Traveling with Friends Mistakes

You can always tell when the season is winding down and the time between questions is picking up.

No, I don't tell stories about my friends.

Ahh, Nigel is spot on.

A friend and I recently met up with someone we have both known for years. We all went to the Orangerie together and my friend and I noticed the other person walking thru the museum with her. shoes. off. Yes. In Paris. In a major museum. Barefoot. Her feet hurt and she thought the marble would feel nice and cool on her toes. Didn't even want to think about what kind of stuff the thousands of people who had walked thru the museum that day had brought in on the bottoms of their shoes. Yikes. Plus usually it is chilly enough in Idaho that we wear shoes all year.

We won't even discuss when she actually snapped her fingers and hollered out Garcon to get a waiter's attention. Fortunately the waiter completely ignored her. Not sure where she saw that except perhaps in an old movie?

So, the take away lesson on this is even though you might have known someone for years, you don't actually know them until you travel with them.

Pam is so correct it's not even funny. An ex-friend and I were already on the outs by the time we took our ill-starred European trip several years ago in which our luggage was lost and she got food poisoning. Then we started arguing, and by the end of the trip we weren't speaking at all. We sat next to each other on the flight from England to Philly for 7 hours and didn't talk. Yeah, that was pretty bad.

On the other hand, I have a good friend in Germany who I've traveled with all over the U.S. and in several European countries for the past 7 years. We have a lot of fun together but we've also had a lot of arguments. I'm looking forward to visiting him in Germany again next year for a couple weeks.

In my case, traveling with a compatible companion requires a lot of elements to line up just right. We must get along very well before even factoring in travel. Our personalities must dovetail so well that we have the ability to talk through disagreements and to forgive each other shortly after issues spring up, so that we can enjoy the rest of the trip. Our personality quirks cannot annoy the other person beyond a certain level, because these become magnified on a trip.

jkc,

no problems here since i havent made the mistake of travel traveling with friends.

happy trails.

The mistake was sharing a room. Different sleep habits, noise levels, shower schedules, leaving the light on to read, turning on/off the TV, coming in late, leaving early... sadly too much to ask from a travel partner. On the surface the friendship was great but apparently couldn't survive a European vacation.

@Pam,

"We won't even discuss when she actually snapped her fingers and hollered out Garcon to get a waiter's attention."

I can't believe that somebody actually did that! That would probably be considered the epitome of gauche and rude behaviour in France.

@jkc,

I don't have any "travelling with friends" stories to share. However, reading some of these examples definitely reinforces the reasons why I prefer to travel solo most of the time, and pay for the single supplement on tours.

@Nigel, I did not really mean this to be tabloid worthy, just fun anecdotes and recollections, okay, along with some horror stories i suppose.

Only travelled with a friend in 1976 and when we landed in Luxembourg and he saw so many women walking arm in arm he was a bit perplexed, wondering if Europe had an over abundance of lesbians. Also, he insisted that there was no way he and I were going to use the side by side toilets at the same time. Finally, he insisted on wearing a big cowboy hat. We caught a night train from Luxembourg to Florence that was absolutely jam packed so we had to split up to find seats in separate compartments. I rode with an Italian family of 5. We manage to communicate using french and they asked if I was traveling alone. I said no, I had a friend and one of them smiled and used their hands to indicate a big hat. I chuckled and said, yes that is the one. He and I lasted about 10 days together. I stayed in Italy on a farm and he headed off to the Olympics in Innsbruck. All fond memories. He and I are still the best of friends in our 60s and communicate almost daily via email. I still give him a hard time about it.

Using "garcon" to attract a waiter!! Sacre Bleu!!

notice how it is always the other person - the "friend". Doesn't it take two to tango?

This thread really strikes me as troll-ish.

This thread really strikes me as troll-ish.

Then do what you do best Nigel complain the the webmaster.

Any hoo here's my story....someone I know and his girlfriend both lost their jobs during the great recession, received very generous severance packages and decided to take a year off and ride bicycles from Boston all the way down to the "bottom" of South America. A year later they accomplished their goal, I picked them up at the airport, took them out to dinner, heard a lot of enjoyable stories about their travels, appeared very loving to one another, a week later later they broke up. I guess it wasn't a love connection;)

Did a bunch of long-time contributors just get accused of being "trolls"?

Did a bunch of long-time contributors just find they have a lot of time on their hands?

Oh, I am sure people have stories about traveling with me as well. I wore my Altra brand athletic shoes everywhere in Europe including Cafe Constant and 2 concerts at St. Chapelle but at least I kept them on my feet. The only place I felt weird was Hostaria Borromei in Milan at lunch when the rest of the dining room was filled with folks in very elegant work dress. I just tucked my feet under my chair. The waiter offered me the same level of service as everyone else.

And yes, I am fortunate that I do have plenty of time on my hands. I just returned from a fairly long vacation in Europe and am enjoying reliving it daily on the forum.

Lots of stories, but not telling any.

Only one friend travel regret--I've only traveled with her in the US. While we are still friends, I won't travel with her more than 2-3 days. The reason is we see travel differently--that's the key to travel, is finding someone who has a lot of the same basic philosophies. For example:
1. She only wants to stay at major brand-name, big amenity hotels; I love B&Bs, and also have no problem with the less expensive chains.
2. I love to try new restaurants and ask the locals for the best dive. She is very non-adventurous and pretty much sticks to Applebees and McDs.

3. She needs every thing planned out (museum 9-11, lunch 11:30-12:30, etc.) or gets anxious. While I like planning some things on vacation; I'm just as likely to drive past some sign for a show or museum and stopping right then and going in.

Although like others posted, you don't often know these things until you actually travel with the person. But if you can see eye to eye on general concepts, you should get along fine.

OK--one story; she refused to eat at this family-owned Italian restaurant in this cute Victorian house in Wisconsin because they did not have spaghetti on the menu (the only Italian food she'll eat). Even though I pointed out she could just have the fettucini al fredo (spell?) with marinara sauce instead (same difference), it was no go. We ate at Burger King.

Maybe we should invent a checklist/questionaire for both travel partners to fill out to determine compatibility before traveling. Questions like accommodations, late nights or early risers, etc .. I learned the hard way that there are many people I just should not travel with.

A dear friend forever cured me of wanting to travel with her when we took a short trip to a large US city. It immediately became clear that she was on the prowl and we had to hit every bar, where she struck up conversations with all manner of men. I warned her that none of them were welcome in our hotel room, though fortunately none of them were interested anyway. I wasn't drinking because it felt like I was chaperoning an aging debutante and clearly one of us needed to remain sober. At one point she simply wandered off--left me with her jacket and purse and after about 1/2 hour I became alarmed and set out searching. Ended up walking alone back to the hotel through a rather creepily deserted downtown well past midnight (funny, I feel perfectly fine out walking alone in most European cities, hardly at all in the US). About an hour later the hotel manager calls to say she's in his office, would I please collect her? She's a consummate drama queen, and sure enough, she's curled up on his couch in the fetal position, sucking her thumb and crying. I berated her all the way up to the room and for quite some time after that--what if something had happened to her in her inebriated state?! This was a few years ago, and she thinks it's just hilarious to refer to this episode as the time she took a nap on a bus stop bench. I just change the subject.

Where to start, where to start?
I took a previously good friend to Florida for a few days at my parents' (free, empty) condo. Some of the "highlights":
1. She made me promise not to tell her husband or son that she had gone into the water at the beach because "they were afraid there were sharks".
2. Whatever we were doing had to stop at 11:30AM so that she could take a phone call from her sister-in-law in Hawaii, who was on her way to work and needed company on her drive.
3. She had to buy two beers for herself every day to drink with her sleeping pill (!!?). She could not buy more than two at a time, and got mad when I would not go into the store with her, because she "didn't want the clerk to think they were both for her" - even though they were.
4. Her phone rang constantly. Her husband called at every break, lunch, after work, and bedtime. So did her grown, college graduate son. If she missed a call from them she was frantic until she could speak to them because she thought they would be frantic.

And there is so much more. Needless to say, we will never travel together again.

Was 20 and out on the town with 2 girlfriends. At about 1:00AM, myself and one of my friends decided to call it a night and both went back to the room to go to sleep while the other friend decided she wanted to stay and continue to dance. Two hours later I was awoken in our dark hotel room only to find a strange man lifting up the bedspread looking at me and another man doing the same thing to my sleeping friend on the other side of the room. I instantly kicked the first man in the nuts as hard as I could and scrambled out of bed flipping on the lights and screaming a slew of profanities that would have woken the dead. The man who had not been kicked by me quickly grabbed his buddy and pulled him out of the room into the hallway. Our drunken friend had met these 2 men in the club and decided it would be a great idea to bring them back to our room to meet her 2 girlfriends. Needless to say, we collectively ripped our friend a new one the next morning after she had sobered up.

To address Nigel's concern that "it's always the friend's fault" when 2 people travel together and things go wrong, I'll freely admit on another trip I brought a friend to Europe and put her on a way too aggressive itinerary for her first trip overseas. Fortunately for us, we were close enough that she was able to speak up when she couldn't deal with it anymore a few days into the trip. She cried and I felt awful I had done that to her, but quickly realized that for every 2-3 hours of cultural pursuits or outdoor activities like hiking, I needed to give her about 2-3 hours of just simple things like people watching on a park bench, sitting in a cafe or a pub or window shopping. We got along very well the rest of the trip and the next time we agreed to travel together (to Canada), we had a really great time from the get go because I knew exactly what kind of trip she needed. Even my significant other has a hugely different view from mine as to what constitutes a great trip - for him it's going somewhere out in the mountains or the country and involves a lot of time parked in an Adirondack chair drinking a beer and listening to crickets, or napping on a hammock. Luckily for me, he also realizes that there is a certain amount of give and take between 2 people traveling together so for every trip where I have to slow down and listen to the birds chirping, he let's me go off and do my museum/theater/shopping thing in bustling cities or lazing on the beach (he hates hot weather and sand). Some people go into traveling together with the idea that they need to be joined at the hip 24/7 which only sets them up for a lot of bitter feelings towards their travel partners. Laying out one's expectations in advance of traveling together, and giving each other some freedom to pursue one's own interests, can certainly help avoid a lot of "traveling with friends mistakes".

There was the weekend I spent in Strasbourg with my high school best friend's room mate. I stayed in her room, like me she was studying abroad. I spent Friday on my own touring and dinner was okay, but oh, my Saturday Night. We went to a wein stube and then to a disco where she met an young Arabic man--he might have been Algerian. I was a bit clueless at age 19. Well the evening advanced and I really didn't know how to get back to her place. At one point we were in Citroen driving around Strasbourg I was in the back seat with another Arab/Algerian who was playing the guitar and my friend's friend was in the front seat. Soon we were at their apartment dancing. I just kept on saying, non, non and managed to survive the evening. I did get an essay out of the experience for my expository writing class.

But in truth, I think that you can get along with a lot of people if you have rules and if you discuss expectations.

Pam

I've travelled to Europe with just one friend. She was a "newbie" so I introduced her to the Paris Metro right off and supplied her with a one-week pass (Carte Orange at the time). After one day I took her to the Eiffel Tower and turned her loose. After all, I had already visited all the places she needed to see. So she took off on foot, wore herself out walking, and conquered Paris on her own. We spent very little time together after that. I had told her to bring her ATM card, but she brought Travelers' Checks (oh, no!). Anyway, she did not make that my problem. We had no problems with money, as we kept current on shared expenses as we went along.

My mistake was to think I would enjoy the experience more. Also, we should have had at least a couple of serious discussions before leaving. I never did find out why she wouldn't bring an ATM card. She was mum on the subject. It's possible she didn't have one, but that hardly seems possible. Things went very smoothly despite lax pre-planning.

We are still friends, but probably won't travel together again.

@jck-If the '76 Winter Olympic Games had been held in Denver & Colorado as originally planned, your friend wouldn't have been in Austria, and his cowboy hat would've fit right in at the time.

No mistakes traveling just with friends, but once a friend brought another friend, and conflict ensued. So traveling with a friend of a friend can be problematic, and I had to leave the 2 of them early, to finish their trip & continued conflict without me.

Define trollish? Perhaps Nigel or anyone else who thinks this is a silly end of season conversation can just stay out of it. I thought it was a funny and entertaining little forum of memories and happily didnt see myself in any of the posts, - yet.....here's my story, I have a life long friend and we have traveled together for years,starting with a rather scary stay in Las Vegas in 1975 which I won't go into incase my kids read this, ha,ha,. But we have had wonderful trips together even though we are different,we love to be together having fun when we can . One year we planned a trip to Italy and she said her sister wanted to come, after Hearing about all our other fun times. Well, after a week, we both wanted to choke her!!!! She couldn't/wouldn't walk, didn't like this,didn't like that, talked non-stop about her grown adult children and their problems and more , but the worst was after 10 days she started to cry that she missed her husband!!! Miss your husband???? We're in Italy FGS, who does that ??? My moral is a good friend is a wonderful travel partner but 3 is a crowd!!!

Judy, my experience is the opposite - I travel with a couple for two weeks every summer, It's almost heaven. But I've known her for 35 years and her hubby is the best soul ever. Also, with three people, I feel like opting out of an activity produces less guilt. But it depends on the people involved. Personality and character go on steroids when traveling together.

I don't have run-ins but I have had frustrations. They're the same traveling with friends, family, or coworkers:
1. Poeple who won't help plan. I don't like people looking to me to plan everything, be their guide and interpreter, then complain about the choices (sights, food, getting up early, being locked into a particular train, etc.).
2. People who won't plan independent time. It's outrageously optimistic to think you won't get tired of spending all day, evening, entertainment and meals with someone outside your immediate family. Too many times people dismiss the idea of including independent times into the itinerary (at least afternoons/meals apart from the group), then get sick and tired of the company while on the road.
3. People who won't pack light. I pack light and go. I don't need bags to slow me down. Unfortunately, their is zero advantage to packing light if you travel with someone who won't. You have to wait for them to collect their luggage, pay for a cab when a bus/metro would be fine, wait for them to pack in the morning and lug all their crap out of their room.
4. People who are amazed that I'm perfectly happy traveling alone and think they're doing me a favor by tagging along. :-)

Most of my funny stuff is traveling with my mom.

Once in a small pub in Wales, she ordered ham and leeks. It came as more of a soup than plate of food. She looked at it and said, "This is crap" loud enough for half the pub to hear - because it wasn't what she expected. I was really embarrassed (and the dish was fine).

My mom won't pack light, even after returning from a trip and requiring shoulder surgery because of lugging around so much stuff (her makeup case is about the size of my carry on, she adds a too-large carry on and a full size case).

In Florence, I was pretty horrified by an American (not in my party) who loudly proclaimed how much he didn't like America - as if that somehow endeared him to the locals within earshot.

@Brad-sounds like you mom is quite an intreped traveler - and so are you for enduring the things you mentioned. So your mom has taken a leek in a pub . . .

Brad, you read my mind.