Edit: lol yeah, I deserve this, I teed it up rather magnificently.
I got to dangle outside the highest window on the Chrysler building. I took a photo looking down that shows the eagles at the top, but can’t for the life of me find it :(
Taj mahal, Grand canyon, and those spinning things at the carnival that look like a UFO
Back in the late 90s, in the CA East Bay, one of my family’s neighbors was a big shot (director or something, can’t recall) at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility. My dad got this guy to give us a behind the scenes tour (including clean suit sections) of the NOVA laser complex, including the target chamber where they did inertial confinement fusion experiments (read: shot really fucking powerful lasers with support machinery the size of several contiguous Costcos smashed together at a tiny little gold cylinder with tritium suspended in it), and I got to stick my head in the inspection port.
It was super awesome, and one of the things I credit for making me go down the STEM track in the first place. Also, this was pre-9/11, and in the “peace dividend” era, and I’m fairly certain there’s precisely zero chance a random neighbor kid would be allowed backstage like that in such a sensitive (technically, as well as national security) area these days.
Also, I got to wave at the normie tour group from the other side of the tour glass while in part of the laser hall with our clean suits lol
That’s like beyond super duper cool!
I mean just to put on a clean suit would be rad, but to then go behind the scenes to places no one else goes!? FUCK YEAH!
Then holy crab on a crutch you saw normies behind glass? Just where those poor, unconnected plebes belong! 😬
I’d have been shocked if you mentioned, “…and then I worked at McDonald’s for three decades,” instead of the tour inspiring you to go STEM!
How Could It Not!?
Thanks for sharing. ❤️
Your mom!
But seriously, a pyramid at Giza. Pretty warm in there after 3500 years in the sun.
Hey, watch your shit ;)
I got to sit in one of the Batman Begins tumblers that was used for filming the movie(s). I used to work where I had easy access to one and early one morning when nobody was around I figured out how to open the door (hatch really over the driver seat) and climbed in. How cool it looked on the outside was unfortunately inversely proportional to how comfortable it was on the inside. Picture a NASCAR car and you’re most of the way there. Neat experience
Oh and also OP’s mom…
I used to sit in K.I.T.T when i was like 8. I was absolutely blown away. I still didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. We touched everything in there, even tho we weren’t allowed to. My friend still has the blurry polaroid. Thinking back, i don’t think it was even close to the production car, and just a car that looked similar with buttons glued on to the dash.
Angkor Wat is very cool, remarkably well preserved, beautiful and a huge area of ornately carved buildings and a palaces to walk around in.
I’ve wanted to go there ever since I played Illusion of Gaia.
you will not be disappointed, although carvings are clear enough that you can still read the polytheistic imagery that they wrote into the Palace walls.
and there’s one main Palace, but like the Palace area extends away further and there’s almost zero people who go to the ancillary buildings which also have really cool carvings and are basically pristine.
I sat back to back with this cute girl at a music festival (first date) strategically placed in the center of several gongs. The artists began gently rolling the gongs in succession in the middle of this electric forest and then they worked together to create rhythms and move them around us.
It is one my favorite memories of my wife :)
So you gonged her a bit later then…
That sounds like an absolutely rad first date. Congrats to you both!
Thank you! Electric Forest was an absolutely amazing first date. We fell in love and I proposed a year later at the same festival. We now have a beautiful family :)
A chip fab. Highest level clean room at the time. Amazing experience.
Probably not even personally most fascinating and doesn’t compare to other examples here, but I was recently in the atrium of the Atlanta Marriott Marquis and it’s amazing. Vast tall space with repeating brutalist architectural elements.
I can’t seem to upload pics here, check it out on google maps.
Love that kinda thing, but it gives me a bit of vertigo. Here’s a better link for pics.
I swam to the bottom of the first chute st Jacobs Well. The cenotes in Tulum Mexico were also pretty cool.
The cenotes are an excellent addition to the list. We did ix-kill(sp?) on the way to chichen itza on a gringo tour and it was amazing.
An ancient Buddhist temple in Kyoto. I don’t recall its name without looking it up… But it was much less crowded than most of the other temples and shrines in the area.
Kyoto’s dope. Tons of history, and great food!
Absolutely one of the most beautiful cities in the world, which unfortunately has led to a lot of over tourism. I hope they can get it handled better so that the city isn’t completely overrun by them/us.
I think just letting the Chinese tourists know that there are places in Japan that also have gorgeous, ancient shrines and temples and buildings might help to spread the tourism out. I don’t mean that as a dig against the Chinese; Kyoto is a very accessible and beautiful place to visit flying out of Beijing or Shanghai, so naturally Chinese tourists congregate there more than people from other places do. Go to one of the bigger shrines or temples in the area, and almost everybody around you will be Chinese. Got to send some to Nara! So close to Kyoto and so rich in history.
Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul.
Built in 537 by the late Romans and still standing even though it’s in a relatively active earthquake zone, it’s amazing it’s been around for 1500 years without collapsing. The central dome is so huge and so high, it’s amazing to think how they built it back then without modern machinery or technology.
IIRC it did collapse, though very early on in its life. Like, barely after it was built. Got hit by earthquakes. But it was repaired, obviously.
So the answer is Maintenance.
I bet some bridges in America could do with some of that.
For sure. Canada too. Actually, the whole continent could use a tune-up and some anti-corruption updates.
And the site of the easiest to plainly identify earliest example of graffiti. Some Viking wrote on it long ago “Half-Dan was here”
The pyramid of Khafre in Giza. It’s the one with still some of the cladding remaining on top. The second largest one of the three.
SS Thistlegorm was really neat. It is a British ship that was sunk by the Germans in WW2. It lays off the coast of Egypt, and is now a place where you can go scuba dive inside of. It still has all kinds of cars, trucks, and motorcycles inside of.
Hot air balloon ride wit ma SO,
Safest flight time was in the early AM so we got an amazing sunrise view out of it!
