Humanities desk
< December 4	<< Nov \| December \| Jan >>	December 6 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

December 5

Great Expectations

Banned user

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

File:Beatles_-_Abbey_Road.jpg

American tourist to wife outside St Pancras Station this morning:

"You want to come here?"

Wife: "What's that? Is it a palace?"

Has anyone come across any other tourist misconceptions of what they are looking at? 2A00:23C5:CDA5:6700:79B3:BC2B:6C1F:879F (talk) 13:40, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

One of the bus guides in Stratford-upon-Avon told me tourists regularly go to Stratford looking for the Shakespearian history. --TrogWoolley (talk) 14:27, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of tourists end up at Abbey Road DLR station when they were trying to get here:

American tourists at Tower Hill, London, looking up at 10 Trinity Square; "Excuse me sir, is that Hamlet's Tower?" Me: "Erm, no, I think Hamlet came from Denmark". The mystery of how this misapprehension arose was solved when I saw a nearby sign; "Welcome to Tower Hamlets".

For my own part, I was convinced that Niagara Falls were in the middle of the countryside and was astonished to find that the view was from a busy road edged with fast food restaurants. Alansplodge (talk) 17:26, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My biggest surprises have always been about works of art; you only ever see them online presented without any context for scale purposes, so you tend to misunderstand the size of paintings. I guess I always thought most paintings were around the same size (like about 1-1.5 meters or so per side) but then you see things like the Mona Lisa which is shockingly tiny, or Washington Crossing the Delaware which is similarly surprisingly huge. --Jayron 32 17:38, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You lot are being trolled; the OP is a banned user. I should really delete this whole thread, but unfortunately there have been too many good-faith responses to do so. --Viennese Waltz 17:46, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Which banned user is it? --Jayron 32 17:49, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Vote X. --Viennese Waltz 17:50, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]