Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Tourists ask the strangest questions

The strangest questions from tourists

When a tourist arrives to an unknown city, it is usual that he is a little bit confused and he is not clear about which are the venues that he has to visit but, sometimes, he goes beyond logic and asks a few funny questions, so to speak.

Tourists

A study made by a hotel booking website, as well as Tourism Offices of the most important European cities, has revealed a list of the strangest and weirdest questions that tourist have made since 1995.

In Madrid, for example, the agent tourist had to listen to questions like: “At what time is the Cibeles closed?”, when it’s one of the most famous statues in the city, in the open air, and you can go to visit it at anytime. Or foreigners mistake La Puerta del Sol for La Costa del Sol. One of the most surrealist questions is “where is the beach in Madrid”?

But of these kinds of questions are asked in other European cities. Let’s take Rome for example. There, a tourist asked at what time were the races at the Coliseum, or if he could go to visit a gladiators fight. Funny, isn’t it? What about this: “how much does it cost to sleep in the catacombs? People dare to ask anything!

These situations wouldn’t exist if visitors prepared their travel schedule a little more carefully and did a little bit of research. Imagine the staff’s faces when they are asked these silly questions! Surely they have to try very hard not to laugh. But, don’t worry, there are many more. Tourists’ imagination is endless. In Sweden, they even asked this marvellous question: “at what time do the elks walk?”, in Portugal, if Lisboa (Lisbon in Spanish) was near Lisbon (in English) or if traffic signs there were the same as in England.

Netherlands doesn’t escape from these funny and strange consultations either.
One visitor wanted to know “where the historical centre of Rotterdam was”. Actually, it doesn’t exist because the Nazis destroyed it during World War II.

But one of the most bizarre questions was asked in Ireland. The confusion of tourists leads them to ask things like “where can we find a wood with goblins?”, “Are there any cell phones in this country?” or “Is English the only language in Ireland”?

And finally, the icing on the cake. In France, staff at a Tourism office was left scratching their heads when someone posed the following question: “Can the boats on the Seine sail or are they just for decoration?” Another bewildered one, dared to ask where he could find the lady that smiled, referring to La Mona Lisa, and someone else wasn’t clear about Hotel Gay Lussac in Paris and wondered if it were just for homosexual guests.

Alright, all this is very fun, but we hope that if you decide to visit rent apartments in Lisbon, please make sure you get enough information to not appear on the next list of the strangest questions!

Posted via web from barcedona's posterous

1 comment:

Paris disney transfer said...

Hiya, a nice list of collection of question. Sometimes it seems so funny about such question, so it is always wise to plan ahead before even make a start to a journey.

 
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