Mistakes were made...

The date format in Europe is DDMMYY. I know this. I learned this years ago. Yet, a couple years ago while in Trapani, Sicily, we could not figure out why the machine at the train station wouldn't sell us tickets for the following day. We tried a few places, and finally found a train employee and right when I started to explain the problem, I realized I was using MMDDYY. It happened to be something like May 4th or I think, or I would like to think, I wouldn't have made such an error.

Jules - that date thing gives me nightmares! I do love the 24 hour clock because I don’t have to worry about the a.m./p.m., but I quadruple check the date when making reservations.

I will always carry a UK converter if I have to transit through the UK. Fortunately, they were for sale at LHR, but I already had a perfectly good selection at home.

Trusting “oh, there will be taxis when you arrive.” Two very long walks in Bayeux and Cherbourg… more people than taxis.

The date format in Europe is DDMMYY

This is not universal across Europe. The date format in Sweden is YYYY-MM-DD (or sometimes YY-MM-DD). I wish all countries used this format as it makes it easy to sort things in chronological order.

Puerto Vallarta is in our mountain time zone, not Pacific time zone. Make a note of this if you want to join the free tour at nine in the morning starting at the tourist office.

Thanks for sharing your post-humorous stories, Mike! You have a way with words!

Learn the difference between AM and PM.

I use the 24 hour time stamp format on my cell phone 24/7/365, even though I only "need" it that way when I travel abroad.

My own contributions

• Arrive in a verysmall Italian mountain town — I mean teeny-tiny, postage-stamp size — on Sunday afternoon and just try to stock your apartment for breakfast in the land of Sunday closures. Just try. A single restaurant and bar open. At least we had dinner. The bakery opened early Monday. Coffee was a problem until later.
• The locals can help you get on the right train. They can lead you to the track but cannot make you get on the right train. Sorrento? No. We went to the other side of Mt Vesuvius.
• The charming 6th floor Paris apartment with rooftop views, served by an elevator: sign me up! No mention that the elevator was for one person at a time plus one suitcase. Arriving “home” for 7 days we took turns on who had to walk up 6 flights and who rode.

Happy to say at least these were several years ago and we are more careful about Sunday transfers, train signage, and elevator details.

When pre booking sites, even if Chrome has translated from French (for example) to English, not everything may be translated. So you may not find United States in your drop down, but there may be an Etats Unis...

I love the honesty! Mistakes make for fun, depending on the specifics;). Not usually fun at the moment, but a good laugh later.

We got on the right train for Rothenburg, but the wrong direction and did not realize until we got to the next stop, and of course had to backtrack quite a ways. We had no idea until the conductor came around to see our tickets. He was very generous and did not make us pay for new tickets.

In Venice, my husband tried to order a double espresso, but the barista thought he said 8 instead of 2, so made him 8. I came out of the restroom and he was frantically asking me for more money as he was paying for the 8.

In Paris, trying to take the train to Caen. We were just being idiots and could not figure it out, so went back to the ticket desk and the poor lady didn't want to deal with us and gave us our money back. Our hotel receptionist then booked a private driver for us for the next day. Sometimes throwing money at the situation works, lol.

We almost took the train in Sorrento to the other side of Vesuvius too. We were the only people standing outside that train and thought that to be weird. A bent over arthritic lady walking by kept shaking her head and pointing her cane. Sure enough, hiding beside the wrong train was the train we needed to get to Pompeii.
The wrong way bus ride in London was actually quite interesting. Three older teenagers, sitting behind us, discussed in detail their previous night’s roll in the sack.

Paying for a checked bag but forgot to check it and then didn’t go back around thru security to check the bag (I had 5 hours between flights, so could have gone back) at Frankfurt.

Miscalculated the distance to the train station from town in Umbria and ended up walking on the highway, onto a bridge overpass, into a car dealership for directions. The train “station” was just beyond the car dealership but when I arrived, NO ONE WAS THERE to confirm which direction to go. Believe me, this was a panic moment. Luckily, this was during daylight hours. Also, I was traveling solo and without a SMART smartphone. Finally, someone else came to catch the train and I confirmed my direction of travel. Whew!

In Paris, Forgot to say Bonjour upon entering shop and got kind of a stink eye. Learned that lesson fast.

In Athens we took the bus to Daphni once. After about an hour, it turned out that we had gone to Dáphni, whereas we had actually wanted to go to Daphní.

First trip to Italy years ago, stopped at a cheese stall in the Florence food market. Asked for Una Etto (?) as instructed in the RS guidebook for 100g as a good picnic portion for the 2 of us. Very odd look on the face of the lady. I thought-wow is my accent that bad?- it's not a difficult word. Then understood a problem when she handed me an entire half wheel of Asiago. I still don't know what she thought I said. Carried it in my backpack and we managed to eat it over about 4 days. Just thankful it wasn't a stinky cheese :) Now I always mime the size I think I am asking for!

I went to NYC with a colleague for a conference back around 1996.
No breakfast at the hotel, so we went along the street to a busy coffee shop, everyone shouting and talking in distinctive NY accents.
When it was my turn to order I asked the young guy for what I wanted in my ( I thought) clear Canadian voice.
He looked at me blankly, then shouted “next”to the person behind me.
I guess he couldn’t understand me!

“No soup (or bagels) for you!”

Just filled out some Hungarian government forms
The date format was YYYY/MM/DD

There is no rhyme or reason to it. They should do it like we do.

Make sure to just be patient when your line is moving slowly. Whatever you do, don’t step over the rope barrier between lines. This can result in a trip that will snap the ligament in your midfoot in a car free zone in Switzerland that necessitates being carried to a local doctor in a wagon. Oh, and two surgeries at home and months of not walking. And a lifetime of foot problems. Just be patient and wait for your line to move. Lesson learned.

I think Beth wins, but:

In 2015, on approximately my eleventh trip to Europe--but the first in about 20 years--I booked my first hotel stay to begin the night of the overnight flight. I did catch it just in time to make an adjustment before I'd have had to pay for the unnecessary night.

Back in the 1980s I boarded at local train in Luxembourg on Track 1 rather than Track 1A. Some minutes after departure, a rail-system worker came through the train and made me understand that I was on an out-of-service train. I was let off at a disused rail yard and walked (miles) back to the city--fortunately without any luggage, because it was intended to be a day trip. That was really lucky, because in those days, only really expensive luggage had wheels.

In 2019 I decided I wanted to see Rocamadour. There's no bus service to the town, but there was a stop some indeterminate number of miles away. The weather was OK, so I decided the walk would do me good. I hadn't considered the two-lane highway might have no shoulder, and there was a nearly constant stream of traffic whizzing past--far more than I had anticipated. I spent as much time hopping into the weeds, trying not to sprain an ankle, as walking along the edge of the road. As I got close to the town, I came across the beer festival that was generating most of the traffic. And I hate beer.

Grabbed the wrong carryon off the plane upon arrival in Milan, the bag was identical to mine, sort of. Ok, I was exhausted after a 10 hour international flight and 3 hour layover in Frankfurt. Didn’t notice the difference in bags til arriving in Varenna and opening it. Now it was very obviously not mine! We spent the first day of our first time in Italy traveling by train back to Milan to drop off the nice man’s bag and then back to the airport to go thru all kinds of security and very serious questioning to retrieve my bag. Learned very quickly that the trains in Italy run on the “dependo” schedule (no matter what it says in the RS Guidebook which earned an amusing smile from a train station agent) so hours spent in the Milan train station and a slice of pizza from a small vendor was my introduction to Italy. Do I now double check that I have the right carryon? Oh, yes……every time!

Don't arrive on Whitsunday in a small German town. If you do, don't believe that all the groceries stores will be closed and drive to neighboring towns in search of food to feed a family of 4 including 2 teenagers because "we rented an apartment with a kitchen so we could cook." Don't realize the locals were correct and return to a gas station "AM/PM" type set-up and clean them out of a liter of milk, 6 eggs, a frozen pizza. Don't return the next day to the same gas station hoping for more food (did I mention Whitsunday Monday is a holiday in Germany too). Do end up eating (and drinking) at the restaurants with the locals. 😂

Take your insulated travel mug for coffee while walking around Venice, the barista knows exactly what to do with it!

If you’re a British person riding the El in Chicago in a window seat, and you are coming up for your stop and need to get past the person sitting next to you, it turns out that the British method* doesn’t work.

My ears rang for a while with the aggression of the guy who said: “if you’d asked me I woulda moved for you.” I had asked, but in a very specific British way.

*The British method: touch your bag, shift slightly in your seat, clear your throat quietly. The person should take this as a clue that you’re about to get off and they need to move. If they don’t, just say “sorry” or “excuse me” in a quiet indoors British manner and they will move.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking there is only one train station in Rome that begins with a T with trains that go to Florence, then try to make it on time only to get on a metro that branches into 2 directions and you catch the wrong one. Then don’t arrive at the correct station to an unmanned ticket office to buy a new ticket to Florence where there are only machines to buy a new ticket that don’t take cash - only to realize you left your credit card at home.

Arrive at the airport in Juneau, Alaska at nearly midnight. It is cold and dark and you are exhausted from your eight hour flight. Nat Geo assured you there would be plenty of taxis to get you the umpty zillion miles to your hotel. Not. A lot of the taxi drivers decided to take the night off. There is a mad scramble of arriving passengers to get a ride as taxis/Ubers pull up to the airport. Call a taxi company only to be told “We’ll get there when we get there.” Now you are two of a handful of passengers standing outside the airport faced with the prospect of a walking through a wooded area (did I mention it’s cold and dark) where there are grizzly bears and moose. When a taxi arrives, you beat out other people to grab the taxi and go.

Don’t rent a great apartment in Prague from friend of friend, be so excited to be there you drop your bags right away and head out without properly orienting yourself except to note to selves “oh there’s a bookstore here on the corner, we’ll find this street again easily”. Leave the guy’s card with his phone number on it in the apartment. Make sure to do all this pre-Smartphone and GPS days. Definitely do not note the exact NAME of the street. Sightsee, then stop at store to buy 4 bags of provisions and head back to apartment where you suddenly realize you’re in the university district and there is a bookstore on every corner. Absolutely do not then realize every door on every street with a corner bookstore has wooden doors that look exactly the same. Try your key in all of them for fun! Then finally after 3 streets and about 50 doors find the right one only to realize you have no clue how to turn on the lights for the common stairwell. Don’t do this at all, trust me.

Hard to summarize the following. Maybe 'don't make the mistake of using rentals with a sole dodgy point of entry/exit...' ?
Location Burgundy:

'Worst trouble faced during this trip: on the second morning, we tried to re-enter our rented house on the edge of Meursault, but the massive old garage door (the sole entry) jammed and would not budge despite all our efforts and many bad words. See 'what to do when all yer stuff including passports, money, sex toys and everything, is locked inside. And the owners live in another country. And you are the last couple on Planet Earth who has not yet purchased that new thing called a 'cellphone'. See also 'soft city folk on the verge of tears'.

After a fruitless and stressful half-hour of us tryna' get in, who just happened to drive by on his tractor? (sound of trumpets) Why, our neighbour Pascal, a 5th-generation winemaker with purple palms rough as sandpaper. He and his assistant, Eric, used their manly Burgundian know-how and tools to eventually unjam the jam. Emotionally spent, I looked on like a lost little boy. My wife, whose beauty was probably the only reason that Pascal stopped in the first place ('French men and traditional sources of attraction'), smiled from off to the side.'

Btw, our landlord was the BBC female producer for gardening guru Monty Don.
I am done. the end

The last 2 posts about issues with rentals, particularly the absentee owner in case of a problem, have led us to no longer do rentals, particularly in Europe. We book hotels exclusively, and whenever possible, only through their booking engines, no 3rd party sites for us anymore after multiple issues we had with booking.com, like hotels having no record of the reservation - the second time that happened to us, I quit using that platform.

Add to that the issues with scams, fraudulent listings, etc., it should give anyone pause before booking an apartment...gift article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/travel/booking-scam-rentals.html?unlocked_article_code=1.YU0.nwck.cD10zKojkm6G&smid=url-share

That article is about an internet scam that has also occured with people booking hotels with Booking.com so has nothing to do with apartments other than they, as well as hotels had their guests victimized.

Here is an article about what to look for specifically with AirBnb, but again, like the other post, some of the things mentioned can happen when booking a hotel with Booking.com or in dealing direct with a hotel.

https://www.aura.com/learn/airbnb-scams#:~:text=That%20was%20the%20question%20data,account%20hacks%2C%20and%20fake%20reviews.

I cant find an article that says any percentage of Airbnb bookings that were fraudulent. I would suspect that its in the hundreds of thousands ……. Because there are 600 million bookings a year and 1% fraud would be 6 million.

We all get to choose where we cover our risk, and staying away from short term rentals might just provide the sense of comfort that makes for a better trip. All good.

This was way too funny. You certainly made lemonade out of lemons. This was like "The Out of Towner's" meet "Trains,Planes and Automobiles."

Plan - and then take - a drive in France, over a long distance, on the first of July.

Nimes to Barcelona ... 8 hours. All of France was heading to Spain.