Hey Pandas, What Memorable Tour Experience Would You Like To Share Here? (Closed)

A few years ago I went on a cruise that stopped in Tallin, and despite my lower expectations (I didn't even know that Estonia existed beforehand) the tour we went on made it one of my favorite countries. The city was beautiful, and the tour guide had plenty of stories from being a tour guide in the USSR.

Not really a tour, but in the late 90s I took a riverboat down the Nile River in Egypt. So this story requires a bit of context, but in ancient Egypt the east bank of the Nile was the land of the living, and the west bank, was the land of the dead. Anyways, we're sailing down river, and it's the middle of the night, desert all around. The stars were like magic, you could see the band of the galaxy like a slash across the sky. Then this low fog rolls in of the west bank, and far in the distance, just above the night sounds, is a human voice. It's the call to the night prayer, so there must have been mosque somewhere off the river a ways, but the voice was very faint. The Muslim call to prayer is already this hauntingly melodic song, and the callers have the most beautiful voices. I'm not a religious man, and I don't believe in ghosts, but that night, coming from the west bank of the Nile, from behind that fog, it was like the dead were calling us.

Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica, one of the most biodiverse plots of land on the planet! Our expert guide found & helped us photograph sloths, anteaters, tapirs, scarlet macaws, snakes, brilliant blue morpho butterflies & more, between a boat ride, some hiking, the best fruit ever & a grand lunch - what a day!

took a tour of Marseille. not the most amazing place, but the city is so old. i learned a lot.

Ok so this didn’t happen to me but it happened to my gigi, so she was in Belize with her sister and it was Halloween well they went on a boat tour so they get to the middle of where ever they were at and it was getting dark it was a full moon to the tour guide was chucky he had red hair and everything we just found that kind of funny how all that lined up

Back in 2001 my family and I went on a tour of Alcatraz prison. They have us headphones and a walkman...shows how old I am...and it guided us through different parts of it. What was really cool was seeing the cells the three inmates actually escaped from.

Not exactly a tour but I was recently at a Birds of Prey live show in Gran Canaria, where the trainers show the bird to the audience and talk about it. Well, we were watching a demonstration on a seriously scary-a*s looking Marabou Stork (Google them, they're massive!), where the trainer would throw little bits of carrion for the stork, so it would ventures closer to where we were seated and we could absolve it running and so on. Well, it suddenly darted for a nearby bush, where it pulled out an unsuspecting lizard about the length of a hairbrush and proceeded to EAT IT ALIVE in front of everyone. It took a long time to kill it and some kids in the stands started crying. It was hilarious! Not for the lizard, of course, but still....

Vietnam. The people were so kind and friendly. Much better than I expected. Great food as well. I was amazed to see how hard many of them worked just to get by. Very humbling experience.

Totally absurd story about my Dad. I have a bunch of stories about my dad, everything they do is absurd, but this was crazy even for my dad. So, when I was 22, my texted me, and my siblings, 4 brothers and 3 sisters all adult, and said that they 'were contacted by a woman and turns out we have another sister.' Her name was Abby and she was, I think 34 yr. This wasn't surprising since my dad has a bunch of kids from different mothers. They were known to sleep around a bit. But something seemed off. My first clue was a picture my dad sent of her and she was clearly Puerto Rican. My dad is a very pale Irish ginger. But, genes can be surprise you. She could have favored the mother. So I dismissed it. I talked to Abby and asked her how she found "our" father. She told me that she had hired someone to find her father. Seems ok, until my siblings and I start speaking to each other about our new sister. Turns out the origin story about our new sister changed from person to person. We were told different things. Some stories were similar to another, but others were way off. She told one of my sisters that it was random, something like my dad and her mom ran into each other and that's how they found out. Another story, (completely ridiculous) was that she was a patient of my now ex-step mother, who was a therapist, and she asked my dad for a consult, (my dad isn't a therapist, they've studied but is in no way a doctor), but anyway, my dad was 'consulting' and through my ex step mother's description of her patient Abby, he figured out that she was their long lost daughter. The whole thing was fishy and we were all doubting if this woman was indeed our long list sibling. It's hard to tell what's the truth with my dad. They make up some bonkers s**t! Anyway, a few weeks later, my dad again texts all of us to say that "Abby was not our biological sister. But she was troubled, and they were helping her, and wanted to' rebirth' her into our family because we're good people." They actually used the word 'rebirth', whatever the f**k that means. This was definitely the strangest thing my father has done, but I wasn't exactly surprised by this. My brother and I went over to my dad's a couple of weeks later, where we found out that my dad and Abby were actually dating. The grossest part though was my dad a magnet on his fridge that Abby gave them that said "I love my daddy". 🤢

In 2021 I went to the 10th anniversary of Bikefest in Ocean City, Maryland. Upgraded my ticket to VIP and stood front and center to watch one of my favorite bands from the '80s perform one of my favorite songs, "What You Give", by TESLA and they did a stellar job. It was their 40th year as a band. Also saw Foghat, George Thorogood & the Destroyers, Brantly Gilbert, Brett Michaels, Great White and Kiiiiiiiiiiiiid Rock! Kix was supposed to play too, but a band member had Covid and couldn't perform. I may have missed one or two bands. The Ocean was fabulous!

The Smithsonian in 40 minutes!