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Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
I've only been abroad one time, and there were little gecko/lizard things everywhere, climbing up walls and scurrying across roads, and nobody cared. I was constantly fascinated but to the locals they're just kinda there.
Bonus question to anyone who visited the UK - was there anything that fascinated you but I'd be taking for granted?
Pic unrelated.
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.
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.
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
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.
Em, what?
oh, riiiiiight. Did you know someone who moved from CA complained to the town hall open mic night in my town about them? As in "what will we do about the noise?"
(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.
Winter. I guess it's different when you only put up with the endless darkness, cold and snow a week once in your life.
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.
The tides at the Bay of Fundy. Highest tides in the world but you have to watch it for 12. 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.
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.
Gambling
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
