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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

#51

Post by jonnybgood »

reaperducer wrote: post #17
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.

It is for this reason New Mexico license plates have “New Mexico, USA” on them. For those not aware, every state simply puts the name of the state on their license plate but New Mexico adds ‘USA’ to theirs. The only state that I believe does this.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#53

Post by khazhoux »

mkl wrote: post #42
83457 wrote: post #22

Not sure how someone could make that mistake. In SF the water is on left and Maine the water is on right.

It's on the left in both, and on the right in both. It depends which way you're facing, and the sort of person making this mistake seems unlikely to know which way north is.

Clearly, a thing can't be both to your left and right side simultaneously -- that's a physical impossibility. In fact, to underscore this point, the Tony Bennet song "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" was written to remind people that water in SF is to their left.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#55

Post by mikewarot »

sanj wrote: post #23

I witnessed a poor chap at the ticket counter at Dulles airport desperately trying to convince someone to flag him a taxi to drive him to Dallas to make his meeting.

My wife and I learned the hard way that Dulles is NOT in Washington DC, we took the bus out to the Air and Space Museum, which we assumed was in DC... the $75 dollar taxi ride that took 1 1/2 hours to show up to pick us up was no fun.

Fun Bonus Fact: We drove to DC, so we could have just driven there, but thought a cheap Bus round trip was more fun as we could both see the sights, and not stress about traffic.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#57

Post by selimthegrim »

leephillips wrote: post #35
fakedang wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so insurance and CC companies are the ones making the mistake?

Not too surprising. When I worked at the US Naval Research Laboratory someone submitted the paperwork for travel orders to attend a physics meeting in New Mexico, and it came back refused because he didn’t allow the required lead time for approval of foreign travel.

Do they think foreign countries have a ZIP+4 AND a +1 country code?

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#58

Post by [deleted] »

eCa wrote: post #33
davidw wrote: post #21

Had a friend come visit us in Padova who wanted to see Venice, but ended up getting off in Mestre, which is kind of a newer, more industrial, and not particularly nice place. I still feel bad about not being able to take the day and actually show him around Venice myself.

To be fair, it's a ten minute train ride from Mestre to Venice, so slightly easier to correct than Maine->SF. But I don't understand why the station is sometimes(always?) called Venezia Mestre. Anyone going to Mestre on purpose knows where they are going, and no one going to Venice wants to get off at Mestre.

[deleted]

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#60

Post by reaperducer »

fakedang wrote: post #25
reaperducer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wait, so insurance and CC companies are the ones making the mistake?

John Preston: Just recently, my auto insurance was canceled when I gave them notice that I was moving back to New Mexico. After inquiring why, they replied, “We don’t cover Mexico.”

https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/one-of-ou...

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