Encounters with Tourists

I for one love tourists. They do not annoy me, I think its cute when they get excited about things like the Metro, the Capitol, the White House and various musems and monuments, I always gladly help them out with directions or suggestions when asked, and they provide me with many moments of comic releif when they ask funny questions or unintentionally annoy crabby locals on the street and on the Metro.

That said, share your favorite tourist encounters, good or bad.

Mine probably came this morning when a guy in his 50's, wearing shorts and flip flops and a "beachy" shirt, who said he was from California, came up to me on 17th and Penn NW and asked "do you know if the Congress is near here?" I told him it was at the Capitol, to which he replied "really? since when?"

they swarm and infest woodley park (my neighborhood) this time of year, has something to do with the two massive hotels in the area and the metro's designation of this stop as "the zoo" (even though it makes more sense to get off at cleveland park and walk downhill to the zoo, but i digress)

i hate all of them. they annoy me to no end. but it does give me a chance to check out the latest trends in carpenter jean shorts and which shades of pastel are hot this season

my favorite recent story: i'm standing at the top of the elevator down to the metro a few weeks ago, some morbidly obese, trying-to-catch-her-breath woman waddles up to me (had clearly just come from the metro escalator) and asks if this was the elevator to the zoo. i said "the actual zoo?, down there?" she gave me some indignant reply, and i kindly directed her up connecticut

i can't wait to move.

You should have asked her if she was trying to find her way back home.

Originally posted by HoyaSaxa03:


my favorite recent story: i'm standing at the top of the elevator down to the metro a few weeks ago, some morbidly obese, trying-to-catch-her-breath woman waddles up to me (had clearly just come from the metro escalator) and asks if this was the elevator to the zoo. i said "the actual zoo?, down there?" she gave me some indignant reply, and i kindly directed her up connecticut

i can't wait to move.

I think you have Hoya confused with this guy:
<img src="http://lvindex.com/las-vegas/live-calendar-events/uploads/797/don_rickles.jpg" alt=" - " />

Tourists are fun. . .especially in summer in San Francisco when the fog is in and it's 60 degrees and all the tourists come from the south and midwest expecting temperatures in the 80s and all they packed were shorts and t-shirts. Boy do they complain.

Not a tourist story, so to speak, but one that still makes me laugh.

A few years ago, my wife and I were in Ocean City, MD, spending our anniversary. We met in a really shitty pool bar down there a few years back, and by tradition we go there on the anniversary to have a drink.

At any rate, as we sat there drinking, we heard screeching tires from the street, as a guy that was obviously from out of town slammed on his breaks to make a turn he almost missed. The bartender, an obvious local, turns to me and says "Huh…fucking tourons."

It took ever fiber of my being not to burst out laughing.

carpetbaggers are worse.