Things you would recommend tourists do/see if they want to get an idea of daily life in your country (schools, live in)
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Get on those big red buses and ride the bus around Inner London and Suburban London. There faces would turn from "" in Piccadilly circus to "" in Peckham Rye that's if they took the number 12.
For life here in Texas, I'd have to second the OP's ideas. I'll go further and tell you what we do when our Belgian friends come for a visit - they come every few years and they love the American South and Midwest and they LOVE Texas! (Good for them.)
Anyway, we usually do this:
1. They love to just drive around neighborhoods with realtor.com pulled up, so they can nearly pass out at the low prices of real estate. They are literally fascinated by Texas suburbia.
2. We usually go to a bookstore/coffee shop. They really enjoy poking around in that bookstore and people watching from the coffee shop area.
3. Of course we have to try local foods - BBQ being their favorite. We take them to a locally owned and operated place called The Country Tavern, which serves the BEST pork ribs on the planet. You don't even need a menu - you just go in and tell them whether you want a small, medium, or large rib plate and what sides you want - potato salad, cole slaw, and/or beans. It's dark except for the candles at the table and the neon beer signs and there's also a dance floor.
4. Great idea about taking them to a high school football game! I honestly hadn't thought of that.
5. We have a number of parades around here - the 4th of July, the Rose Festival parade, Christmas, and I'm sure there are others. I like the idea of taking them to one of those as well.
6. Speaking of seasonal things, besides the obvious Christmas, I think it would be fun for them to experience Halloween or Thanksgiving here.
7. When I'm in a foreign country, I like to go grocery shopping there to compare experiences, items, etc. So I think it would be fun to take them to a really big, Whole Foods type of grocery store we have here.
8. I like the idea of taking them to a "typical" chain restaurant. Actually, my Belgian friends really love Applebees and Texas Road House. I think they need to go to IHOP next time! Oh, and they were fascinated by the Marble Slab Creamery as well.
9. I hope they visit in the early fall next time, though generally they avoid the hotter seasons because it's such a culture shock to them. But it would be fun to take them to the lake and get the boat out.
10. When they're here, I like to fix them an all American breakfast (while clearly telling them that we don't always eat like that - maybe about once a month!) - bacon, cheese grits, scrambled eggs, toast and jelly, lots of coffee. But their FAVORITE meals are the "southern/soul food" meals that they always want me to cook - ham, corn bread, squash, turnip greens, black eyed peas, and bread pudding for dessert, all served with big glasses of sweet tea.
Attend one of our hundreds of festivals, from the International Jazz Festival (biggest in the world), to the International Fireworks Festival to Just for Laughs to Les Nuits d'Afriques to the Circus Arts Festival.
Go to the Main for our famous smoked meat. Catch a Cirque du Soleil show on their home turf under the Big Top.
The Plateau for fresh bagels right out of the wood-burning ovens. Stroll through Old Montreal and watch the musicians, jugglers and artists. Have crepes for brunch at a terrace at Place Jacques Cartier. See the wildlife at the Biodome. Take them up to the cottage in the Laurentians to do some fishing or kayaking.
The list is endless.
1) Come in the winter, which shouldn't be hard. (Not BC)
2) Either wake up an hour earlier than you would one morning to shovel your way out a door/parking space, or put it off during the day before until you have to do it late that night (and hope it doesn't snow overnight).
3) Go watch a touring Canadian musician in a dive bar on a Saturday night, and spill your beer everywhere while shouting either lyrics or nonsense back at the stage.
4) Find someone who will take you out on their snowmobile. Bonus points if it's a Bombardier.
5) In the spring or summertime, just walk around wooded areas until you see a bear. I seem to run in to several every year so if you stay for a month here, chances are good. At least in Northern Ontario, and I guess Quebec and the Maritimes probably as well.
6) This is tacky, but I used to do it a lot when I was a kid: go to a maple syrup farm, and get syrup poured over snow that's been cleaned out and eat it. Usually they've already cleaned some and have a large pile somewhere on the property. It's awesome.
- Visit an American "County Fair" (or State Fair), if it's the season. Enjoy the contests/ exhibits of livestock (animals), plants, the contest for the largest vegetables/ fruits, the best flowers, the best handicrafted items, the stage entertainers/ musicians, the snack foods, framed art by local artists, the booths (exhibit tables) of local organizations, politicians running for election, the school science fair projects. the carnival rides, ferris wheel.
- Attend a fundamentalist or modern praise-style worship service. Especially an African-American congregation. In N.Y. City, some bus tours take visitors to a Harlem (black peoples) church, and Europeans find the worship very interesting and inspiring, although they may not fully understand English language.
6) This is tacky, but I used to do it a lot when I was a kid: go to a maple syrup farm, and get syrup poured over snow that's been cleaned out and eat it. Usually they've already cleaned some and have a large pile somewhere on the property. It's awesome.
Why is this tacky?
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