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A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

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Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#11

Post by smnrchrds »

RegnisGnaw wrote: post #4

I lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (eh?) for 23 years and we have similar stories. There is an island that is part of Nova Scotia called Cape Breton with a city named Sydney (so Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada) with population of ~30K. Every few years we get a tourist that confuses that with Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. They generally realize something is wrong when they switch planes in Halifax from a Jet (B…

Saint John, New Brunswick and St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador must confuse people too. I never remember which one is which without Googling it.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#12

Post by EponymousMoth »

smnrchrds wrote: post #11
RegnisGnaw wrote: post #4

I lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (eh?) for 23 years and we have similar stories. There is an island that is part of Nova Scotia called Cape Breton with a city named Sydney (so Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada) with population of ~30K. Every few years we get a tourist that confuses that with Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. They generally realize something is wrong when they switch planes in Halifax from a Jet (B…

Saint John, New Brunswick and St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador must confuse people too. I never remember which one is which without Googling it.

Am from Saint John. Every time I tell someone from away where I'm from, I make sure to tell them "The one without the 's'."

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#16

Post by InitialLastName »

ilamont wrote: post #3

There was a story some years back about a guy who got on the wrong flight to Oakland ... he ended up in Auckland instead. https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/27/us/wrong-flight-passengers-tr...

There is a similar classic (much less expensive) mistake between New York Penn Station and Newark Penn Station, which are consecutive stops on the Amtrak line NYC.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#17

Post by reaperducer »

RegnisGnaw wrote: post #4

I lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (eh?) for 23 years and we have similar stories. There is an island that is part of Nova Scotia called Cape Breton with a city named Sydney (so Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada) with population of ~30K. Every few years we get a tourist that confuses that with Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. They generally realize something is wrong when they switch planes in Halifax from a Jet (B…

New Mexico Magazine has a column every month where people tell their tales of people thinking that the U.S. state of New Mexico is in the nation of Mexico.

Things like insurance and credit card companies cancelling their accounts because they moved out of the country. Apparently it happens all the time.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#18

Post by zikzak »

RegnisGnaw wrote: post #4

I lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (eh?) for 23 years and we have similar stories. There is an island that is part of Nova Scotia called Cape Breton with a city named Sydney (so Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada) with population of ~30K. Every few years we get a tourist that confuses that with Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. They generally realize something is wrong when they switch planes in Halifax from a Jet (B…

Grew up there and never heard of this! Hilarious! :)

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#19

Post by reaperducer »

Spooky23 wrote: post #9

I used to work in a State Capitol, and would occasionally run into confused tourists in strange places, or very much lost. They were always Chinese or German and I’d run into them two or three times a year. One couple thought they were in Niagara Falls. Another somehow found themselves stuck in a secured employee parking garage. The strangest one was a person on a self guided tour who took a wrong turn and ended up w…

Back when I still worked in the office, one day I found a lost Chinese couple wandering around campus. The tourism app they got in China told them it was a shopping mall.

This was right after Siri became able to do verbal translations, so that's how we communicated. I was very surprised and impressed how well it worked.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#20

Post by w-m »

ilamont wrote: post #3

There was a story some years back about a guy who got on the wrong flight to Oakland ... he ended up in Auckland instead. https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/27/us/wrong-flight-passengers-tr...

In Germany we had this woman (unsuccessfully) suing a travel organization for booking her a ticket to Bordeaux, when she phoned them to book one to Porto: https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/bordeaux-statt-port...

Bit less fun because she didn’t actually board the plane. But nevertheless met with a lot of glee at the time, as the Saxon dialect is known for the soft consonants, and everybody likes to poke a little fun at it.

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