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.

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.

These fellas

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

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 🤯

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.

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

Leaves.

Yes, tree leaves.

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

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.

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

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

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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).

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.

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

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"

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?

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

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.

Mountains. We got a lot of em

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.

My Polish wife was thrilled to see fireflies in Kentucky.

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.

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!”

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

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:

Walking to a supermarket, riding your bicycle to work.

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.

(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

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.

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

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.

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.

Whales, northern lights, reindeer

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.

cactuses

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

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.

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.

Trees which change color in the fall

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The Autobahn.

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.

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.

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.

Apfelschorle

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.

Czech beer....

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

Fireflys.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Hot air balloons. I see them in the sky most mornings when I go for a walk, weather permitting.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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

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 “

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.

Squirrels, I guess. Oh and so many prisons.

• 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.

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.

Oktoberfest

Gambling

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.

Squirrels

The sea

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

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.

-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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The sun.

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.

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.

our grocery stores

Everything. I live in Orlando.

No idea.

AIDS