Funniest signs you have seen while traveling??
 

Hey everyone! Saw this question on another travel website, and it had some HILARIOUS responses... <BR> <BR>What are the most interesting and/or amusing signs (street signs, signs in businesses,etc)you have seen while traveling? <BR> <BR>I'll start: A sign near a wall in Skipton, North Yorkshire, England that reads "Dog loo".

In Germany 'AUS FAHRT' <BR>

On a low wall along the Seine in Paris: <BR>Defense de pissoir. <BR>I don't read French, but I think I understood.

Well it wasn't in Europe but in Puerto Vallarta,Mexico. There was a fire extinguisher next to the elevators (Sheraton Bougainvilla's Hotel) and the placard next too it said "Do Not Use in Case of Fire". We assumed they meant do not use the elevators in case of fire, but we cracked up everytime we saw it. That same hotel passed out a newsletter on Easter Sunday on one of our visitors advising guests that "The Eastern Bunny" would be arriving to entertain the childern. Then there was a sign on a bridge near my home in Ca. that said "do not jump off the bridge" .....

J.M., <BR>In the courtyard of a close (narrow street) where we stayed in Edinburgh there were numerous round signs banded to streetlamps/posts that read "£100 fine for soiling the green verges". They were nice enameled white with red circle/slash depicting a dog doing his business - even neat little wavy lines representing steam eminating from his deposit. Across the top was the official seal of "City of Edinburgh". (Liked it so much that we went out at midnight one raw night with a screwdriver and snatched one which is now proudly affixed to the fence in my friend's dog run -- forgive us city council). What struck us as funny is that the warnings seem to be directed at dogs, not dog owners. (My dog never carries anything larger than a 50 anyway).

The funniest sign I ever saw must be taken in the context of its presentation. A friend of mine had walked up to the lodge on top of Mount Le Conte in the Smokies where he had a room for the night. Details vary, but somehow my friend had food in his pockets which he laid out on the bed. A bear sniffed the food and came in the cabin window. So my friend and the bear were doing a square dance of some description in the room. <BR>(No injuries.) Later another friend gave our bear-dancing a friend a sign that said "Do Not Feed The Bears." <BR>

Paul - LMAO, man! Great stuff. Anyone else?

On the road to our North Georgia mountain house is a sign that always makes me grin: "Four Mile Church. Two miles."

Somewhere in England, saw a sign in front of some parking places...."Please Park Prettily"...never forgot it.

While driving along behind a German bus on a road in Denmark, great clouds of black diesel smoke came from its tailpipe. Our teenage daughters burst into laughter because just above this source of fumes was the sign: "Turistfahrten." Sure were.

<BR>Oh yeah, thought of another one-- locally. I was playing tour operator for my sisters from back East and chauffeuring them about SF. We were heading back from Fisherman's Wharf area to downtown on one of the super-steep hills (Hyde or Jones I think) where the incline almost makes your tires bark as you're climbing. At the crest of the hill you reach a stop sign - with the nose/hood of the car looking at nothing but blue sky; then you zip across the intersection and begin the death-drop. Just at the beginning of the decline is one of those yellow signs saying "Hill", <BR>and shows a car on a steep diagonal line. On the lower portion of that sign somebody (a tourist I presume) had very neatly printed with a broad, black permanent marker: "No shit, Sherlock!" <BR>We had a good chuckle - maybe you had to be there.

I've always liked the signs here in NYC that say "Don't even Think of Parking Here." So New York. In DC, I found it amusing to see, on the sides of all federal office buildings, signs near basement-level doors indicating nuclear fallout shelters. (Gee, why didn't schools get those?) Also in DC, the "Kiss and Ride" signs made me laugh (where commuters get dropped off), as did one reading "Giant People's Parking" (parking lot for Giant Food and People's Drug).

On the train somewhere from London to the west, on a building "Fertilizer Depot" so, the s**t stops here I sez I sez. <BR> <BR>In Victoria Station "STOP! before driving over the sleeping policeman" <BR> <BR>On the side of a bus in Brussels (as previously mentioned) "Turistfart" <BR> <BR>The pictograph on the grounds of Versailles that forbade playing Twister (it actually was a 'no picnicking' sign, we finally surmised).

Well, two signs, actually.... As we were walking the winding streets of Siena, we saw at one corner two signs: the first, <BR> <BR>Duomo ---&gt;, then just below it.... <BR>&lt;--- Duomo. <BR> <BR>As I was taking a picture, a local man followed the gaze of my lens and starting laughing with us. Only in Italy? Nah, I think there are overly officious bureaucrats everywhere. (probably some redundance in that phrase) <BR>

We were in a bus climbing up Haleaka Volcano on Maui, about 9,000 feet up, corkscrewing towards the summit. On a right hand bend, when the left hand side showed a dizzying prospect of cliff straight down to the coast, some helpful park ranger with a sense of humour had placed a sign reading "No Left Turn". No kidding!

More cute than funny really .. In Ireland a sign in a remote, mountainous spot that said "Leprechaun crossing".

Read in a magazine long ago about somewhere rural in the USA: <BR> <BR>ONE LANE BRIDGE -- Take Turns

There was a local billboard in our city -- advertising butter. At the bottom it said: "the lima bean's only hope". <BR> <BR>

What really got our attention in Germany was the speed limit signs for tanks!!!

There once was (may still be) a mortuary in New Jersey owned, apparently by Mr. Gorney and another Mr. Gorney. It had a huge neon sign on its roof just about eye level with those traveling by on the NJ Turnpike. Late one night, I was going home from college on a chartered bus with many other college-mates, when I heard a chuckle begin at the front of the bus rippling back to me, and I saw everyone looking out to their right at something along the road. <BR> <BR>One "e" in the neon was unlit and the resulting sign said "Gory Gorney Mortuary."

(sorry for the misreport -- obviously the "n" was missing, too.)

In Inverness, Scotland - lots of graffiti that said, "ENGLISH GO HOME!"

I like one I saw in the midwest (US) that said SLOW DIP. Who you callin a dip?!

I liked the sign with a mortuary's name in Deadwood, South Dakota (below the cemetery with the graves of Wild Bill Hickok and Annie Oakley): Chaput. <BR> <BR>(Say it like the "ch" in "loch.") <BR>

Oops, that's Calamity Jane buried next to Wild Bill. Annie's still in Ohio.

This is probably more sad then funny. Several of the roads leading into Boston (eastbound) have signs warning: "CAUTION! - Solar Glare in AM". I know the general level of education in this country has decreased over the years, but I didn't think it was so bad that we needed signs telling us that the sun rises in the morning!

1) On Spadina Street in Toronto (one of the cities Chinatowns) a funeral parlour by the name of "Wing On". <BR> <BR>2) Walking past the lake in Central Park in mid-August - "Warning. Thin Ice" <BR> <BR>3) At fortress in Loche "Children are kindly requested to keep quiet" <BR> <BR>

All of the public busses in Locarno CH <BR>have the acronym for the local transport <BR>agency on their sides---FART.

None from Europe come to mind, but I do remember a couple from Asia. <BR> <BR>First, a store in Phuket was named "Pay All That You Can". <BR> <BR>At the Forbidden City in Beijing, there was a sign posted that read "Please keep the ancient wall free from graffiti."

Sign at the entrance of a cemetary in Woonsocket, RI "Entrance Only" <BR>Once you go in you can't come back.

Thought of another one, Europe this time. <BR> <BR>When it was still the USSR, we drove in from Helsinki to Leningrad. The actual border consisted of a simple shack with a soldier and a gun and a hand-cranked field phone. He checked passports and visas, then wrote down the car plate number, made a phone call, and waived you on. The road then went through several km of woods until one emerged into a vast clearing with a big concrete building surrounded by parked cars, buses, and trucks, all being inspected (read dismantled) and the occupants and luggage being inspected (read dismantled) by po-faced soldiers, while other AK-47-toting soldiers looked on, including those in the concrete guard towers, one of which (with visible guns and searchlights) must have been 100 feet high. <BR> <BR>The sign on the premises? "Welcome Centre."

In Germany, no words, just a warning sign with a big BULLFROG on it. WE cried everytime we passed that sign. Took a picture of the sign and framed it. Our German friends said, "You think that is funny??? When a lot of toads cross the road they can cause an accident because they are very slippery" Oh and we always thought it was because there were giant man-eating bullfrogs in that area!!!

In Prague at our hotel, there was a sticker on the underside of the toilet lid. It was one of those big cicles w/ the slash thru it. It showed a hand holding a handle, like a fixed handle on a suitcase and an arrow pointing down. We could nver quite figure out what they were telling us NOT to do! <BR> <BR>

As the manufacturer-painted logo on a motorbike in Taipei, where (at least in 1995) it seemed that every motorbike- and t-shirt manufacturer had decided that English phrases made his product distinctive and cool: <BR> <BR>"We reach for the sky. Neither does civilization." <BR> <BR>I have a photo, of course. <BR>

A sign along the interstate going to Mackinac, Michigan that read "Tourist and elk information."

This is not a sign but the previous post made me think of the funniest "translation" error I've ever heard. My husband is a musician and he was in a club somewhere in Scandinavia and the host got up on stage and was trying to pump up the crowd by yelling "We are really rocking now, haven't we?" The crowd went wild.

These are great, you guys! I thought of another one in my area of England. <BR> <BR>I saw the photo in a local magazine. It was a picture of a street that goes through a local village. At the time the photo was taken, there were two speed limit signs on the road within a few feet of one another, each posting a different speed limit. <BR> <BR>And the name of the village? "Bedlam"!!

In England there are signs for 'Plant Crossing'. Never did see any plants crossing the road but it did conjure up some fanciful ideas. I appreciate that a plant is a factory, but here we use 'truck crossing' not 'factory crossing'.A common sign for blind corners was something like 'Oncoming vehicles in middle of road'. I appreciated the warning but thought what would I do about it, there is a stone wall 2 inches from my left mirror.

We were in London in March and while wandering on the east side, came across a sign that said "Wholesalers of Children" -- we suspect that the rest of the sign (probably something about children's clothing) had been ripped down.

In Jerusalem, at the entrance to the Garden of Gethsemane, there is a wordless sign telling visitors about many types of prohibited activities. It's the usual stuff: no dogs, no picnicking, no camping, and some not so usual stuff: no nudity, no automatic weapons, etc. What makes it funny is that it's all visual. <BR> <BR>The other signs I loved in Paris were the warnings in the Metro about ways you could be hurt. One, showed a man in mid-air falling on to the tracks, quite dramatically, and another showed a man convulsing violently as he was electrocuted. What made them funny was obviously not the message, but the passionate way it was conveyed!