Stupid Travel Mistakes

And what happened to the brothers?

This fall my husband and I were at some botanical gardens. We did not realize that there was no cell reception there, and I wandered off to go look at something. I texted him to tell him where I was, but of course that didn't go through. Oops. I went back to where we were and he was gone. I asked a handful of people if they had seen them, so we had a mini search party going, lol. He was doing the same thing. It was probably close to an hour until we finally found each other. Note to self, don't wander off again;)

Our "biggest" and "most awful & stupid" travel mistake was the "24 hour clock translation on too little sleep and too much nonchalance/cockiness" many years ago. Ie - reading, in our heads, 1500 as FIVE PM for a flight, and missing the 1 hour cutoff for the international flight by a couple minutes (arriving at 2:01pm for the flight thinking we had 3 hrs). Air France pulled the rope across the line about five passengers ahead of us in line, and as they were overbooked across all three flights that afternoon, it meant we were in a huge pickle scrambling for another flight to Paris that day (took one the next day our of Newark).

It was our mistake for sure, and it cost us time and money, BUT we made friends with the German guy behind us who had made the mistake of taking "advantage" of his long layover in the DC area to try to get out and see some things, and thus also was too late checking in. He couldn't fly out for another day or two, and we let him use our home until he was on his way, and I think that also gave him some respite from a crappy situation. He (and his family) is now a great friend, so we made lemonade from lemons.

Mistaking 11:00pm for 11:00am when I was buying plane tix, thus completely ending the trip.

My wife still hasn't let me forget about that.

-- Mike Beebe

I have made so many stupid travel mistakes that I do not have the time to write about all of them.

Feeling good that I have company.

But one of my most expensive stupid travel mistakes was when I was booking my last trip, in September.

I had to rebook my flight on American. I went to what I thought was aa.com but called up a fraudster website. When I called the contact number, I was calling a crook. Very long story short, I got bilked out of $759 biut was later able to recover $450.

This call was made was about 3:30 a.m. I am an insomniac and had not yet gone to sleep.

Among the many lessons learned: be far more cautious when doing anything on line when sleep deprived.

And do not do anything under stress. Take a deep breath.

And I was on forum during a very long ordeal. Forum helped me greatly or at least tried to help me.

Caused by a family member that didn't appreciate how flight check-in/ cut off times worked.

This happened about 30 years ago. My parents would go to Florida for about a month each winter - I would schedule a week's vacation during that time and go visit and stay with them.

My father was driving me to the airport for my return flight. He decided to take his time and use side routes. The airport was not that far and the drive was taking a long time. I was getting anxious that I wouldn't get there in time to check-in and explained my worry. When we arrived at the airport and I got to the check-in desk, it was 30 minutes before the flight was supposed to leave. Of course I had just missed the 30 minutes check-in cut off time and they were selling stand-by seats. There were no other flights that day and I had to work the next day- that it was a night shift was the only good thing about this. We went back to the apartment. I had to call my workplace and explain there was "problem" with my flight and that I might not get back in time for my shift. The next day we went back to the airport early enough and had to wait for stand by seats to come up or not. Fortunately, I was able to get a stand-by seat for about $100 and arrived home in time for my shift with only a few hours to spare.

This locker incident is a great example of why Rick suggests the first stop be to the grandparents' house to drop the kids off.

My children often think their biggest travel mistake is traveling with their dad who can linger in a museum when there is good gelato to be had....

Happy travels!

Probably a good thing the lockers were not like the ones in Cologne, where you insert your bag, and off it goes down into the bowels of the station via an automated storage system.

What horrible boys. She could have suffocated. It makes you wonder what terrible things they did to her at home.

Landed in Milan at what was for us the middle of the night, with an hour layover for a connection to Rome. Desperately in need of a caffiene hit I plodded bleary-eyed to the concession and said to the young barrista, "per favore signorina, vorrei uno latte". "Milk?" she asked in heavily-accented English, "Si," I replied. "Hot milk?" she asked. "Ovviamente!" I replied, irritated that she insisted on answering my perfect Italian with English, and as if who'd make a latte with cold milk?! And so she presented my half-asleep caffiene-craving self with a glass of warm milk. Realising I meant to order uno caffè latte I thanked her politely and walked away, carying my pride along with the quintessential drink for puttting oneself to sleep.

Biggest mistake that I ever made was going to the wrong airport in Paris.

We lived in Saudi Arabia and planned to meet relatives from the States in Rome and then tour Italy, Germany and France for 3 weeks.
We ended the trip in Paris and had a flight home on PanAm Airlines (this was in 1983), I assumed that PanAm was in CDG Airport.
WRONG, we go there and were told the airline operated out of Orly, a smaller airport on the opposite side of Paris.

I called the airline with the help of a TWA rep and the flight we were booked on we could not make the flight, but the airline had a flight on a charter flight that left in time for us to get to Orly. All worked out in the end.

It was my first trip to Europe and to Venice for the RS V-Fl-Rome tour.

I scheduled my trip to arrive in the late afternoon in Oct. I didn't realize how fast the light goes then.

I watched the sun finishing going down as the Water Bus made it way from the airport to my stop. Very picturesque as the light rapidly left. When I got off the boat at my stop it was almost fully dark and I was faced with trying to navigate the alleys and bridges in the dark trying to read the little paper map I'd printed off on where my hotel was (the one next to the Opera House).

First was to leave the lighted Vaparetto stop and into this very dark alley (yes that was the way on the map). I'd never do something like that in NYC but I had heard violent crime was very low for Venice so I gave it a try. Spoiler: no problem.

Two very dark alleys and a square and two bridges => there it was!

And what happened to the brothers?

i have no idea (he didn't say) but if it were my kids, they would have been in big trouble. Although coming from a family of 7 kids, I remember some of the stuff we used to do and it wasn't far off from this. 🙄

My biggest mistake was stopping in a lovely town square to admire the view, taking off my crossbody purse to remove my coat, then strolling off without my purse. When I returned ten minutes later, it was gone. Cue visit to police station and consulate (because, yes, all my ID including passport was in my purse) and frantically cancelling my credit cards. We made it home a day later than planned, with a new purple emergency passport. Amazingly, three weeks later the police notified us that the purse and some contents had been turned in. I was able to coordinate a Fedex pickup at the consulate, and it eventually arrived home ready for me to wash and use again.

Buying an airline ticket from St John’s, Newfoundland to Seattle instead of St John, New Brunswick to Seattle. I discovered the error the night before the flight so I was able to “fix it” for just $300 out of pocket. Still feel quite sheepish over that one. My taxi driver informed me that I was not alone in this error and he frequently gave rides to people at the airport that would give him an address in Newfoundland and seem quite surprised when he would tell them he couldn’t do it.

Most heart-dropping moment....

1981 or so....in a former life....traveled to London with the person who is now my ex-husband, lol and his 2 kids who were about 6 and 8. We'd gone to Harrods for afternoon tea and were heading to the elevator to leave. The 6-year old got ahead of us slightly and hopped onto the crowded elevator where upon the door closed before we could get on. OMG. I stayed there with the older kiddo, his Dad tried to sprint down the stairs which then were fairly hard to find to try and catch him at the bottom and not knowing if he'd gotten off on another floor. I still remember the kiddo's very shocked face as the elevator closed and we were not with him. He did stay on the elevator to the ground floor and his Dad caught up with him down there so all was well. But yikes.

Fun and interesting thread, Mardee!!

Well, I haven’t locked any kids in lockers (although tempted), but I am feeling distinctly stupid - having made 2 mistakes on my upcoming trip to England. First I booked one night in a hotel (night before flight), paid, and THEN saw I had booked it for the following night instead of 2 months from now. Even I can’t get to Europe that fast. I had entered my dates correctly, but didn’t notice than when I changed screens to choose which room, the date reset. (I figured this out by doing 2 more trial reservations.) I immediately email the hotel and they very kindly changed my reservation (which now fell into the noncancelleable date range because of being within 24 hours before checkin) to the date I had really wanted.

Then, as if I hadn’t learned my lesson, I booked train tickets for 3 people on the wrong dates. Again, I had entered my dates correctly but there were no trains at all available for the route I wanted on the day I wanted. So the system moved my dates for both legs backwards by a day. And I didn’t see that till the following day. Side note: Kudos to South Western for helping me figure this out (they didn’t know why there were no trains), finding a route that DID work (neither National Rail nor the South Western app could), and refunding my initial purchase mistake.

Note to self: please triple check dates before hitting Buy.

I make the same stupid travel mistake every time I travel; Pack too many clothes.

For 20+ trips to Europe, the cost of this one incident was minor - what I told myself when given the cost of the fine: On the recent Christmas Market trip, I accidentally purchased train tickets for the wrong date. I may have mixed it up looking at just the day instead of the day/month since it was supposed to be for the 12th. A bit of serendipity - our seats assigned were missing because it was the gap where the luggage was stored. The conductor outside the train car told me to just take the two seats at the end of the car since they were empty. But, when they scanned our QR codes on the train, we had to pay the fine. Fortunately, the nicer conductor looked at the tickets and told me we could be refunded for the ticket price since the date was in the future. Being able to reach Paris at the time we intended was worth the extra cost vs. if we had realized the mistake as we waited for the train.

I recently bought train tickets for Spain and triple checked the dates! ; )

On one trip, I apparently had rented the car for upon arrival, but in my head I thought we were picking it up the next morning. So we paid for a private transfer into town, and in the morning we walked over to the car rental place and thank goodness, they were holding our vehicle for us! We needed the large vehicle as there were 5 of us, and they were so nice about it. Whew!

And what happened to the brothers?

They are still in the lockers without the auto open feature.?

Last year, my flight from Salt Lake City to London was cancelled after several hours delay. I was fortunate to get on a flight to Amsterdam which was leaving an hour later. After several hours in Amsterdam, I would take a short flight to London. When I got to Amsterdam, I went to check on whether I could possibly get an earlier flight to London. No dice. But I had put my Civita day pack down on a shelf in front of the desk of the woman who was checking flights for me. Then I walked off without it. (Of course, this was the middle of the night for me after a somewhat stressful trip.) It was perhaps an hour before I noticed it was missing, went back, and it was not there. Went to Lost and Found - nothing. I tried using "Find My" and it showed the pack was way down on one of the concourses and I figured the person who had it was about to get on a plane, at which point I gave up.

There was a card inside the pack with my contact information, and before too long I received an email from China from the person who had my pack. He wanted to try to get it back to me. (Why he didn't leave it at Lost and Found in the airport, I don't know.) The only thing of real value in the pack was a 6-year-old mini iPad. After some back-and-forth, I decided the cost of him shipping it to me and me possibly having to pay duty on it wasn't worth it and I told him to just keep it. So I now have a Chinese friend and a new iPad mini, having paid my stupid tax (not the first time in 25 years!).

Oh, I’ve made plenty of mistakes and usually shrug it off but this one had me so flustered, especially since just a 1/2 hour earlier, my daughter was diverted to another island in Spain because her flight couldn’t land on Madeira due to wind. She was supposed to meet up with her 18 yo daughter on Madeira. I was a very stressed grandma, when this happened………

Lisbon Oriente: Waiting for the Flix Bus to Evora, bus arrives 5 minutes before scheduled departure, I place my bag in the hold, queue up for driver to read ticket QR code, everyone else is placing bags in hold, driver reads my QR code and says wrong bus, I’m too early., next bus. I quickly scramble to the hold to retrieve my bag and it was buried under other bags, so I was unable to get to it. Pleading with driver to let me on the bus. It was going to the same place after all. He spoke to supervisor and let me on. Fortunately, there was a seat available on this packed bus to Evora. Yikes! Lesson learned in this fiasco was always have your ticket/QR code scanned by the driver first before loading your bag. A situation made more difficult when traveling solo.

I bought a Capri boat trip through my Sorrento hotel concierge. All I had to do was walk to the nearby park for the shuttle pickup to the boat dock. Easy enough, right?

I got there early to ensure a good connection. After a while, an unmarked van pulls up. I checked the van passenger list and I saw my last name at the top. I got in and off we go to the dock.

When I try to check in, they don't have my name of the reservation list. Wrong boat and wrong dock! I called the charter company and they refused to pick me up by van or boat. The dock was a good distance and up & down from the dock that I was at. I decided to buy a ticket from the charter company for the dock that I was at. I will deal with a refund later.

Then the original charter company calls and said they can pick me up. Too late, I already have a new ticket.

I had a great time on and around Capri. Unfortunately it cost me double, since the original charter company refused to give me a refund. My credit card company supported the charter company. My hotel concierge was no help either.

I figured out that I made a mistake when i looked at the van passenger list. I saw my last name on the top of the list. Coincidentally, the park name matched my last name. The list showed that as the van stop. The van was not the correct van either.

Another minor, but funny mistake. When we were in Venice, we went into a cafe. My husband wanted an espresso and I needed the bathroom, so took the kids with me. When I came out, my husband quietly asked me for more cash. I looked up and saw 8 espresso's lined up for him. He had tried to speak Italian and wanted a double, so said alto, but the barista thighs he said Otto. My husband was paying the man when the manager came by, saw what was transpiring, and smacked his barista upside the head, lol.

Oh my gosh, these are all so funny! I've read every single one and I'm just laughing (and so glad that some of them didn't happen to me!).

Of course, some of you may remember a big mistake from my TR in 2024 when I took a bus from Helmsley to York in England. The bus schedule said the last return bus to Helmsley left York at 4 p.m. However, I failed to read the fine print that said the 4 pm bus only ran when school is out. So when I made my way to the station around 3:45, I received the sad news that there was no 4 pm bus because school was in that day. So I was stuck in York without a way to get back to my car in Helmsley, which was an hour away.

Luckily, a passerby saw my face and asked me if something was wrong. I poured out my saga, and she immediately got on her phone, told me to head down the road to the train station, catch a train to Thirsk, and from there get a taxi to Helmsley. So that's what I did. It worked, and I finally made my way back to my rental cottage around 6 p.m.

Biggest stupid mistake: staying two hours away from the Geneva airport with an early morning flight and two teenagers. OF COURSE I couldn’t get them moving fast enough in the morning, and then I couldn’t figure out how to return the leased car to the French side of the airport in the dark. After crossing the French-Swiss border half a dozen times looking for the turnoff, I gave up, dumped the car in the Swiss-side Hertz lot and dashed for the flight. Missed the cutoff, naturally, though not by much. I had several hours to kill before the Aeroplan service opened in Montreal, so I retrieved the car, returned it appropriately, then spent hours on the phone with customer service rebooking for the next day.

The very nice Aeroplan customer service agent helped me scrape all our assorted frequent flyer and Amex points together and got us all home the next day in business class with about 50 points to spare. Best service ever.

I have never since stayed more than 20 minutes from an airport for morning flights. Or kept the rental car till morning.

Mardee--Your bus story reminds me of one our son had. He was studying in Copenhagen and went out one night. He did not have a jacket with him, had been drinking, and got on the last bus back to the nearby town where he was living. He passed out cold and the bus driver kicked him off at the last stop, an hour away. He slept on a park bench until the first bus of the morning came by. Yes, my son the bum;)

Nelly, I'm going to save your post and show that to all these people that want to stay four to five hours away from the airport on the day of their flight. They just have no clue. I won't do it. I am too risk-averse, and I will almost always stay as close to the airport as I can get. I might stay in town if it's a place where it's easy to get to the airport by public transportation, and less than an hour away but more than that, and I'm parking myself at an airport hotel.

mikliz, that's hysterical! That sounds exactly like what a college kid (especially a guy) would do, lol!

I had a trio of near disasters on our last trip.
1. On a local flight from Dublin to London. We are getting up to leave the plane and my husband says, "Is that your passport on the floor?" It was.
2. Got a taxi to the train station in Kingham. We get out, grab our luggage, lug it up the stairs over the tracks and down the other side. We sit on a bench to wait for the train. Suddenly, I notice that my glasses are missing. I have my sunglasses on and I tend to hook my other glasses on the front of my shirt. Quickly, trying to think where they might be... I stay with the luggage, husband runs back up and over the tracks to where we were dropped off. I had forgotten that when I have my glass hooked to my shirt and take my seatbelt off, they tend to go flying. He found them on the ground right where we were dropped off. Not even run over.
3. Taking the Heathrow Express from Paddington. We have done it many times. We get on the train, stick our luggage in the rack and I plug in my phone which is almost dead. Then my husband, all of a sudden decided we are on the wrong train. I don't know why I listened to him but we jumped up gathered our stuff and got off the train. Then my brain came back online and I said "no, this is the right train". We turn around to get back on. The doors were trying to close but we go on and there was my phone sitting there waiting for me.

I had a trio of near disasters on our last trip...........

I would be VERY VERY careful going forward.

It looks like you used up a lot of 'good luck'