Disappointing tourist attractions

[Cols]

No one's mentioned the Magna Centre. Full of interactive exhibits that are broken, kids running round seeing how many buttons they can press. What is it with kids - they press the buttons and don't wait to read what comes up on the screen, they just charge onto the next button to be pressed.

 

Rother Valley country park - the pits (literally). There's nothing pretty about this place. Old reclaimed mine workings with a feeling of desolation.

 

Winter Garden - it's a big greenhouse.

 

Weston Park Museum - it's pretty but they've taken the soul out of it.

[Hallamton]

My friend recently went to Weston Park Museum and said how good it was!

 

(She is quite a boring person though)

 

-Michael

[pattricia]

No one's mentioned the Magna Centre. Full of interactive exhibits that are broken, kids running round seeing how many buttons they can press. What is it with kids - they press the buttons and don't wait to read what comes up on the screen, they just charge onto the next button to be pressed.

 

Rother Valley country park - the pits (literally). There's nothing pretty about this place. Old reclaimed mine workings with a feeling of desolation.

 

Winter Garden - it's a big greenhouse.

 

Weston Park Museum - it's pretty but they've taken the soul out of it.

 

Yes, The Magna Centre has to be THE most disappointing place I have been to. Beachy Head is also disappointing.

[Darbees]

Beachy Head is also disappointing.

So disappointing that people regularly jump off it.

[nick2]

Oh, please. Yes, America has less history than England.

 

But it more than makes-up for it with natural attractions, of which there are very few in England. The vast (realy vast, not 50 miles without going through a town) open spaces are (IMO) the biggest attraction in the USA, so much of it hasn't been ruined/exploited/changed by man, unlike 99% of England. Added to that you can get desert, mountains, prairies, swamps, glaciers, beaches, forests all in the same country, in some places all in the same state.

 

(No doubt someone will say the Lake District is more impressive than Yellowstone Park or the Grand Canyon in the next few posts)

[Darbees]

But it more than makes-up for it with natural attractions, of which there are very few in England. The vast (realy vast, not 50 miles without going through a town) open spaces are (IMO) the biggest attraction in the USA, so much it hasn't been ruined/exploited/changed by man, unlike 99% of England.

 

(No doubt someone will say the Lake District is more impressive than Yellowstone Park or the Grand Canyon in the next few posts)

Not been to Yellowstone but I'd say Lake District is quite impressive in different ways to Grand Canyon. You see the canyon which is awesome initially but after a few miles of it, it's still a bloody big canyon. Lake district has a lot going for it, they are different.

[nick2]

You see the canyon which is awesome initially but after a few miles of it, it's still a bloody big canyon.

 

In the same way that the Lake district is just a few hills and lakes, it depends what you do when you get there, you can hike into the canyon, raft down the river, camp at the bottom of it, have helicopter flights over it.

 

I see your point though, but I found the Lake District very boring, and overly expensive.

[Darbees]

In the same way that the Lake district is just a few hills and lakes, it depends what you do when you get there, you can hike into the canyon, raft down the river, camp at the bottom of it, have helicopter flights over it.

 

I see your point though, but I found the Lake District very boring, and overly expensive.

The Lake District has the added attraction that I can just go up there at a moments notice too.

[Waltheof]

I think the problem is a simple misunderstanding. They are talking about United States history, 200+ years. You are talking about the history of North America.

 

Two different things.

 

Sierra

 

Not quite--what became the USA is included in that "North America" and the first settlements were on the eastern seaboard, if I remember correctly (speaking off the top of my head here) in Jamestown in the early 1600s. there had been even earlier attempts to colonise but I think they failed.

[Waltheof]

Hallamton has put up two posts which to me show muddled thinking. The investigation of the recent past is just as valid as looking at remote time, because we are concerned not just with what happened, but why events evolved as they did, what were the human motives, who were the influential figures, and as time goes on successive historians reassess the interpretations made by earlier ones. Of course the history of early times, accessible as it is only through the few records we have, the archaeology, the artefacts and the observations of some contemporaries, is fascinating because we can never fully recover the exact nature of what happened and why; but in many ways the same applied to the times closer to us. Yes, there may be more records, yes there may be more oral traditions handed down, and more material for us to examine, but records require careful interpretation, traditions may be faulty, the winners may write the "official" history, and there will always be factors that people at the time were not aware of, but which later enquiry may reveal. In those terms the pursuit of truth by the historian is every bit as exciting and fascinating

 

Moreover, there is no reason to dismiss the history of one place as not relevant to the history of another. How long have the UK and the USA been bound together by common friedlines or animosity (even long before either the UK was the UK and USA was USA); look how the history of India has affected that of the UK and vice versa, and how we may have a love/hate relationship with various European countries but can't escape from their legacy to us.

 

History is history, no matter where or when, even that of yesterday (how do you know if someone did something yesterday which might change the course of human thinking, but it isn't recognised yet and may not be for many years--I think, for instance, of the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, the repercussions of which are still with us, but its full implications were not understood for a long time. The current debate between Creationists and Evolutionists cannot be understood without recourse to Darwin's work?)

 

OK, rant over, but please, don't think simplistically about history.