Unlike, I suspect, most remaining readers of The Independent newspaper, I believe it’s to the credit of the people of the United States of America that one of the most common questions they ask of tour guides as they are shown around the Grand Canyon is: “How did we make it?” If the Martians are going to bet on the nationality of their first visitors from Earth then all the information they need is there.
Tim Almond responds robustly to tourists who, according to the Telegraph, have been complaining about other great attractions:
“Even Egypt’s great pyramids, one of the seven wonders of the world, made the list of underwhelming and overrated attractions, because of the oppressive heat and the persistent hawkers.”
Oppressive heat? You’re in Egypt, fool!
Spinal Tap were, incidentally, right about Stonehenge. In the early 1980s, a badly bungled attempt to clean the stones in the hope of restoring them to their original glory resulted in their instead being shrunk to a fraction of their previous size. It’s because of this that visitors are no longer allowed to get too close to the circle, where they might touch the fibreglass shells encasing the not-so-megaliths and discover the truth.
Must have been the same kind of fibreglass shells that bass player got stuck in.
It’s not just because you’re in Egypt. You can walk round the streets of Cairo in reasonable comfort moving in and out of shade but even in squares the heat is tolerable. However, the Pyramids are a bit of a heat trap.