the little guys.
- Yeah I didn’t mean to imply they’re all exclusive to where I live, but the opossum anecdote is actually from a person I met from Ohio funny enough.
People that live in former glacial areas don't realize the difference if you don't. They made a lot of sand and lakes.

Apfelschorle

Czech beer....

And cathedrals/castles. I was in a tourist group, thinking "Can we move on? I can see two peak Gothic sites from my house roof." "50 m tall sandstone column? Let me know when it's chocolate."
I really loved Staropramen when I was there but apparently that's like the Bud Light of the Czech Republic.
P-U!

The Bude Tunnel

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g190804-d12865329-Reviews-Bude_Tunnel-Bude_Bude_Stratton_Cornwall_England.html

Or less locally the Hole in the Wall

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g3450960-d15617858-Reviews-NatWest_Hole-Ilkeston_Derbyshire_England.html

You asked about what we thought fascinating of the UK and what you might be taking for granted so I'll let 'er rip.

I felt the almost omnipresent pressure of an imperialistic black hole that pulled everything to it's centre. I walked the streets of London and saw enormous edifices to grief and religiosity and greed. I saw graffiti from people yearning to express themselves against systems that often held them down. I saw stolen art and belongings of my ancestors hung in galleries to be admired and gawked at. I saw the whims of kings cut entire forests to the ground so that they could "worship" a distant speck of Christianity while hunting their favourite game in their historically exclusive fields. I saw the hollowed out guts of the Industrial Revolution turned into trendy shopping centres and into walkable cities. I saw Palestinian protestors laying on the streets of Oxford as graduates in their gowns stepped around and over them. I saw the land literally wrinkle before my eyes as I went North to Edinburgh. I heard Texans make a fuss at the top of Arthur's Seat. I tried to see the Queen's yacht from a parking garage because I didn't want to pay (rather disappointing). I noticed that almost none of your industrial coolers and fridges actually kept anything cold (but the lights worked and I think I remember hearing the fans whirring, blowing lukewarm air). I saw a doorman enjoy his job and crack some jokes and making people smile. I saw the king's "gateman" with a bullet proof vest and a semi-automatic rifle intimidate tourists to keep them away from his gate. I saw a highschooler throw an orange at a fabulous black actor at the Globe, and another thrown orange from a different high schooler soon after - the play kept going. I saw weapons of war used as posts in the ground. I saw a cyclist get chewed out by a "pensioner" for going too fast and almost hitting her. I saw works of art painted on discarded gum.

I bought a Yorkshire pudding burrito and walked far too long to find a place to sit and eat it - rather tasty.

Fascinating place.

As far as the UK goes bumblebees are pretty great, also the pollen soup that is spring, hiking is also pretty awesome in the UK, lots of hiking trails that run between towns/pubs that just cut through farm etc.

What about the werewolves?
- Stick to the road. Beware the moors.
- aWOOOOOOOOO!
I didn't know Tasmania has bumblebees until I moved here. You don't get them in the rest of the country. They're such adorable insects.
- There are bumblebees in Tasmania?!? Damn them, the closest we get in WA is Christmas beetles and we don't seem to get too many of them any more .. I miss those dopey bastards

Living in the Black Forest is sometimes fun.

First of all people admire the "mountains". While yes, the Black Forest is not quite flat and especially in winter it is often underestimated (we have avalanches and occasionally people die in them) it's not like they are that step and high. At least from my perspective - I grew up in the actual alps. It would be totally different If I grew up in the Netherlands. (And again: The nature is nice and we have wild wolves, Lynx and s few other rare animals here)

The other thing people totally get excited about is "Black forest cake". But.. It has nothing to do with the Forest... it's just a reference to its looks and was invented hundreds of kilometres away. While you can get a decent one here by now, it's still funny.

So...what is the most original thing you can get here? It's the thing the tourists think that they are all produced overseas. The cuckoo clock. Not kidding, while a shitload of them are cheap china trash, you can actually get nice ones for a reasonable price that were still built here. (And some really really nice ones that look modern and stylish as well. I need one of those one day,but they are ridiculously expensive)

Other than that: Old buildings. My last apartment had some walls that were built at a time Australia wasn't discovered by Europeans yet. My kids friend lives in a house that is 800 years old - and always belonged to the same family. The hill the local kids go tobogganing in winter very likely was already used in that capacity 2500 years ago as some archeological sites have shown.

Even my current house is 80 years old and that sometimes sounds absolutely ridiculous to friends overseas.

The trees. They’re big. I frequently pass by Douglas firs that are 100+ feet tall and 6+ feet in diameter. They’re just normal around here, but you realize that isn’t common when you travel to other places and all they have are spindly 30-foot-tall pines or wimpy looking deciduous trees. We have some that are notably big even for this area and are definite tourist attractions, but there are also so many that are objectively massive, but we just overlook them.

The Red Creek Fir

If you're in the UK, then here in the US, it's the sounds.

Crickets, frogs, birds, beetles, giant wasps, small mammals. The spring and autumn are wild with sounds.

My partner is a Brit in an industry where many get stationed here, and they all say the same.

Edit: And if you're outdoorsy, the geography, of course.

Don't forget cicadas!
Wait...you dont hear that in the USA?
I hear that even in the city!
- I'm in the USA, OP appears to be in the UK.

The Autobahn.

I love explaining the Autobahn to my foreign friends. "It's just the word for highway". "All highways are called autobahns". "Yes, sometimes there is a speed limit". "Even where there's no speed limit, we won't be driving that fast".
- "All highways are called autobahns"
  Does Germany not distinguish between highway and freeway?
  In Australia a highway has traffic lights while a freeway does not.
- More importantly, if they ever come here, they should check their insurance papers for exclusion clauses like "this contract does not cover accidents in the cities of Rome and Paris, and on German highways (Autobahn)."

So I do Uber in a small town tourist trap in a very red state. Convention center has a gun show what seems like every other month. I picked up some people from another country at the hotel next to the convention center on one of these all too common days. A dude was in the cross walk with some kinda hunting rifle on his back, and they immediately started trying to take pictures. Granted I have never seen the dude at McDonald's/Baskin Robbins with an AR strap to himself and two other pistols on his hip, so this city is at least that civilized.

My area isn't too tourist heavy until you go to the mountains, but I once saw a bunch of tourists crowd around a rattler and one of the dumb fucks got bit. Closest thing I can think of, actually correction I've seen some tourists amazed by a sand storm coming off a dry lakebed on a turnout along the 15.

The sea. Fr I grew up here and it's a'ight, but like... People freak out. I feel sad for people who live inland.

Also if you want to see an actual nice beach then get to know some locals and find out where they go. Tourist beaches are always ruined by tourists and tourism businesses.

My answer to this post is the same as yours.
I definitely take the sea for granted. When a friend from Ontario came down and saw the ocean for the first time, it blew his mind. I mean, it's definitely awesome, how it's immense and connected all around the world and everything.
But at the same time, I was born in a hospital that was on a beach. I can't imagine what it must be like to see it for the first time.

I live in the middle of a very sparsely populated forest. Tourists want to see the black bears, wolves, eagles, loons, and deer. You will see the deer, eagles, and loons if you are on a lake. But you probably need to spend serious time in the forest on foot to bump a bear or wolf. If you want to see those, we have a bear and then a wolf center where biologists study their behavior and keep a small number in captivity. And evidently, both centers are pretty famous for the work they do with other wildlife biologists around the world.

And oddly enough come fall, they drive around to see the leaves on the trees turn pretty colors. It's popular enough that news stations in the one large metropolitan area we have in this state, actually tracks and includes the rate and areas where the leaves are turning color so tourists can drive and see them.

When winter arrives, we get a fair number that drive here to go ice fishing when the ice gets safe enough to drive on.

When visiting the UK. Arriving at St. Pancrias International station and needed to get to waterloo. I had no idea how to move about.

But i found it weird how you have the power lines of trains ON THE GROUND and have TV adds of "hey dont get on the rails!". Plus that you cant even get onto the platforms without a ticket. That you cant get into the underground without a ticket!! That there are cameras and cops EVERYWHERE! And i only visited 2 years ago!

Only some metro systems, like the tube, have third rail - standard railways have overhead power. But since a lot of metro trains run outside tunnels as well it's not always obvious which rails are and aren't electrified.
The whole thing with gates is because the UK train system is privately run for profit and so respecting human dignity is less important than making sure every individual adequately prostates themselves before the company decides to provide service. Even TfL, the council-owned operator of the tube, is forbidden by law from receiving any taxpayer subsidy so must run at a profit.
- Germanys trains are also private and we dont have that. So this isnt an excuse
- I wish it were more obvious what the system is, or at least that every metro system ran similarly. The only thing about international travel that stresses me the fuck out is figuring out what app I need to make my way through town, or if I need a paper ticket, etc. Not even language barriers give me as much stress as landing and having to spend 30 min figuring out the best method for transits when I’m tired and just want to relax.

In Sydney most trains...

(a) Are double decker

(b) Have seats which flip to face the opposite direction.

Australian pedestrian crossing lights cater for the blind and the deaf-and-blind. Billie Eilish's brother/producer sampled the sound, when he visited, for her smash hit.

The Dark Hedges. Not our number one tourist destination, but probably the most overrated one. It's some trees that appeared in Game of Thrones and the over-tourism + the increase in stormy weather thanks to climate change is killing them.

We've more popular places like the Giant's Causeway and the Derry walls, but those places are worth visiting at least.

Montreal. I don't understand the people that excitedly wait for the metro to arrive and take pictures. It's a subway.

People that take panoramic shots of downtown of people walking on the sidewalk.

I guess some tourists come from places with no rail or sidewalks.

In Oxford, it's "normal" to see students walking around in sub-fusc (formal academic dress) at certain times of year. It's not just for matriculation and graduation, you have to do all of your exams in it, too. Tourists seem to love it, though. Some will ask random students for photographs. Some won't bother asking.

When I was in grad school, a French post doc saw one of the pine cones ( some get around the size of your head). She wanted to keep it to prove that “ everything is bigger in America “

Squirrels, I guess. Oh and so many prisons.

I live near the Rocky Mountain line so I've seen it many times. People I've met in other cities I've lived in always say they're jealous that I'm close to such a place but live there long enough and they just become another mountain

I've only ever lived in Northern Ohio and Florida, two very flat places. So when I visited Denver, it was so weird to see the mountains always looming RIGHT THERE. You always know which way is West.

Beer
Old buildings
a statue of a peeing boy
a forest with huge beech trees with flowers underneath
castles or manors everywhere.

About the UK.

I really liked the Edwardian and Victorian heritage. You'll find remains of beautifull crafted industrial stuff and craftsmanship that is nearly lost.

Lately it's been the waymos (driverless cars) in San Francisco, assume it's the same in the other couple cities there going. They've been going a couple years now so they've been normalized for locals but every so often I see people taking pictures of them or waving there hands in front of them trying to fuck with them.

I live in the Gulf Islands of BC Canada. So. Many. Tourists. I don’t leave my house on the weekends in the summer. We have fabulous beaches though, and it really is lovely. I moved so much as a kid so I’ve always been like oh this is a cool place, I could move here whenever I travel. This is the first time in my life when I’m happy to be going home. Vancouver island is amazing.

The sea

Gambling

Oktoberfest

Squirrels

Awww. As a kiwi (no squirrels here) I can confirm.

Summers are wonderful, it doesn't rain very much. We tell outsiders that it rains all the time. Oregon, USA.

Climate stuff comes to mind. Big storms, it being sunny almost all the time, and -30C. There's other climates that are similar, of course, but I guess most people don't live in them, because visitors remark on it. Europeans tend to be gobsmacked by the amount of empty space there is between human structures, too.

A lot of pests people think are everywhere are just nowhere to be seen because of the cold. That's more something that's missing, though.

Free healthcare and French labeling, for the Americans. I'm not sure if they think the money is cool or just stupid.

Kay, but summer/spring is brutal for the deer flies and mosquitoes
- Fucking mosquitos. They could probably survive Antarctica. Instead, if you go further north yet everything that eat them dies, and they grow endless and mutantly large. I'd love to see the territories but that bit gives me pause.
  If you're somewhere wooded, blackflies also get bad reviews.
Québec? Quelle partie?
- No, Alberta. Unfortunately, my French isn't good. C'est merde, pardon.
  I wouldn't be at all surprised if Quebec is more like here than southern Ontario or BC, though. And definitely the US or most of the EU.

-Gem show

-Rodeo week

I personally couldn’t be bothered for either, but it’s cool that people like them.

Yes I understand the irony that “Horsey” doesn’t like rodeos, lol. Eventing in the horse world is just too damn expensive for me to want to compete.

IDK. Nobody visits me.

Penguins, the biggest desert on the planet, snow blindness

Whatcha doing in Antarctica?
- Lumberjacking, but business has been pretty slow
Hmm, is Antarctica bigger than the Sahara?
- Sahara is ~9,200,000 km2
  Antarctica is ~14,200,000 km2
I'm willing to move, any chance you can hook me up with a job there?

Poutine is lazy junk food and there's nothing impressive about a slop pile of gravy, curds, and fries.

In Montreal, it's pretty typical to see groundhogs and raccoons. It was a fairly regular phenomena for me to walk through St-Helen Island and see tourists that stopped to take pictures of groundhogs.

In the US and one that I haven't seen others mention yet is the hummingbirds

Palm trees and birds that stand chest high.

I spend about 1/4 of the year in the UK so I'm used to it now but I remember being shocked by the bad teeth.

I'm in the UK and it's totally normal here to have kids sitting on harbour walls catching crabs (crabbing) at any seaside town. I don't give it a second thought but it seems to fascinate foreign tourists.

My school was in a village that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site so in the morning there’d be coachloads of Japanese and American tourists unloading and getting their cameras out and I was just trying to not be late for registration.

I find the old and historical buildings in the center of other countries' cities very fascinating. I live in a city where all the old buildings were demolished to build newer style ones, so I don't see a lot of them in my everyday life.

our grocery stores

You go to some tiny, dying town and it has 700 years of history, often 1000+ years of proof of habitation before that and a majestic church that is a work of art on its own.

No idea.

The sun.

The Derby. So glad I moved out of Louisville, KY as soon as I graduated high school.

Everything. I live in Orlando.

Hey, that souvenir shop with the giant wizard head over the door is totally worth getting excited about.
- When that shop first opened, the Wizard was holding a scepter with a giant glass globe. It may have lit up at night, I don't remember. It was very impressive.
  Not long after it went up, Hurricane Charlie hit, and tore everything up, and the giant globe was destroyed. I would love to see video of it exploding in the storm.
  To this day, they have never replaced the globe.

I have lived in Tucson, Arizona for about 5 years. I still get excited about all the little lizards and birds. And Coyotes, and bobcats. Last night I saw a toad for the first time. There is a TON of wildlife here, kind of like you hear about Australia, and it's pretty amazing. I'm sure it's all pretty old hat to a lot of people. I also see gorgeous mountain ranges every day, which is not something I grew up with in New York.

Oh, and there is legal weed (marijuana) every damn where. It's fucking. Awesome. We....did not have this in NY growing up.