News: International visitors shared their USA holiday experiences

Pokistic

Fearless squirrels and drive-thru strip clubs: Tourists reveal the weirdest things they discovered while visiting America

Reddit users shared what surprised them the most on a visit to America
Giant food portions and the friendliness of strangers confounded visitors
The scale of the country shocked travellers keen to embark on roadtrips

Brazen squirrels have been known to steal food from tourists. Pictured a grey squirrel eats a nut on a bench in Union Square Park New York

Quote:

Trump, Hollywood and fast food are probably among the first associations that spring to mind for any non-American when they think of the United States.

But breaking down the stereotypes, travellers from around the world have revealed their surprising discoveries of what life in the States is actually like.

From drive-thru strip clubs to the unnerving friendliness of locals who seem to have a particular a fondness for Australians, international visitors have shared their holiday experiences.

Quote:

Reddit users were asked 'Non-Americans who have been to the US: What is the weirdest thing about America that Americans don't realise is weird?'

While common answers discussed mouth-wateringly large food portion sizes including Canadian Phalty's discovery of 'raptor sized turkey legs' and Palawan sharing that 'everything tastes sweeter', visitors found that local wildlife also shared an appreciation for American cuisine.

Canadian, Phalty shared their discovery of 'raptor sized turkey legs' at amusement parks across the States

Quote:

Many international contributors to the forum found the friendliness of Americans highly suspicious and in some cases unnerving.

British tourist Calthis said: ‘Someone smiled at me on the light rail the other day and I had a mini panic attack.’

Quote:

TheMediumPanda added: ‘Americans are extremely friendly, almost to an uncomfortable degree for some. When my parents got slightly lost and had to ask for directions, after 5 minutes, 20 people with huge smiles were surrounding them, trying their utmost to help. Several offering rides back to their hotel.’

Dubayet, an American living abroad, agreed that many people he encountered overseas expressed concern that American friendliness might be fake but he defended it as a cultural misunderstanding.

Dubayet explained: ‘They are just being nice, and this is something Americans are used to and accept as normal. No one thinks the guy behind them in line who strikes up a conversation wants to be your BFF, but I think this confuses people not used to that kind of culture.’

Highlighting this further, user oOOOOOO was surprised to note: ‘If you walk into a busy bar and shout USA WHOOOOOOOO!!!!! 99% of the time someone somewhere in the bar will repeat it back.’

Tourists added that the kindness of strangers was an unexpected yet heatwarming experience in the States.

Cheddarfever said: ‘I was having a bad day a couple weeks ago and was crying at the bus stop. A random person stopped and asked if I was okay and if I needed to use his phone to call anyone.’

The great open road: Travellers have mistakenly thought they can drive across the whole country in no time

Quote:

Granpa_Strange said: ‘Everytime I go to Louisiana, I get pulled over for NOT speeding. I don't understand why, but if I'm doing the speed limit I'm not going fast enough.’

And all the more disappointing for any holidaymaker hoping to embark on an epic roadtrip across the States is the sheer scale of the country. Toykolunchboxes revealed a common visitor mistake: ‘It took me a while before I realized that a person cannot drive from New York City to the Grand Canyon in one day.’

However, a driving holiday is still appreciated by tourists who were in awe of ‘drive-thru everything’. One reddit poster KatCole7 surmised: ‘Drive-thru car wash strip club, thanks North Carolina.’

If you thought Americans were the most fond of their British cousins think again, several Australian travellers shared their bizarre realisation that many in the States are ‘infatuated’ with Antipodean visitors.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/tr...#ixzz42KH8dXVL

Read more: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/c...s_what_is_the/

Interesting. I live in NYC and I just love this city and I love this country too.

Even with all its flaws. Any International ATRLs want to shared your experiences when visiting the USA?

Marvin

Quote:

‘It took me a while before I realized that a person cannot drive from New York City to the Grand Canyon in one day.’

USA slaying like always

Tropez

Yeah. People don't get American politeness. I thought everyone did it and it was common to smile at people or say hello when you see them. But it's not.

rivers

this is very nice to hear!

I always love helping people with directions or tips who are visiting my state. Makes me happy

Ascension

Quote:

top 200 commentsshow 500
sorted by: best

[–]SthrnCrss 1588 points 1 day ago
That there are a lot of squirrels.
permalink

[–]crazy_pants_wolf 545 points 1 day ago
Some of them are terrifyingly bold.
permalinkparent

[–]LessLikeYou 169 points 1 day ago
In NYC they are pretty fearless. I've seen one eating a burger in a park. I couldn't tell if it was actually eating the meat because it caught me staring and gave me the finger.

The squirrel comments are KILLING me.

Are squirrels not a thing anywhere else?

I never noticed their absence when traveling abroad, but now that I think about, I don't specifically recall seeing them when I did.

The food portions thing is funny tho. I don't think people get that a lot of Americans just equate value with portion size (especially at the average/low priced restaurants) and most people don't actually eat all of the food they get at restaurants in one sitting; people either discard what they don't eat or take the leftovers with them. Most of the time I end up with snack for later on or lunch for the next day whenever we go to restaurants. We do consume a lot of sugary stuff tho. My cousin (by marriage but she might as well be blood

) from Germany has commented on the sweets before.

This is so cute; I love hearing visitor's perspective and things we don't realize are strange or unique to us.

Ascension

Quote:

As a Brit having traveled America extensively I don't know if I find anything about America that weird any more. Your media and politics are insane, but day to day life is just rather normal and toned down. Average American is a lot less loud and annoying than their average politician or TV host.

Quote:

Spent a year in the US and came back for a few more weeks because I like you guys. I know you don't give a **** when you ask how I am doing but it's still nice to be asked that sometimes.

Oh, we do give a ****, that's why we ask. We just don't want to get into a discussion if the answer is "bad".

"It's cancer" "...oh. Well, uh. Hmm."

and

TRUE!

Quote:

Your lack of inhibition with strangers.
I spent a month travelling from East to West and stayed with my best mate in NYC for a few weeks. While there I decided to top up my red hair dye as it had seriously faded. One disaster later (boring story) and my hair actually came out illuminous pink/red instead. I'm talking pretty out there from my usual red, but I thought, '**** it, it'll fade soon enough and I'm travelling, why not just rock it for a bit?'
What I did NOT expect was for all the comments on it by complete strangers! I live in Scotland and we're a fairly friendly, cheery, chatty bunch when we want to be, but it's usually during an ongoing exchange. Such as when you're being served by someone in a shop or restaurant, after having established base contact you might then venture out with 'Oh I love your hair/clothes/bag' whatever. It's pretty rare (though not unheard of) for someone to just pass you in the street and make comments like that.
I was blown away by how often it happened over there. I'm a fairly sociable person myself and enjoyed it. But it constantly surprised me. I'd be walking down the street in my own world and I'd hear a 'hey, awesome hair!' from someone just passing me. It was great.
I would probably regard this as an asset as opposed to weird, but I don't know if you guys realise just how different you are in this respect.

Aww!

Quote:

American here, why isn't smiling at strangers more common everywhere else?

**** man that's how most wars start in Europe.

One minute you're smiling at someone on a train, next thing you know you're driving a tank into Poland. What can ya do?

Aviana

Lots of young people smoke weed..
I had my first experience with marijuana when I was exchanging there in 2013. You can get it at campus, at bars and clubs, on the road...I even smoked it with friends when we were driving besides a police car and it was illegal back then in that state, it was fun though.

In Australia, I don't even know where to get canabbis and very few of my friends have ever had it..

Haburo

an actual conversation:

'where r u from'

'ireland'

'wh... how did u get here, by boat?'

'what'

'well they don't have airplanes there, right?? or like airports or whatever'

'what? yes they do?'

'i'm irish too. my family is descended from the murphys in county mayo, do you know them?'

'wh-no...'

'are they still really big into tug of war over there?'

'what'

'tug of war'

Toya

Quote:

Highlighting this further, user oOOOOOO was surprised to note: ‘If you walk into a busy bar and shout USA WHOOOOOOOO!!!!! 99% of the time someone somewhere in the bar will repeat it back.’

This is true I've tried it.

Reza

too bad non American ATRL members get all of their info about America from Fox News.

Pandora

Quote:

Originally posted by Haburo

an actual conversation:

'where r u from'

'ireland'

'wh... how did u get here, by boat?'

'what'

'well they don't have airplanes there, right?? or like airports or whatever'

'what? yes they do?'

'i'm irish too. my family is descended from the murphys in county mayo, do you know them?'

'wh-no...'

'are they still really big into tug of war over there?'

'what'

'tug of war'

revel8

I''ve visited the USA several times. The first time I went to New York City to visit an American school-friend, we were talking with some locals in Bryant Park and they thought me and my friend were Australian for some reason. We were from the UK! We just humoured them and pretended we were Ozzies to avoid embarrassing them! Me and my friend had both been to Australia, so could easily fool them with knowledge of Australia, and they obviously weren't able to distinguish our English accents from Ossie ones. They took a picture of me and my friend and said they were going to put it into a textbook they were doing research for. This photo of me and my friend is likely in this book somewhere, with me and my friend falsely labelled as Australians! LMAO!

Also that trip to NY, in separate incidents, I saw a car on fire and a person being stretchered into an ambulance after being shot in a sandwich shop. All this happened in Midtown Manhattan in broad daylight. My American friend assured me this was unusual, and he had never seen anything like it in his years of living in NYC. And yet for me, 2 days in NYC and already seeing the aftermath of a shooting, something I'd never seen in my life at home or any other country I'd visited.

The thing that most surprised me about NYC was the roads had lots of metal plates in them, which made for really bumpy taxi rides.

New York Delis have amazing choice in bread and fillings. Me and my friend, were gobsmacked and took about 15 minutes just trying to work out what half the bread types were. Who knew sandwiches could be so complicated to order? The staff working there must have thought we were retards, but we were just overwhelmed by the possible combinations of everything! Welp!

The USA has parts which are very different from each other. Apart from NYC a couple of times, I have also been to Boston, Las Vegas, Arizona, California (LA, Sacramento, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe). Me and my brother were really happy to find that in the West Coast fast food joints had free refills for drinks and some ice-cream places did too! Most people were very friendly, especially once they found out me and my family were English. California was great for Mexican food but iced-tea is an abomination!

Also there were lots of really fat people in the US. This is hardly news, but it was quite an eye-opener if you are just a kid seeing it for the first time. And yes, the US has massive portions of food. Don't even bother with a starter cos it will be bigger than the equivalent of a main course back home. It is not hard to figure out the cause of high obesity rates in the US.

Stayed at the Luxor Pyramid in Vegas. The elevators/internal balconies are like something from Star Wars! Incredible town, but the casinos were a lot more casual than the movies portrayed. I'd been to casinos in the UK before, but thought the ones in Vegas would be more glamourous in terms of dress code/clientele. Nope! Great restaurants though.

US TV is weird with so many adverts. You have a TV show, which has multiple ad breaks, then the TV show ends, more ad breaks, and then the credits roll, and then more ad breaks. That's right, you even have adverts between the end of the show and the credits rolling! That is just overkill.

Mekitor

This is so interesting. I live in NYC and I have seen some tourists fixated on the squirrels and Raccoons. I also like to help lost tourists many times. Nice article.

Witchpop

I kinda do wish our portion sizes were smaller, I eat so much

Mekitor

Quote:

Originally posted by revel8

I''ve visited the USA several times. The first time I went to New York City to visit an American school-friend, we were talking with some locals in Bryant Park and they thought me and my friend were Australian for some reason. We were from the UK! We just humoured them and pretended we were Ozzies to avoid embarrassing them! Me and my friend had both been to Australia, so could easily fool them with knowledge of Australia, and they obviously weren't able to distinguish our English accents from Ossie ones. They took a picture of me and my friend and said they were going to put it into a textbook they were doing research for. This photo of me and my friend is likely in this book somewhere, with me and my friend falsely labelled as Australians! LMAO!

Also that trip to NY, in separate incidents, I saw a car on fire and a person being stretchered into an ambulance after being shot in a sandwich shop. All this happened in Midtown Manhattan in broad daylight. My American friend assured me this was unusual, and he had never seen anything like it in his years of living in NYC. And yet for me, 2 days in NYC and already seeing the aftermath of a shooting, something I'd never seen in my life at home or any other country I'd visited.

The thing that most surprised me about NYC was the roads had lots of metal plates in them, which made for really bumpy taxi rides.

New York Delis have amazing choice in bread and fillings. Me and my friend, were gobsmacked and took about 15 minutes just trying to work out what half the bread types were. Who knew sandwiches could be so complicated to order? The staff working there must have thought we were retards, but we were just overwhelmed by the possible combinations of everything! Welp!

The USA has parts which are very different from each other. Apart from NYC a couple of times, I have also been to Boston, Las Vegas, Arizona, California (LA, Sacramento, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe). Me and my brother were really happy to find that in the West Coast fast food joints had free refills for drinks and some ice-cream places did too! Most people were very friendly, especially once they found out me and my family were English. California was great for Mexican food but iced-tea is an abomination!

Also there were lots of really fat people in the US. This is hardly news, but it was quite an eye-opener if you are just a kid seeing it for the first time. And yes, the US has massive portions of food. Don't even bother with a starter cos it will be bigger than the equivalent of a main course back home. It is not hard to figure out the cause of high obesity rates in the US.

Stayed at the Luxor Pyramid in Vegas. The elevators/internal balconies are like something from Star Wars! Incredible town, but the casinos were a lot more casual than the movies portrayed. I'd been to casinos in the UK before, but thought the ones in Vegas would be more glamourous in terms of dress code/clientele. Nope! Great restaurants though.

US TV is weird with so many adverts. You have a TV show, which has multiple ad breaks, then the TV show ends, more ad breaks, and then the credits roll, and then more ad breaks. That's right, you even have adverts between the end of the show and the credits rolling! That is just overkill.

This is some great stuff. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Americans do love the British and Australians

New York Delis are awesome!

Yeah we do have too may fat people. LOL

Yes I agree that Americans do not have a good 'dress code' when it comes to some places where you will expect them to dress better because of the location. Like those fancy hotels.

Jackson

Mess. I love it here, 'Murica **** ya!

gloamingtheplain

My parents moved to Australia from the UK and they felt really uncomfortable here. My mum freaked out when someone at the supermarket said to her "See you later" and my Mum just freaked out and had anxiety leaving the store

So it doesn't surprise me when I hear stories of people from Europe being almost alarmed and ready to start a punch on when they go to other parts of the world.

America is a really friendly place, as long as no one brings up politics. Ever.

I remember watching an episode of Skins where Cassie goes to the U.S. and she was super scared of how friendly everyone was. It was like half the episode.

Yet in Skins anyone who becomes too friendly to her in the UK ends up being bad news.

Kamil24

Quote:

Originally posted by Ascension

The squirrel comments are KILLING me.

Are squirrels not a thing anywhere else?

I never noticed their absence when traveling abroad, but now that I think about, I don't specifically recall seeing them when I did.

The food portions thing is funny tho. I don't think people get that a lot of Americans just equate value with portion size (especially at the average/low priced restaurants) and most people don't actually eat all of the food they get at restaurants in one sitting; people either discard what they don't eat or take the leftovers with them. Most of the time I end up with snack for later on or lunch for the next day whenever we go to restaurants. We do consume a lot of sugary stuff tho. My cousin (by marriage but she might as well be blood

) from Germany has commented on the sweets before.

This is so cute; I love hearing visitor's perspective and things we don't realize are strange or unique to us.

They're also common in Canada, my cousin was fascinated by them when she visited from Poland. They're just running around all over the city whereas in Poland you'd rarely see one in a forest somewhere.

Kamil24

Quote:

Originally posted by Haburo

an actual conversation:

'where r u from'

'ireland'

'wh... how did u get here, by boat?'

'what'

'well they don't have airplanes there, right?? or like airports or whatever'

'what? yes they do?'

'i'm irish too. my family is descended from the murphys in county mayo, do you know them?'

'wh-no...'

'are they still really big into tug of war over there?'

'what'

'tug of war'

so iconic

americanshameless

nn yall are too nice
we londeners hate most tourists

ill be visiting ny, vegas and la this summer though
any recommendations?