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Submarines are pretty cool. I toured a WWII-era submarine and there are still lots of manual valves and controls. It’s impressive that they worked so well.

I got to sit in one of the Batman Begins tumblers that was used for filming the movie(s). I used to work where I had easy access to one and early one morning when nobody was around I figured out how to open the door (hatch really over the driver seat) and climbed in. How cool it looked on the outside was unfortunately inversely proportional to how comfortable it was on the inside. Picture a NASCAR car and you’re most of the way there. Neat experience

Oh and also OP’s mom…

There was a period where I regularly got to go inside Boeing’s Everett factory for work (I didn’t work for Boeing though). For those who don’t know, it’s one of the largest buildings in the world, built in the 60s to manufacture 747s. Now they build all kinds of aircraft there.

“Big” is an understatement. Even “cavernous” falls short. It’s easy for your brain to forget you’re in an indoor space until you look up and see a roof over your head. It’s like a miniature city in there. It’s got its own road network, fire department, cafeterias, and I heard it can even have its own weather.

My route to and from the job site every day took me through alleyways and around sites where workers were actively putting airplanes together. I got to watch an entire fuselage be moved from one side of the factory to the other by the overhead cranes. But my favorite part of the whole place were the underground tunnels that you could use to get around. You could still see old civil defense fallout shelter signs in the stairwells, and even though I wasn’t supposed to take pictures in the facility I did anyway:

Back in the late 90s, in the CA East Bay, one of my family’s neighbors was a big shot (director or something, can’t recall) at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (at the time, it was still called the NOVA laser, I think). My dad got this guy to give us a behind the scenes tour (including clean suit sections) of the complex, including the target chamber where they did inertial confinement fusion experiments (read: shot really fucking powerful lasers with support machinery the size of several contiguous Costcos smashed together at a tiny little gold cylinder with tritium suspended in it), and I got to stick my head in the inspection port.

It was super awesome, and one of the things I credit for making me go down the STEM track in the first place. Also, this was pre-9/11, and in the “peace dividend” era, and I’m fairly certain there’s precisely zero chance a random neighbor kid would be allowed backstage like that in such a sensitive (technically, as well as national security) area these days.

Also, I got to wave at the normie tour group from the other side of the tour glass while in part of the laser hall with our clean suits lol

The Cologne Cathedral.

It took 500 years to build it.

That is so many generations. Imagine you are just the 4. architect. Your great grandfather has started it, but you did not know this man. Somehow the plans have been passed down to you, but of course there were changes… Somebody after you is going to finish it. You do not know how it’s going to look in the end, because there will be more changes later. If they will be able to finish it at all…

The Blue Grotto in Capri, or maybe some of the less famous grottos on the Mediterranean Coast. There is something so terrifying about being surrounded by rock formations, I’m not typically a claustrophobic person, but felt a visceral fear of being under that much rock with waves moving in and out of the cave. And yet the grotto is gorgeous because of the reflection of the light. The endless dark of the cave is lit by the most brilliant blue of the water.

I like to imagine the person who first discovers something like that, having to overcome the fear of the unknown and be rewarded with the best mother nature has to offer.

SS Thistlegorm was really neat. It is a British ship that was sunk by the Germans in WW2. It lays off the coast of Egypt, and is now a place where you can go scuba dive inside of. It still has all kinds of cars, trucks, and motorcycles inside of.

West Kennet Long Barrow is a Neolithic barrow over 5,500 years old. It’s part of the numerous neolithic structures in Wiltshire, UK (which includes the frankly far less impressive but more famous Stonehenge).

Going inside it is a very odd feeling. You can see and touch ancient work marks put there by people who are so remote to us we know very little about them. I’ve visited numerous ancient world heritage sites and its unique (to me) in how close you feel to those people.

I had access to the real life equivalent of the Dr. Doofenshmirtz tower.

Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul.

Built in 537 by the late Romans and still standing even though it’s in a relatively active earthquake zone, it’s amazing it’s been around for 1500 years without collapsing. The central dome is so huge and so high, it’s amazing to think how they built it back then without modern machinery or technology.

A chip fab. Highest level clean room at the time. Amazing experience.

A neutron reactor (Institut Laue-Langevin). The mix between 80’s concrete bunker like structure or yellow steel bars and uber high tech mirrors that reflect neutrons is amazing, as is the crudeness of the experiments that achieve the best matter probing on earth. It’s straight out of retro-futuristic sci-fi, and at the same time higher tech than many modern sci-fi will imagine in some technical areas.

Borobudur Temple

There are many questionable practices in museum work, and of course the Lourve might be the one of the worst when it comes to that. But I have never been to place with sooooo many well preserved sculptures with super thorough explanations. I LOVE sculpture, especially the ones made with less than forgivable media for making mistakes. The Three Graces is absolutely captivating.