Tourists (Question about a UK town)

[gulplum]

All this talk of living in towns which are tourist attractions makes 
me want to tell my favourite "tourist" anecdote (which is 100% 
entirely true). 

As some around here might know, I lived in Paris for a chunk of my 
life. Don't ask me why, but I seemed to be a magnet for English-
speaking tourists asking directions (Which I was always perfectly 
happy to provide, BTW). If a tourist had a crowd of pedestrians to 
choose from, they'd invariably choose *me*. Is it possible to look 
like an English speaker?

Anyway, I was walking up the Champs Elysees one day, and a couple of 
Americans in their early twenties asked me for directions to Madame 
Tussaud's. 

I replied (ever helpful, and displaying my smartarse 
credentials), "Go to that Metro station. Take the Metro to Charles De 
Gaulle Airport, then a plane to London Heathrow, then the Picadilly 
line Tube to Green Park. Change to a Jubilee Line train and get off 
at Baker Street. It's next door to the station, but there are lots of 
exits and if you leave by the wrong one, there are directions." 

They looked at me, a bit baffled. "Eh?"

"It's in London, in England."

"But she's French!"

"Actually, she was Swiss. But her museum is in London. If you want 
the Paris waxworks museum, the Musee Grevin ( 
http://www.grevin.com/english/index.htm), go down that road [point] 
and turn right at the end, but Madame Tussaud's is in London. It's 
also much better, and the Grevin exhibits are mainly French people 
you probably wouldn't recognise."

They walked away, still not believing me, and I saw them stop someone 
else, who clearly didn't have a clue what they were asking about...
(Madame Tussauds means as much to French people as the Musee Grevin 
does to the British)

OK, I *am* a smartarse, and that was a typical example of "more 
information than required" but I do expect tourists to know what 
*country* they're in... :-)