We had family visit from the UK many years ago. They said after they visited Niagara Falls, they wanted to “pop over” to Prince Edward Island to see Anne of Green Gables. That is an 18h drive if you don’t even stop to pee. They finally realized how big Canada really is when somebody showed them a map of England superimposed on a map of Canada.
I mean, it is also about how much time you have in the vacation and how much it feels like a “once in a lifetime” thing, where you take more hardships to check all the “highlights”. Like, when we spend 2 weeks in Australia we drove crazy distances, because I don’t know whether I will ever be there again. Same for US tourists in Europe, even in this thread “oh, we did Lissabon, London, Paris, Prague and Zagreb”. No European would ever cram that into 4 weeks. But if you have the opportunity ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
When backpacking in China we went from Shanghai to the border of Tibet. Crazy distances again, but we wanted to cover snow capped mountains and Shanghai, solely because of “well, while we’re at it”. I mean, it felt like we already travelled half-way back home, only to come back to Shanghai to take the return trip.
Anyway, TL;DR: I don’t think it’s underestimating the size, but a FOMO on a “once in a lifetime” vacation.
We had family visit from the UK many years ago. They said after they visited Niagara Falls, they wanted to “pop over” to Prince Edward Island to see Anne of Green Gables. That is an 18h drive if you don’t even stop to pee. They finally realized how big Canada really is when somebody showed them a map of England superimposed on a map of Canada.
I mean, it is also about how much time you have in the vacation and how much it feels like a “once in a lifetime” thing, where you take more hardships to check all the “highlights”. Like, when we spend 2 weeks in Australia we drove crazy distances, because I don’t know whether I will ever be there again. Same for US tourists in Europe, even in this thread “oh, we did Lissabon, London, Paris, Prague and Zagreb”. No European would ever cram that into 4 weeks. But if you have the opportunity ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
When backpacking in China we went from Shanghai to the border of Tibet. Crazy distances again, but we wanted to cover snow capped mountains and Shanghai, solely because of “well, while we’re at it”. I mean, it felt like we already travelled half-way back home, only to come back to Shanghai to take the return trip.
Anyway, TL;DR: I don’t think it’s underestimating the size, but a FOMO on a “once in a lifetime” vacation.