I used to live in York, it gets a LOT of tourists, and the whole place is geared to catering for them, so at the height of summer you are constantly left with a sense of being in your own York theme park.
I could probably furnish you with many stories about stupid tourists in York but here are two:

How many times you are asked by Americans where the 'Cathedral' is in a day is astonishing, as THE MINSTER IS REALLY BIG and nothing in the centre of York obscures it and you can almost always see it. If you're feeling nice, you point up, if you're not, you give them gibberish instructions that will take them in a circle, THEN tell them to look up...

French hoardes of school children are easy to spot as they all dress in REALLY bright colours, and when I was working in a shop they would almost always fancy themselves as clever thieves (it was a joke shop, the stink bombs were very popular!) except I can speak and understand a fair amount of french! They would ALWAYS assume no one in England would understand, hence much hilarity as they loudly decided what not to pay for and which pocket it was going into, and I corrected them even more loudly within earshot of their adult guardians. Oh how the eyes would widen!

Finally a story about Belgians some on here may already have heard:

I used to work abroad and live in Belgium, Brussels, where french is the language and the snobby 'we all know how you Eeeenglish are, and you don't have anything to teach us' attitude has made it through with the language.
We would work as teams doing stocktaking in shops all over Europe, and 6 months or so into this job we got the first posting in England (London, Woolworths).

I tried to forewarn all the smokers and drinkers (which was basically all of them!) to stock up on the cheap fags and booze available as we waited to set off on the ferry for the weeks stay. They were all completely derisive of me as they knew we English were sadly obsessed with such things, you had only to see them at Calais with their shopping trolleys piled high with cigarettes and cheap beer, I should not worry, they had far more restraint and cultural breeding than us stupid English, they have no need to be so uncouth!

On the first night there, we had earlier already had much horror all round over trying to find somewhere cutured and nice to eat that didn't charge you your mortgage for the privelige. We had just finished a LONG shift and were back in the bar of the flea-pit pub/hotel we were staying in (the same money would have got us a 4 star hotel with full service in central Europe!).
One of the smokers had just smoked his last ciggy and immediately went over to the machine on the wall. I watched with quiet but smug amusement as falteringly he put more and more coins into the machine until it finally relinquished it's under-stocked over-priced packet of stubby dry cancer sticks. I have never heard or seen such infectious horror and indignant 'This cannot BE!!!' type rants, the whole table in slow uproar as the true horror of their predicament sank in!! You should have seen his face when he lit it!

Then, having first sat for about 10 minutes waiting to be served and unable to stoop to asking me how I managed to get mine, the first of them went and purchased a beer. Basically the same reaction all over again!

Finally, just as they had all managed to find something they individually liked (spirits mainly), the bar closed...

They were mentally all back on that ferry by the end of that first night!!
( ..wil, Fri 8 Jul 2005, 12:05, Reply)