visualizing
When you are traveling, do you ever find that how you visualized a place is different from reality?
Even though I research locations in advance, including looking at Google Maps and Google Street View, I frequently find that places don’t look exactly how I thought they would. It’s usually that I didn’t fully grasp the scale/size of a place, but also I often don’t fully realize how a site is placed within its environment.
For example, the Panama Canal. I didn’t fully understand its construction and was thinking that it was one channel that was much much wider to allow for two-way traffic. In reality, the original canal is two narrower channels that alternate directions throughout the day. Additionally, I didn’t know until I was there that there’s a newer third canal that’s much wider and deeper in order to accommodate larger modern ships.
In another example, in older cities, I am often surprised by how built up an area around a cultural site is. For example, in Rome, so much there is ancient that places like the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, and the Pantheon just have regular buildings around them. By contrast, in the U.S. major sites often are set off and made special. But in Italy, so much is ancient that it would be impossible to create buffer space around them. Life goes on, right?
Nature often surprises me too. The first time I saw the Grand Canyon, I was surprised that something so large was not actually visible until you are practically on top of it. And that element of surprise was fun when years later we took our offspring to see it. We parked our car at one of the visitor centers and walked to the edge. We were probably only 40 or 50 feet away when the canyon revealed itself. In one breath, both pre-teens paused, blinked, and said almost in unison, “WHOA.” It was a delightful reveal.
Mount Vernon and the White House are two 18th-century buildings that surprised me with how accessible they felt. Even the largest of rooms felt not too large and most rooms felt scaled to human needs. In spite of the grandeur, I could imagine them being comfortable.
(And as it happens, one of my children felt so comfortable in the White House, that a couple of Secret Service agents heard me hiss-whisper to my six-year-old, “[Child’s full name] we do NOT pick our nose in the White House.”
So yeah, often things are vastly different from what I was expecting. Most of the time I am still delighted and enthralled. Sainte Chapelle in Paris absolutely blew my mind and I was truly speechless when I walked in. Rarely am I disappointed or underwhelmed, although it has happened on occasion.
What about you? What place was different from what you were expecting?
We just got back from a "family resort" in the Catskills. I didn't even realize places like this existed anymore, so it was a shock to discover that at least one does, and is full all summer with families who have been going there every summer for decades. I had always visualized the Catskills as dark & depressing with musty cabins buried under damp forest. Instead, it was clean and quaint with wide open sunny spaces and beautiful views.
I'm afraid this will happen when I visit Angkor Wat, that it will be so built up. In Japan, I was always thrown off by a petrol station being smack next to an old old shrine. Pretty wild!