Vacation mishaps

Parents Forum Parent Cafe
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I was scrolling through YouTube last night, I’ve been looking for river cruise videos.

I happened to land on one that was so unintentionally hilarious, I thought I would create a topic based on it.

The couple missed their connection waited 12 hours for the next flight, missed the boat. Thankfully they were able to Uber to the boats location. Trip started out on the wrong foot. The video was a litany of wrongs, there is footage of a scenic cruise, showing all these industrial sites. The room was small. The food was so so. The hotel at the end was not in the center of town. The author shows her husband at the end of the film, he’s scrolling through his phone and she asks if he ever wants to go on a river cruise again and he’s like, never.

It really made me laugh because we’ve all been on that vacation! You have these great hopes and the vacation just goes sideways. Or it’s a trip that’s just not for you.

Make me laugh about your vacation horror story! Pictures appreciated if you have them!

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Not quite a vacation, as I ran a marathon. However, it was supposed to also be a fun 4th bday trip for younger S. My sister and family came and we were all going to have this great weekend.

Literally, as soon as we started down the road, younger S started coughing. Seemed just like a cold. So I’m trying not to let it get to me. 4.5 hours later, I am exhausted. Marathons always stress me out. Packet pick-up was a nightmare. H is in a foul mood. We get to a hotel. The hotel does not look like the pictures at all. It looks like a run down dump. There is some national convention there and it takes two HOURS to check in. Finally we eat dinner and are all miserable and try to go to bed.

When younger S had colds, he threw up. I’m not new to this, so I’m getting up with him every hour to run him to the bathroom. H is snoring and older S is grinding his teeth. I am in tears. Then drunk people start running up and down the hall banging on doors. H gets up and goes out and almost gets into a fight. We try to go back to bed. The firm alarm goes off at 3am. We are on the 14th floor. Just no.

The race began at 6am, so I had to leave at 4:30 anyway. My sister drove me so she could watch and cheer. Somehow I ran a PR. I was too miserable to notice how bad I felt. I think I won my AG and was somewhere around 5-8th overall. Lol

Rest of the trip wasn’t much better. Younger S had to keep throwing up and several times in the car I had to catch it in my hands and pitch it out the window. We high tailed it back home to the doctor. The cold was the FLU! It was the year of the flu shot shortage so none of us could get it. The doctor prescribed tamiflu, but it was likely too late for him at that point, so I gave it to older S. Meanwhile in my post marathon state, I caught it and it developed into pneumonia. I thought I was going to die. The clinic was so booked it took 4 hours and there were no chairs left. I laid on the floor in a heap. H also caught it and it turned into bronchitis. Older S on tamiflu never caught it.

So that is my worst weekend trip EVER!

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That’s a bad vacation. Except for the PR! :rofl:

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https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/fun-scale That qualifies as a 3.

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I got hemorrhoids on my honeymoon. I don’t really think you want pictures.

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First anniversary celebration trip: we ran into a blizzard and had to find our way in near whiteout conditions for the meals (we were in a cabin fortunately not too far from the main lodge). We were stuck inside for more than half the trip!

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The first time we went to Europe, we traveled early to Italy and then we were going to take a cruise from Venice. We packed all carry ons, but had a short connection at JFK, so I checked all the bags. I had cross packed an outfit in each. We had sweatpants and meds for the overnight flight. When we got to Rome 3 flights later, no luggage. We were not alone. British Airways has lost 10,000 bags!!! The first 3 days we kept checking the lost luggage website and they said our luggage was coming…never showed. By day 2, we discovered H&M. We had to buy suitcases, make up, everything for myself, 2 teenage girls and DH. It was a nightmare. Eight days in we were about to go on the cruise, so I just had to break down and buy as much as I could, shoes were bought in Florence. The airline wouldn’t give us an actual number of how much we could spend, meanwhile, we were surrounded by Prada, Gucci.

A couple days into our cruise with Disney- they found one bag in Athens Greece (thank you Disney)- belonged to D2- luckily contacts for D1 were in the bag. DH and my luggage went home, D1’s bag was never found. After the cruise we still had a few days in Italy. All in ,23 days with no luggage. Disney was great gave us free laundry. On the flight back I insisted they let me carry my large suitcase on board. I said call it medical equipment if needed, but it was not going to be checked. They must have sensed my absolute frustration because I carried it on the plane. We had saved points for years to fly first class and needless to say, we have never flown British Airways again!

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Coming home from Culebra last summer, we were scheduled to land at O’Hare at about 10pm. Had we, the 2ish-hour drive back home would have had me in bed around, oh, 12:30-1:00am (allowing for time to retrieve the suitcase, find the car, take a leak, etc.). That, in turn, would give me a relatively solid six hours of sleep before heading back to work the next day.

Well, that didn’t happen.

The first flight was from San Juan to Fort Lauderdale. At that infernal airport, the schedule went to h-e-youknowwhat. Our flight was delayed about four hours. So we ended up landing at O’Hare around 2am, in the car at about 3:00 (it was a cluster…), and home about 5:30 because I kept almost falling asleep on the highway and having to pull over for a few minutes to just gather myself, pump myself up. The shoulder rumble grid, or whatever they call it, awakened me about five times – thank goodness for those!

I tried taking a cat nap before getting ready for work, but the dog had weasled his way into my closet and attacked all of my shoes, so I spent that hour finding the pair that was least damaged and making the shoelaces work.

That was a really, truly awesome day.

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Whoa, there are some horror stories here!

I spent my junior year of college in France on a weekend trip to Germany. On the return I had a connection to switch from the German train to the French train in Basel. I don’t speak any German, so when I heard, “…Basel” over the train intercom, I got ready and deboarded. When I looked up at the list of trains and other platforms, however, my train wasn’t listed. So I asked someone and they said that I got off at the German Basel station and I needed to get on the next train coming in 20 minutes to go to the Swiss Basel station.

At this point I’m starting to get a bit stressed but make it to the Swiss Basel station about 5 minutes before the train was supposed to depart. I look up at the board of departing trains and don’t see mine. I ask someone about my train and they say, “Oh, this is the Swiss Basel station. You need to go to the French Basel station,” which was a block or two away. I ran for it, but but missed my train (which was a sleeper train). At this point I am very distressed and go to see what I can do to get back. I either had the option of staying the night in Switzerland and taking a train the next morning, or I could take another train that night to cross into France. As I was not thrilled with Basel at that point and had no Swiss currency, I decided to go back to France as I at least had francs (yes, pre-Euro days!). I then ended up walking from the train station in France late at night in an area of town with ladies of the night on the street and called my mom in the U.S. from my cell phone so she could keep me company on my walk until I got safely into a hotel.

Suffice it to say, whenever I know of anyone taking trains in Europe near France/Germany/Switzerland I always warn them about Basel!

I’ll save the story about a terrible flight experience booked with frequent flyer miles for later!

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I was on vacation at Disney… was in a water park… in my early 20’s… wearing a bikini… then went down a slide (the kind where you are on your stomach on top of a flat raft thingy…) got off the slide at the bottom… Put my towel around my neck and walked for several minutes with my sister… before some stranger came up to us and told me “you’re exposed”. I looked down and saw that my bathing suit top had err, relocated itself while on that slide. Hadn’t even noticed it.

I walked around for minutes. I was mortified. Looking back on it, it’s a good thing this was so many years ago or I’d probably be a meme. Thankfully I had that towel on my neck which may have provided some amount of coverage. LOL.

Another mishap - I was on a business trip about 5 years ago… decided to go to a baseball game while there (I want to see all of the stadiums, it was an easy way to knock one off)… I missed a step and fell down the stairs at the stadium in the first inning. Sprained my ankle. Didn’t break anything. I had to hobble through 3 airports to get home 2 days later with a lot of luggage (I had been there for 2 weeks).

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We’ve been pretty lucky on trips but one time at a resort in Mexico, DH got really sick with a bad cold and spent days in the room. He was annoyed I wasn’t attending to his every wish even though I was dealing with three little kids! Ugh. That was not fun.

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My vacation mishap ended up being a fun little adventure.

I was in college studying abroad in Rome. My friends and I went to the Amalfi Coast for the weekend. We were staying in Sorrento for two nights, Fri and Sat.

On Saturday, we had a day trip over to Capri. We took a hydrofoil over (mistake, after a night of drinking and a bumpy ride!). We spent the day touring around Capri and then went to the port to take a ferry back. We bought our tickets and then sat at a cafe overlooking the port until it was time to board.

Well, somehow we all miscalculated the departure time, not quite used to the 24hr clock vs 12 hr clock. We thought we had another hour or so until our ferry left (I don’t recall specifically). We weren’t really paying much attention until we see the ferry pulling away and one of my friends doublechecks her ticket and we realize it is our ferry! We race to the ticket office and notice it was the very last ferry listed for the day. There were several fishermen at the port so we were begging them, for pay, to take us back to Sorrento. Nope!

At this point we are freaking out b/c we can’t afford hotel prices on Capri, plus we already paid for our hotel in Sorrento. The woman who ran the ticket office had just closed up and saw us, realizing we missed the ferry. She was so kind, and said her friend owned a hotel and she would call and explain our dilemma. Well, her friend very kindly offered us a room for $50, easily split by four of us. The ticket lady then took us there - much to our surprise, it was a waterfront hotel set on the cliff. Our room overlooked the sea, and we slept with the balcony door open, listening to the waves crashing below. It was amazing! We paid less for that room, then our hotel back in Sorrento.

The only downside was that we had to get up super early to catch the first ferry back as we had already booked mopeds to drive down the Amalfi Coast on Sunday (um, that was another adventure, and one that in hindsight was quite a crazy and harrowing drive!).

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Lol. Love this topic.

Future hubby (FH) and I booked a (cheap) guided tour to Egypt. It was supposed to be a partial “camping” experience.

-FH left his passport at home so I had to leave without him and he arrived next day. He missed The Great Pyramids and The Sphinx. (We did squeeze in a hurried visit before going to airport at the end.)

-Tour guide was in a relationship with the cook. They bickered constantly on the excursions and on the coach.

-Second night of the tour was in a car park, in tents, with sleeping bags and no sleeping bag mats, NEXT to a mosque. Most people might be aware of the time at which the Imam starts calling worshippers to prayer. Sleep did not happen.

-Tour guide came down with flu. Gave it to most people on the trip.

-Tour guide and cook smoked a marijuana hookah each night. The cook was not a good cook, unsurprisingly.

-One hotel was so unacceptably terrible that FH and I paid for a night elsewhere.

-Another hotel was so infested with cockroaches that FH bought a can of bug spray, but forgot to leave an exit route for the roaches, so we slept with the lights on all night.

-Tour guide booked a terrible restaurant where I found a TOENAIL clipping in my food.

-Forced to sleep in a freezing cold coach one night because tour guide hadn’t booked camp site. We basically stayed up 24 hours. But, it was Christmas Eve, so we just walked up Mt. Sinai in the dark to watch the sunrise on Christmas morning. That was actually kind of cool. (We brought a tiny bottle of port to toast Xmas morning, but forgot the corkscrew. Lugged bottle of port all the way back home and had a good laugh a week later.)

Finally, the piece de resistance…
-The highlight of the trip was an extra fee camel trek into the desert with Bedouin tribesmen, sleeping under the stars. There were four tourists and three Bedouins. The tour guide provided all the provisions.

We trekked to a few hundred yards past the town garbage dump.

We discovered that our meal for seven consisted of: Plenty of beer, 1 packet of spaghetti, 1 carton of stewed tomatoes, and 1 block of Feta. The tribesmen made our meal. Luckily, they had salt and pepper.

The kicker, and this is 100% true, was when I asked them an innocent question.
Me:
“Do you have a word in your language for this meal?”
One of the Bedouins:
“Yeah….$hi_!”

:rofl::laughing::joy: Hubby and I laugh about that every single time. We proceeded to get very drunk in the desert with the other two tourists and had a very entertaining evening.

When we got home, almost every person on the tour wrote a lengthy complaint letter. We all received full refunds on the tour AND a credit for a future trip.

We did see some super cool places, all of which were overshadowed by roaches, toenails, and spaghetti with feta. Probably one of our most fondly remembered trips though.

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Like Jimmy Buffet says “if you don’t have a good time at least you’ll have a good story.”

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Got to airport really early ( so I wouldn’t be stressed) for a flight to Belgium connecting through Atlanta. Had a nice lunch. All good. Flight kept getting delayed. When the plane arrived it was an honor flight for veterans and took another hour to deplane. Meanwhile weather wasn’t looking good in Atlanta. That connecting flight was still possible though. Everyone boarded. We taxied out. The pilot was hoping we’d get off the ground. Atlanta airport closed because of weather. We taxied back. Some deboarded to wait further instructions (including my H). Then the steward quietly advised us to get on the phone for a new flight–he didn’t think we were going anywhere and we were basically on our own. Some already were. My husband had already gotten off and hadn’t heard the steward.

Think it was first time ever my H brought the ipad. While standing in a LONG line at the service counter I found a plane leaving in 10 MINUTES to JFK where we could catch a flight to Belgium.
I RAN to the front of the line practically grabbed the poor guy by the collar and told he had to take care of me RIGHT NOW! He couldn’t find the flight at first–luckily I had the ipad with the info.
First question: Did you go carryon? Fortunately we had or they wouldn’t let us go. He said go grab your bags (still on the plane) and RUN! He’d call the gate to hold for us. We made it but my legs were wobbly from running so much. So much for the relaxing start of our trip…
(rest of the trip was a lot of fun except for the pickpocket…)

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Probably not worthy of a post but it just happened so its a bit raw. D started her summer DPT clinical this past Monday. It was in a nice area in the mountains of TN. We rented an Airbnb and were going to spend a few days getting to get know the area and relax before she moved into her new abode. I home brew and two days before we are supposed to leave I bottled a batch of beer. After I finished I was washing a 5 gallon carboy, it slipped out of my hand I caught it but in the process I ruptured my bicep tendon. The day we were to leave I had surgery. She is moved in and the area is beautiful but it will be June before we get to see it. Alcohol is the proximate cause of a lot of accidents. Usually it requires consumption.

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We’ve had some doozies. One of the worst was when I was a teen and my mom decided to take us on a last minute trip to Cancun. She didn’t book a hotel in advance and we spent hours at the Cancun airport with her on a payphone trying to find a room. She finally a room over a restaurant, nowhere near the beach. My brother got food poisoning and then horribly sunburned. I think we got to the beach once the entire time we were there.

We had some more minor mishaps as well - lost luggage on our honeymoon; missed international flights after the only highway was shut down for 8 hours and we were in gridlock with no food, water, or bathrooms; some flea infested dumps; etc…

Overall though I love traveling!

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Happened to me too! I was on a trip in Switzerland and was going next from Zurich to Strasbourg in France (great city, BTW). I needed to change trains in Basel and so pop out of the Swiss train and start looking for my connection. The train number is on the board along with the gate number, but none of the gates in the station have that number! I’m walking around starting to panic slightly, finally I come across a policeman and he says the same thing; your station is a few blocks thataway. Luckily I had 45 minutes to make the connection.

Two more stories. On my very first trip ever to Europe a buddy convinced me to go to Italy. “I’ve got it all covered” he said, and handled all the hotel reservations. We were on separate flights and he was going to get into Rome about 2 hours before me, then we’d meet up and I’d tag along with him. I arrive, get thru immigration control, don’t see him in the waiting area outside. Hey, no problem, he went to get something to eat I figure. So I wait a while, he’s still nowhere to be seen. Getting a bit concerned I pull out my phone to text him (luckily this is in the cellphone era). I have a bunch of texts from him; he missed his plane and will arrive the next day. He gives me the name of the hotel. I go to the Travel Aid window and basically ask “where is this hotel, and how might I get there?” In the end it all worked out, I took the train to Rome and walked to the hotel which was near the station.

On a different trip I was taking the night train from Bologna to Munich. The train was arriving in the evening around 10pm and as you can guess there were not many people in the station, everything was closed up for the nite. Nothing on the departure board and then finally a train is listed. But the destination was not Munich, it said Monaco. ■■■!! Eventually I find someone and it turns out that the word in Italian for Munich is, indeed, Monaco.

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Monaco di Baviera is sometimes needed to distinguish it from the other Monaco. Sometimes that mistake gets made.

Of course, in Italy, there is a city called Firenze. But in most other nearby languages, it is called Florence or something similar.

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Germany is another place where there are varying names in different languages that can cause travelers to have trouble finding the way there: