Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 December 5

= December 5 =

Great Expectations
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)
 * 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)
 * 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)
 * 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)
 * 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)
 * Which banned user is it? -- Jayron 32 17:49, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Vote X. --Viennese Waltz 17:50, 5 December 2019 (UTC)