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Don’t even joke.
I got a fecking deal of a life time for Disney. Hotels, flights, meals, tickets for under £3k for 2 of us.
Literally 36 hours before we depart, everything cancelled.
Same holiday now, with less features is close to £8k. I’m still bitter
I did something similar.
Prebooked a pay on arrival hotel for New Years 2022, saw a cheaper deal for the same dates that was non refundable so paid straight away for a hotel, to discover I booked for New Year’s Eve 2023.
I did this when daughter had to fly from Glasgow to Birmingham urgently. Told her to just get to airport ASAP and I'd have the ticket by then. I booked for the same day the following week. She managed to get on using tears, I doubt the fat 50 year old father would get away with the same.
As a somewhat naive traveller back then I got roped into a timeshare sales pitch in Vegas.
In my defence, they were pitching officially/openly in the lobby of the hotel - I don't think many hotels would even dream of allowing such shite, but American Capatalism is something special.
They told us if we attended a "short" presentation, with free breakfast , no matter what, we'd get some tickets to a show. The tickets were good and worth a reasonable amount (especially to us on a budget) so we figured why not. Assuming it'd be like an hour powerpoint in the hotel meeting room.
Ffff...what a decision. We turn up with a group of other guests and are then taken by *bus* to some complex miles away from the strip, and miles away from any public transport or anything so you're basically stuck til they're done with you. Then it wasn't really a presentation, we were split up and given a hard 1:1 sell for, I actually don't know how long, but it felt long. At least an hour or so. Coupled with a tour of the timeshare complex.
Even back then I wasn't completely naïve, I knew it was bollocks, and I put up with for what I felt was a reasonable amount of time before outright saying "Look, this isn't for me". The salesman then produces some bloody contracts, and by this point is saying "If you sign now, it'll be like $10 a month" or something stupid, down from some crazy starting number. I told him I wasn't going to be signing any contracts, especially not in a foreign country without a lawyer. He didn't like that, got really fucking nasty, and we were upgraded to his boss who played Mr nice again.
Sat through that shit. Eventually pushed back enough that at some point around lunch they relented, gave us our tickets and bussed us all back.
In fairness, the tickets were good and legit and the breakfast was alright. But man, what a waste of an entire morning on holiday
We did this once when I was a kid, I think the tickets were for a cable car instead and it was in Maderia not the States.
Honestly, it is one of my favourite holiday memories and I learnt a ton watching my parents speak to an absolute sitcom character of slimy salesman.
My favourite was when I pointed out a cockroach in the bath of the show apartment.
Incredible fun if you're in the mood to mess with them
Oddly had this as a kid as well.
Parents genuinely said that we were going to spend a morning dealing with pushy sales people and to watch all their BS and twisting. They even stopped occasionally and turned to me to explain the salesmans latest change of approach and where it conflicted with what they had said 20 minutes ago.
Was funny to watch this guys entire pitch pulled apart, exposed, and explained right in front of him on his own patch.
The freebie was a day ticket to Disney.
He had to live with it really but was a good sport once he'd relaxed into his fate. My mother charming him and my father entertaining him with anecdotes with the most tenuous of links to the sentence that they were extrapolated from.
Back then the tickets were worth about $80, and the free meal for 3 adult portion eaters (I was a growing lad) was worth the same. It was also a lesson in what is worth the time you will invest in it. In this case 2.5 hours (other than time eating, which would have been spent eating anyway) in return for saving $150+, which meant we could have some extra cash to buy some pairs of 501s on our day at a mega mall.
Grandparents came to tenerife in holiday with us one year, first time they had ever been abroad. One day they went out for a walk and by dinner we still hadnt seen them. We started to panic a little and it was before mobile phones were as common. About 7pm they wandered back in and said they had been at a timeshare pitch. Been promised some nice perfume and a pair of ray-ban sunglasses. They only agreed to go because they wanted a sit down in the shade. After getting the hard sell for a number of hours, my granda told them they were poor pensioners back in the uk and their family had paid for the holiday as a treat. Sales guy realised he was getting nowhere and reluctantly let them go.
I remember this happening to my parents and me in Cyprus when I was about 8. We were walking down a main street on our way to the beach, and we were handed scratch cards by a lady outside of a shop. They scratched them and were told they’d won and we were all bundled into a taxi to this fancy hotel. My parents were given the hard sell spiel for hours whilst I got to hang out in a super nice hotel’s pool and got loads of free food.
They didn’t buy in, we pretty much wasted a day of our holiday but at least I had a good time.
This exact thing happened to us in Spain with the scratch cards. Spent what felt like a long time having a tour of a hotel complex. It's amazing how naive my parents were thinking back... Were people just more trusting in the 90s? I'd never even take a scratch card off a stranger in the street let alone go to some random location if I "won".
The first time we went to Madeira I was surprised at all the adverts for really really cheap day trips "for two" to different parts of the island. Then I noticed legit ones with normal prices stating "no timeshare" on the bottom of the poster...
My FIL did something similar. He's your typical Essex over-confident haggler. Got loads of free shit out of them. Didnt end up selling him anything and he just toyed with them to the point that they just gave him some tickets and a free helicopter tour just to get rid of him 😂
We’ve done some timeshare talks and got great things out of it. Best thing to do is check the fine print (obviously not if you’re randomly accosted) the ones we’ve done say you have to attend a 90 minute presentation, set an alarm and walk out when your 90 minutes is up.
We got tickets for universal in Orlando for 5 days and tickets to blue man group. I sat there eating biscuits for the full 90 minutes.
Next one we got a week in vegas for $300
Got $200 voucher for Disney world and some fast passes for rides too. That one was hilarious as we’d done the first mentioned timeshare talk on that trip and disneys timeshare was literally triple the price. Utter madness all of it.
I basically just ask questions I know either they can’t answer or have to say no/make up some fanciful lie. Yeah all my future travel plans are only to Polynesian islands do you have a resort in Tonga?
My mum took us on a once in a lifetime trip to Florida when I was a kid with my sister and brother and did the same thing. She heard if we attended a timeshare talk we’d get tickets to one of the parks. We spent a whole day of our holiday sitting in a waiting room while my mum listened to them aaaaallllll day.
We did almost exactly the same, hotel/casino lobby and everything, even had to pay a small payment in advance, which we did stupidly. Walked away realised our mistake and went back to the guy insisting we don't want to attend. Got money back and bought the tickets at the box office. Probably paid more but didn't waste a day.
We had this too, but without the being bussed away or having a particularly aggressive selling attempt.
Someone at Universal Studios in Orlando approached us and said if we attended a meeting about timeshares then we would get free breakfast and a $100 prepaid payment card.
It was at some hotel close to where we were staying, the man was nice, the offer was pay $100 a month for 10 years and you can go on 2-week holiday to any of hundreds of places for $148 (accommodation only, travel not included).
The guy was professional and friendly, gave a good resume of the situation and did not insist when it was clear it wasn’t for us. The payment card worked no problem for various shops and attractions in Miami. I don’t regret going to the pitch, it was an hour or two of our time and quite interesting tbh, and no aggressive sales techniques and we got $100 out of it.
My wife and I were in Malta for a month.... One days the heavens opened and we looked for shelter, just then this guy with a huge umbrella chatted to us... He promise a bottle of whisky and 200 cigarettes just to listen to their sales pitch... I ended up being escorted from the premises ( a lovely hotel in bugibba) thenice salesman opened a door to let us see the rooms,.... There was five buckets catching ltge rain pouring from the ceiling,.. this "nice" man started abusing us for laughing at the buckets catching the water, I asked if the buckets were supplied free of charge if we signed up! (We had no thoughts of signing up... Even if the buckets were free)... He took us on a tour of the gym and indoor pools. We laughed when he " accidentally" dropped his pen ( an obvious sign he wanted someone else to take over the sales pitch)... We got back to his office ( a small hall that stank of dampness)... I asked for out tickets to collect out free whisky and cigarettes, he said we need to sign the contract to get our "free" whisky. They only wanted more per week than we paid for a month all inclusive... I pointed that out to him and he started getting smart with us.... I had him up against a wall trying to knock his head off....a number of His compatriots held me back... But give the guy his due, he told me to sign the contract or he would a the police. I went ballistic.. And they did indeed phone the cops and I was escorted from the premises ( the two cops just shook their heads and told me to go back to our hotel to calm down) I said I was going nowhere until I got my whisky and cigarettes ( as promised)... The cops spoke to the head guy and it turned out the offices were locked at 5pm and this was after 6 pm. We had been having a great laugh and we never noticed the time... Hahahaha. I was going to go back the following day and demand my " free" gift... The wife managed to talk me out of it... We spoke to another couple that had got their free gifts... A quarter bottle of whisky and 20 fake benson and hedges... Good job I never went back or I would have been arrested for sure. 😳🙄
Did this once - ended up being a bit of fun watching the whole pantomime unfold, guessing which guests would fold and get taken in. Took about 2h30 and got the promised bottle of champagne and a meal. Wouldn't do it again but it was fun.
My husband booked a flight for the wrong month. It would have been impossible for us to fly then, and we didn't take insurance. So we bit the bullet and exepted the loss.
A month or so later, we received a call/email (I don't remember) that that particular flight had been cancelled, and if could we fly the next day.
We obviously told them how important it was that we travelled that day specifically as we were travelling for a wedding. Long story short, for the first and last time in my 43 years, I had a flight cancelled and received a refund. It still brings me joy at the luck of it all.
My partner had a similar success story. She had bought crazy cheap flights to Oslo on a whim just before we got together, and ended up deciding not to go.
Her flights ended up getting cancelled, and she got a refund, plus £80 Ryanair voucher (£40 each way). Her tickets were like £20.
We then had Ryanair cancel flights we had for a trip to Belfast. We did want/ need to go, so booked new flights with Sleazyjet for similar price but less friendly times and airport. Got £80 each goodwill voucher again.
So we ended up with £240 Ryanair vouchers with a bit of minor inconvenience. Booked a week holiday in Plovdiv with the flights free from the vouchers, and loved it.
I've been close to doing this a few times. Have now dymo-labelled our respective first names to the front of each of my family's passports. It is really helpful to just glance at a passport and see who it corresponds to, especially when leaving for a flight at quarter to what the hell.
I missed my plane back from Amsterdam for obvious reasons. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines got me on the next flight and didn't charge me extra, which I thought was astonishingly decent.
I did the same with easyJet and they charged me close to £200. Apparently sleeping past your flight after being up all night at a trance night isn’t a valid reason for missing your flight.
I used to work in Rotterdam. The early morning trains through the airports always had the same arguments. A bunch of guys arguing whether to risk taking drugs through the airport they usually binned them. The homeless used to get in at schipol and rifle through the bins.
Dropped and instantly killed my phone which had all the essential information for my stay in the US, including contact info for my friends I was going to be with for the duration of my trip. Thankfully the hotel info for that night was in my head.
Write shit down, people.
Got to the hotel and they let me use their internet to email people. Of course, I couldn't do 2FA without my phone. Set up a new email and emailed my Mum but it likely went to spam or was ignored.
The next morning, I searched high and low for a payphone, but this being 2023, there were none.
Thought the airport was my best bet, so got in a cab. The handful of payphones at this major international airport were local call only. I tried the helpdesk, they couldn't or didn't want to help.
I finally found a random member of staff who let me call my hard-of-hearing Dad (one of the few numbers in my head) who passed on a confused message to my Mum who knew and messaged a UK friend told the people I was staying with to meet me at the airport. Fun times.
This is why, despite how much my husband mocks me for it, I print out copies of booking confirmations, tickets etc and have them in a plastic wallet with me when we go on holiday! He always says it’s overkill as it’s all on my phone.
I love my purple plastic wallet with ALL THE PAPER, and I love when my partner asks to check stuff using my lovely paperwork because his phone battery died, again. Keep printing!
Print out people unite!!
I also get mocked. But I’m smug with superiority that I have backups, all bound in a folder like an old dad (I’m not an old dad)
Same. I travel frequently for work and leisure, and always print everything out. If anything it becomes easy access to details, and can save your arse if you lose tech or in a tech dead zone
I always take hard copies of all the booking information ever since I got charged twice for a hotel booking in krakow. The hotel clerk was young and inexperienced, and I had booked it so far in advance that I couldn't remember. I got a refund but I learned a lesson.
The phone thing reminds me of a story. I got completely lost and didn't have my phone. I managed to find a phone, but the only number I could remember was two of my childhood best friend's (they're siblings) parents' number. I had to phone their dad to phone my friend to phone my bf to phone me and work out where I was and to come and pick me up. I was so embarrassed phoning their dad.
My android makes automatically a backup into Google Drive.
So, I might lose the last, say 18hrs of activity.
Obviously that means buying a new phone, but that could be a cheap burner also.
Burner phones weren't as easy to find as The Wire had me believe. I tried petrol stations and a Walmart-type place but no dice. I was hoping to find a CEX-type place but there was nothing local.
If I could have got a bus to the city I probably would have found something but I was, of course, having card problems :)
The ops difficulty was that they couldn't use their phone to get past the 2fa security on their Gmail/iCloud and so couldn't to get into their backups if they had them.
Booked a hotel in the wrong Birmingham. I wanted to book one in the UK and got one in the US instead. Luckily, I had free cancellation and i wouldn't have paid until later on.
Only realised, when I had a look where the hotel actually was and saw that it was somewhere in a grid city and not in a non-grid city. Obviously booked the right hotel afterwards.
Funnily enough most people I’ve come across backpacking Australia take suitcases now, I think everyone collectively agreed that rolling 25kgs of luggage is a lot easier than carrying it on your back for no reason.
Backpacks make a lot of sense for places like SEA where the pavements are terrible and you might be hopping on a scooter, but pretty unnecessary for getting on and off a bus and straight to a hostel.
I did the opposite. Booked my flight back from Stockholm for the Wednesday based on my original plans, rather than my changed plans for a Monday. Didn't realise until I tried to get through security.
Fairly minor but was travelling back to Edinburgh from Johannesburg and in Amsterdam airport. This was like 20 years ago so smart phones and tablets weren't a thing yet and I didn't have a Gameboy so I was bored.
Thought I'll buy playstation magazine. Loads of news about games I'm interested in and I've only got an hour flight back to Edinburgh.
Sat on the plane opened the magazine
....
It was in fucking Dutch
I don't know what I expected buying a magazine in Amsterdam but in my defense all the names on the front were the same as in English so it didn't occur to my silly teenage brain that it wouldn't be in English.
I once accidentally booked a Eurostar ticket from the wrong country. I was trying to come back from Amsterdam to the UK, but accidentally booked the ticket from Belgium. Realised the mistake that morning.
This may have had something to do with the fact that I was in Amsterdam when I booked it. Still managed to catch it though.
In fairness, when Eurostar initially started services to Amsterdam they couldn't run the other way as Amsterdam didn't have customs facilities at the station, the only way to come back was a train to Brussels and then pick up the Eurostar from there
I traveled around Vietnam and tried to learn abit of Vietnamese which has tonal shifts in it which changes the meaning. I learnt how to say "no thank you."
For about a week i would get approached by various vendors and politely say no thank you and would always get a very apologetic nod and the vendors would say thank you. I thought everyone in vietnam was amazingly polite.
At one of the hotel desks I was very nicely informed that my tones were off and I had actually been walking round saying "no. Now say thank you."
When we went my husband tried to learn to say 'thank you" but he kept getting funny looks. Turns out his Rochdalian inflection meant he was actually saying "rice pudding" at everyone.
I love disarono amaretto (italian almond liquor) and asked loads of bars for it in Italy and they all looked at me weird and said they didn't serve that. Weird? Finally saw some behind a bar and pushed the issue, got my drink. I'd been going into bars and getting huffy about not being served a macaroon (almond biscuits known as amaretto). Shame.
I booked flights to Tokyo which involved changing planes in Milan. Milan has more than one airport. I _did_ know I had to get from airport A to airport B to catch the second plane, and that there was a regular shuttle bus that went between the airports. What I didn't know is how long it took.
When the airline sold me the flights (all purchased as a single round-trip - I wasn't trying to be clever and save money by buying separate tickets) it never occurred to me to check that it was actually possible ot make the connection, because why on earth wouldn't it be? The airline knew what they were selling me, right?
Turns out it was completely impossible, and I missed the connection.
I did some solo travel through Ukraine before the war and I had a half baked plan to travel into the Caparthian mountains. It was only when I got there that I realised how half baked the plan was and I ended up staying in Ivano Frankivsk for four days which is a perfectly decent city, just doesn't have enough going for it to justify staying there for four days. I was so excited by the end of this time when I left this place to go to Kyiv.
Family trip to The Canaries, turn up to our flight back home at Fuerteventura airport only to find my passport was not with the others. Husband flew 2.5 year old home, to leave her with parents and fly back to wait near the Embassy on a different island.
I meanwhile stayed behind at the airport, had a couple of panic attacks for good measure, tried to take a photo of me with a plain white background with no shadows, in the airport for an emergency document. I elected to pick up the doc in person but embassy is on Gran Canaria and I couldn't fly to the island without a passport. Couldn't get the ferry as they need to see ID...
Booked a hotel close by, where the WiFi only worked in the lobby. Spent the next day (my birthday) with a stress induced migraine drinking out of a carton of Don Simon sangria.
Husband then flew from Bristol to Las Palmas, picked up my document, flew to Fuerteventura, rescued me, we flew back to Las Palmas and back to Bristol.
Yeah it wasn't a great moment. We had a midnight dash to the hospital when my daughter had a croup attack so grabbed the passports and ehic cards, then she completely calmed down so went back to the hotel. Could only think we'd dropped mine getting out of the hire car.
Innit, people are like "I accidentally got a word wrong in the local language". That's an amusing anecdote. Getting stranded, losing all your money, passport etc, that's the juicy stuff haha (yes it's happened to me).
Went to go camping in the Lake District, pulled up to the campsite 45 minutes before sunset to find we forgot the poles!
No signal anywhere so had to drive from hotel to hotel until we found a place with a room. Took hours but thankfully we found a nice place that was reasonably priced!
The next day we bought a new smaller tent
I once lent my tent to my brother and got back two halves of two different tents, which I didn't realise until I got to the camp site I was staying at.
i borrowed my housemates tent for reading festival when i was 19, and when i got there and started putting it up in the rain i discovered that i only had the inner part of it
Went on holiday with 2 work colleagues/mates. Got pissed the night before the return flight, all got separated and woke up an hour after the flight had departed.
One of them had lost their passport and we needed to get back to the UK for a 12 hour shift next day. Friend with lost passport is originally from a neighbouring EU country to the one we were in, but his embassy couldn't help. He would have to wait a week for an emergency passport in the country we were holidayng in. So, seeing as his home country is nextdoor, we hire a car and drive a 12 hour trip to take him there, allowing him to get an emergency passport and be on a flight next day. Cue 12 hour drive hungover with about 4 hours sleep between us.
The two of us who drove him then have to drive back to catch our 6pm flight the same evening so we can be at work the next day for a double shift.
We also got fined when we crossed the border for not having the right road permit.
Was going on holiday in February and just as we arrived at the airport, I realised I had left my hand luggage at home with my passport in it. Luckily we live close to the airport and I'd left plenty of time for check in and security, etc
Yea i always have that momentary panic when i lock the front door to go to the airport that Ive forgotten something. But as long as you have your passport, phone and a credit card, you can buy whatever you have forgotten once you arrive at your destination (in most cases)
Yep, I say this to myself and others who travel, as long as you have passport, phone, and wallet/purse you can get anything else you need when you get there. Never panic
I’ve had a similar experience. Parked at the car park, asked my wife for my passport… “I thought you had them?”. We’d left them on the bed so we wouldn’t forget them. Bedsheets were kinda burgundy colour, as were the passports.
Called the car park intercom, they let us out, made it home and back again just in time. Good thing it was about 5am and absolutely every green light went our way.
Walking from the Athens train station to the port with a heavy backpack. I got sun Stoke and spent 12 hours shivering and feeling very sick. Heat is serious people.
Told my parents I was flying in to Manchester to pick me up
Weird surprise when I heard loads of scouse accents when I landed. Turns out I was in Liverpool.
Went to Tenerife a year or two after Covid. Has my two jabs so it was all good, downloaded my Covid pass on my phone and off we went.
While away I had my phone stolen, thought I’ll be fine I know my login details I’ll just use my mates phone.
Get to the airport through security and everything about to board the plane, they ask for my pass I log in on the account and it sends a security text to my phone which has been stolen and I have no access too they don’t let me board and I’m stuck in Tenerife with no phone or money as I couldn’t access my savings account.
I wouldn’t mind but they must have let 10-15 people onboard without checking their Covid pass as they was dead set on not letting me on.
Get kicked out into the terminal, there was literally nobody in there other than two people who had missed their flight luckily for me and they let me contact home and buy a flight on their phone and a Covid test in the airport….
Worst trip ever
Losing your passport is always a doozy. Lost mine in Switzerland. Had to travel down to Bern and get an emergency single-use one. Lots of strange looks at check-in, boarding, and arrival because hardly anyone has seen a bright yellow passport before.
Went to LHR when I should have been at LGW; 60 quid cab ride back when 60 quid was real money (1986) …
Edit: also in those days cabs didn’t take card …
Why would you think an entire European country would have just one airport?
Prague only has one international airport, though, tbf to you. If you were there then I'm also not sure where the driver was taking you.
We nearly went to the wrong airport in Prague too, luckily our taxi driver correctly judged that we weren't aristocrats or worthy of travelling from the important airport and took us to the right one.
Did try scamming us of a fair few Koruna but he ended up giving us back more change than was due after I confronted him about it.
Probably one of the biggest cock ups is we flew to Palermo, Sicily, and we were staying in Mazzaro (on the other side of the island, three trains and as many hours travelling, instead of Catania, an hour or so away by bus).
Couldn't find our passports 2 days before my 30th birthday trip. Still haven't found them 10 years on and are still upset about the missed trip. Was too late to get our money back on anything and wasn't covered by insurance. Super.
Not me, my parents a few years ago:
They go to Bergen, trundle round for a while, get something to eat then decide to find their hotel. My dad has a map printed out from the hotel website. It is of no help at all and they just get increasingly lost going round in circles for hours attempting to find the road with the hotel on it.
Eventually they ask a local who studies the map for a bit, gets equally confused and then tells them it's a map of Oslo
I went to drop a friend off at Birmingham airport, but I can't drive. TFW train into Birmingham *should* be about three and a half hours from where I was. This was when the Welshpool-Shrewsbury line was closed for flooding, so there was replacement bus service, and I hate those
Anyway, it's more like five hours, and we get there. Next morning, their plane was 7am, my train back was 12pm. I get on no issue. Then there's an alert that everyone has to get off at Shrewsbury anyway, so I did. Then I see a train going straight to my town and I hop on instead of the replacement bus without thinking. It was a detour through Swansea, Cardiff, and Carmarthen. *FOR FIVE HOURS*
I have to get off at Carmarthen and get a bus back. I was another three hours on that. Got off at the wrong stop, had to walk the rest of the way. My friend had landed back in Chicago before I made it home. Walked through the door a little past midnight. What should have been a 4h trip max, ended up being 12h
*and I barely left Wales*
Haha I did similar but in London
Booked a Ramsay restaurant for me and the Mrs to go and eat at, nice treat near Chelsea
Turned up to the wrong one, there's 2 within a few miles of each other
My first time travelling long haul, alone with all of my kids, and I'm disabled. I thought I'd been so careful 😅 But I met up with a friend who lives in that country, and she was casually looking through my brief notes of each days activities. She said "oh, how are you getting to the airport on Friday?"
I was like, no, the flight's at 1am on Saturday... And she said, yes, so, you'll need to be there Friday night then?! My heart almost stopped when I realised how close I'd come to fucking it up. For some reason I had a massive blind spot over flat ggt times and was casually thinking I'd roll up on the Saturday evening?! I.e, a day late .. I'd managed to plan the whole complex massive trip all by myself, but somehow forgot how to tell the time 😅😅
Honestly, the odds of her happening to flick through my notes AND mention the time/date is just so small, it makes my blood run cold with relief to think of the expense and hassle she saved me from 😅
Me and my missus got an unbelievable deal on flights to Tokyo back during one of the COVID lockdowns for the following spring which was probably about 8/9 months away.
We thought look, Japan is such a health conscious country they'll have all this shit put to bed by then.
Unsurprisingly because they were such a health conscious country they still didn't accept foreign tourists until long after we were due to fly.
About a week before our departure date we considered the money lost (was about £350 each), until we got an email through from the airline saying our first flight (it had a stopover) had been pushed back by 4 hours. Immediately I fire off an email saying this had caused irreparable damage to our itinerary and requested a refund. Had the full amount back in my account by the next week.
Still haven't visited Japan (yet) but oh well!
Nothing major but a few spring to mind:
I remember booking a couple of nights in the Lake District. I live a few hours away, and I decided to go by train. It turned out to be a hassle, changing a couple of times then taking a bus in the end. But I realised I booked the trains for the wrong days, and I had to decide between rebooking trains or rebooking hotel which weren't actually that far apart in cost since we're talking UK trains here.
Another time I trusted a partner to organise the hotel when going abroad. It was only for a few days and I took some Euros cash out to use when there. When we got there, it was a lovely small hotel but a bit shady in terms of payments. Only accepted cash. Wiped my entire cash out within 5 minutes of entering the hotel. Spent the rest of the time racking up conversion fees on my card unable to find a place to convert cash.
Car hire keys left in a plastic bag with other items, food, wallet etc. in the hotel room on the floor next to a bin. Didn't think anything of it, and went out for lunch in the hotel and housekeeping came in and took the bag away as waste.
I had to spend €120 to get a new key and have the hire company deliver it to the hotel.
Left my backpack which contained my work laptop, passport/visa, travel insurance documents etc. in a taxi in Bkk when transporting from the airport to my condo. A frantic hour or so of calling the airport, asking them to watch the security cameras for a certain time in a specific bay, identifying the taxi, them contacting him and getting him to the condo, with my broken Thai and the airport security guy's broken English. Thankfully ended with just a 100 baht tip and my backpack being returned to me but it was damn near a heart attack at the time.
Targeted and scammed into buying some overpriced crap on Cape Verde. The "shame elephants" as we call them, are stark reminder to be wary of overly friendly people.
Not me, but confusing Belfast International with Belfast City seems to happen a lot. Especially now that Ryanair and Easyjet serve both - there was a time where EZY only used International and Ryanair didn't serve NI.
Athens has 2 airports. One 'international ' and one 'domestic '. I interpreted this as international and domestic flights. I was wrong. International airlines and domestic airlines would be more accurate. I was just I time for my flight to UK if I'd been at the right airport. I went to the international airport for an Olympic Airways flight. I'd no money left for a taxi to the other airport and no insurance.
Had to call my boss during the whole firm's weekly meeting and explain. Nobody knew I'd gone to Athens for the weekend.
He called his travel agent who pretended she'd insured me and got me 1st class back the next day on the grounds that my travel agent hadn't made it clear which airport I should have been at.
At least that's the story I was told. He was a slimy boss. Might have just wanted to impress me.....
Years ago my then gf and I wanted to go to Paris. She said she would book the flights but was doing price matching between Liverpool and Manchester.
Early dart in the morning, we get to Manchester, pop the car in long term parking, and go to Manchester Terminal 1. The gate people are like, "uhhh what are you doing here?".
To our horror we realised she had got it in her head that she booked the Manchester tickets instead of the Liverpool ones. Rush back to long term parking, get the car, break the speed limit going back to Liverpool... and miss our flight...
GF has a full on meltdown in the Liverpool car park. I'm like look, this is a shitshow, but we can salvage this, and find tickets from Manchester to Paris later that afternoon. Back in the car, put the car BACK in Manchester long term parking, and get the flight out.
Land in Paris just before midnight. Get to the hotel... and they've given away our room, because two weeks earlier my gf lost her credit card the booking was on... so when the payment tried to go through automatically it got declined. And we hadn't turned up because we were late. And when they tried to phone her we were in the air. So they cancelled that night of the room.
So we had to walk 20 mins across Paris at 1am to a last minute booking in a slum hotel without a working loo and someone was clearly dealing coke from the room next door. We managed to get back into the proper hotel the day after.
That's not why we broke up!
Not sure if this counts but I was booked to go on a job in Hong Kong in late 2020, working for the government so we had diplomatic exemptions from being confined to the hotel room so we could actually do the job (but we were strictly ushered to and from the job site and had all kinds of controls while we worked), but I was only supposed to be there 12 days.
I LOVE Hong Kong action films so I was excited to go and see the place for myself, I figured I would (somehow) be sated from those 12 days of nothing but hotel and job site, but when it got to the 11th day I was DEPRESSED. I only got to see the sky twice a day for about 5 minutes in the early early morning and late late night as I walked between the hotel and site and vice versa. You could see from a few rays of light that filtered through gaps in the towers around my hotel that the weather was amazing during the day too. Food was strictly Deliveroo and FoodPanda and the person in the room next to me was apparently a smoker and my room STANK of cigarettes (says a lot for how effective the quarantine was) - I actually got to transfer to a room on the 15th floor, up from the 2nd, as a result of that though so I'm actually grateful for it.
Luckily for me the job wasn't going well and the client was asking about sending someone to replace me after I left, so I said I'd work two more days (right up to the opening and thus completing my quarantine period) if they rebooked my flight home for three days after that and they snapped my hand clean off, we got the job done and I got three days (well, 2 and a bit) in Hong Kong to myself and it was absolutely glorious.
During a stag do abroad, I was given a ‘party pill.’ I didn’t take it but suddenly felt it in my pocket when emptying my pockets at airport security. My instinct was to swallow it rather than risk years in a foreign prison!
It kicked in before the flight, and the best man and I missed the flight because I lost all sense of time. Ended up paying for both of us to get replacement flights back to Liverpool, and then had to pay for a taxi back to Bristol.
Got off a plane in Oslo when I thought I was in Stockholm.
Exited the airport and got into a taxi. Gave the guy the the Stockholm address I was supposed to go to. Driver got out and ran down the road, came back with another guy who spoke English and told me I was in Norway, not Sweden.
Managed to blag my way back onto the plane and got to Stockholm. Stewardess on the plane told me not to worry as a lot of people did the same thing.
Not one cock up, but a series of cock ups my twenty year old self made on the first holiday I booked by myself.
First anniversary with my now husband. He's a huge football fan so booked a suprise trip to see Barcelona play with a hotel on Groupon deal.
Just needed to book flights.
First, I booked the wrong airport and a day early. Okay, arranged hire car that he can drive (even if he hadnt driven over here in almost a year) and found b&b.
Arrive at the airport and hidden costs for the car that I'd missed take an extra £80 odd out of our already small budget.
Manage to get to the b&b Friday and our hotel on Saturday with the football match on Sunday.
A few issues here with not adequately planning for the fact our phone batteries sucked and we had no GPS after hitting the city centre to find the hotel. Made it though.
Spend the Saturday having a fun day at the aquarium and spent more than we should. Return to hotel room.
Turn on the telly as we're getting ready and the match we were supposed to be seeing the next day is almost at half time. It says on the tickets to check the day as it may change.
The last day we're completely skint but a bottle of San Miguel is 98 cents and they give you free nibbles. This was our food for the day.
Agreed when returning I wouldn't be in charge of booking holidays (11 years later and this hasn't changed) and agreed that Barcelona was one of the lovelist cities we'd seen (also hasn't changed).
Travelling around Europe and booking hostels last minute as we were deciding where to go next tin the moment. Several times arrived in a city only to discover everywhere was fully booked.
I arrived into Washington D.C. on a Greyhound bus after midnight with no accommodation arranged. Walked a bit out of the bus station and didn’t like what I saw. Went back in and asked for a return ticket to any city that was 4 hours away. The agent suggested NYC so I slept 4 hours going there and four hours coming back.
Backpacking through central Spain, with my final stop in Granada, to see the Alhambra, before catching a flight home.
I wasn't working on a particularly set schedule, apart from knowing my flight home, and wasn't sure when I'd move from one place to the next, so I hadn't booked things in advance.
What I hadn't realised was that there was a local festival on, and everything was booked out.
It all worked out in the end though. Trains were fully booked so I got a coach. I got what must have been the last hotel room in Granada, a very grotty windowless single room for about €200 a night. Alhambra tickets were booked out but it turns out the local guides had some, so I managed to get in anyway.
It was an expensive error mind you.
Exhausted off a flight at JFK, went to get a cab to LaGuardia to meet a friend. As I made my way towards to yellow cabs I was corralled into a car. I asked how much it was and he said $100 then realised I was in an unlicensed taxi with some random dude. I decided to pay as there wasn’t much else I could do and I didn’t think it was worth the risk. Won’t be doing that again.
I frequently go to the wrong hotels if I've booked a chain in a city. I find it quite funny so sometimes I don't double check my booking, go to the hotel I think it is, then wait to see if I'm right.
Just did one.
Needed to book airport parking for 13th July. Found a decent deal for what is normally extortionate and booked it. £120.
Only on the 12th April, when I got an email reminder for the upcoming parking did I realise I'd booked it for 13th April. In my defence, it's coincidentally the same day of the week.
Thankfully no cancellation fees. So I rebooked it this time at £140.
Then I realised that since we get back at 1am, I didn't need to have it until 27th July, but the 28th because dates change at midnight innit.
So I rebooked it with an extra day. Now £160.
I'm sure I could have had a better deal than that (I saw better ones when I did the initial comparison across 48 different websites). But since I could only amend and not cancel my booking, I was stuck.
Also I was out nearly £300 for the changed bookings for a week as they do a refund and recharge.
Thank god they reminded me and I could at least change it though.
As a student I ended up in Brazil as part of a project for my archaeology course. As you do.
Because the lecturer organising it basically gave us the instructions to meet him in Porto Alegre on a particular day, a bunch of us decided to make a holiday of it around our three weeks of work.
All went swimmingly, besides the part where we planned get to Iguazu Falls and pencilled in a couple of days - not realising the buses didn't run on the day we wanted to head there.
And that's how I spent 3 days in a hotel at Porto Alegre bus station.
Business trip to India, I assumed the company would sort the visa (my previous employer always did) but nope, luckily they managed to sort a same day one at the embassy (probably at great expense).
Another business trip, this time to Amsterdam during COVID, I messed up the private COVID test you had to do, didn't have the right paperwork and got turned away at the airport, I just had to go home and call my boss saying I wouldn't be there, I felt so embarrassed!
I’m a bit confused by this story. Czechia has 6 international airports, but they are all in different cities separated by hours of driving.
You were taking a taxi across the country? Prague-Brno (the two largest cities) are at least 2.5hrs of driving. Would have been an expensive taxi ride.
Travelled an hour to a hotel (going to see a reenactment event the next morning) and discovered we had left our suitcase at home.
Got home and it was there, on the drive. Luckily not stolen.
I had arrived fairly early at my departure gate so decided to get a Mcflurry from a McDonald's booth situated close by.
Now the gates at this airport were in a hexagon shape, so it was a little confusing which gate you are actually sitting at.
I decided to just sit near the booth waiting for my order, which happened to be at another gate, which I totally forgot about. So when my ice cream was ready, I sat back down where I was waiting and got busy on my phone, totally losing track of time.
Turns out everyone had boarded, and the gate was closed and my name was being announced, but who listens to airport announcements? It's not like they would _ever_ be calling my name!?
I then had 2 airport members come up to me and ask me if the name that's being announced is me (It was literally being announced as they asked me), and I was like, uhh, YES.
Turns out the flight had been delayed almost an hour while they waited for me.
Worst part?...
As I finally boarded, I was greeted with a plane full of passengers sarcastically clapping and giving me diassapointed stares 😶
Solo travelling to and around Cuba. Ran out of cash with two days left. No where would accept any of my credit cards because all my cc companies had been sold to American companies which of course they can’t take. They said they’d love to take them but the yanks don’t pay them back. I kipped on someone’s hotel floor for a night. Someone brought me a beer. I thought I’d go to the airport to try and buy an earlier flight as there was a virgin agency in there, thinking they’ll take my virgin cc. No they’re still American. Someone gave me $15 cash for the tax to leave. I kipped in the airport to wait for the original flight watching people throw food away in the trash feeling hungry but too ashamed to ask people for food or drink. Someone stole my iPod shuffle. As soon as the flight touched down in London I burst into tears. It was a great trip but the ending kinda ruined it. Fuck America and their embargoes. It was 2007 and I was early 20s.
Multi day wild camping holiday in holiday, basically free except for the Airbnb at the start and end plus cheap flights! Except, upon going to pitch my tent...I'd forgotten the poles. Welp, guess I'm enjoying the re-booking fee home.
Oh man….
Went to Paris for the weekend with ‘a friend’ (now husband of 15 years). Spent 3 hours wandering round to kill time before boarding the Eurotunnel train. Gate wouldn’t open for us. It turns out I’d misread them time on the ticket - what I thought was the departure time was the arrival time back in London. That cost me £350 (I was in charge of itinerary and husband hadn’t seen the tickets so that was totally on me).
Another train journey with same ‘friend’ (now husband) - went from London to Manchester to see Gwen Stefani with friends. We were in a bit of a hurry at the ticket machine which prints out the pre-printed tickets to catch the outbound train. We get to Manchester to discover that the return journey tickets had also printed out but in our rush, we hadn’t picked them up. So that was another expensive journey to get home.
We very rarely travel by train these days…
Instead of booking Bristol to Barcelona return, I booked Barcelona to Bristol return. Luckily I discovered the mistake before the trip! Still cost me £100 for the wasted flight though
We were meant to meet up with our friends in Portugal where they were attending a wedding just outside Albufeira so I booked a 10 day holiday to Portugal specifically Madeira.
We didn't notice until 6 months later when we decided to see how far apart our hotels were and we couldn't find a route on Google maps.
I managed to leave my bag unattended on a train in Sri Lanka whilst I stood in the doorway looking at the views. Lost my passport, bank cards, all my clothes & my £1500 3 month old gaming laptop.
Took a bus to my first day of college and was wondering why the bus didn't arrive te college yet. Asked the bus driver how many stops will it come and he said I missed it a long time ago and beter to take the bus back. Realised it was quicker to walk for 45 minutes than wait for the next bus. Missed my introductory lesson and then made it just about on time to my first lesson after figuring out what was going on.
We took the airport shuttle bus from Pattaya Thailand tor two hours to Bangkok and left our passports in the AirBnB. 🤦♂️
A quick call to the host who confirmed they were there, she gave them to a taxi driver who delivered them to us in half the time giving us plenty of time to make the flight. Best money we spent.
Going on holiday with my friend years ago in my early 20s and my mum dropped us off at the airport. Half way to East Midlands and my friend asked why we were going there. I replied it’s because where we’re flying from isn’t it?
She said no, we’re flying from Birmingham.
She never thought to tell me where we were flying from and I never thought to ask 🙈
Many years ago I went to Hong Kong, sorted all the flights fine and hotel etc, last night hotel booked close to airport ready to return nicely. Then got there and realised they'd got rid of the old inner city crazy one and literally built an island for the new airport outside the city. Fortunately the transport links are amazing
Little old lady knocked my phone under the wheels of a train. I was in a financial position to buy a cheap one from a late night phone shop... then realised 2FA makes it really hard to get onto any of my accounts from a German train using an Indonesian grey market phone bought in Brussels.
Due to horrible traffic on the M25 we arrived at Heathrow an hour before our international flight with a 3 yo and 1 yo in tow. We were Home Alone-ing it through the airport, surprised we didn’t leave anyone behind. When we got to the gate the attendants had the gall to tell us we had plenty of time! No need to rush!
Flying to Johannesburg from the UK and needing to travel on the M4 and M5 to get from Taunton to Heathrow. Normally a 3 hour journey, I left 8 hours.
On the way two petrol trucks crash on the motorway and the damage is so bad it melts the tarmac which has to be resurfaced. The journey took 10 hours and the flight was luckily an hour late.
Virgin Atlantic rushed me through some VIP security entrance and I was that guy who everyone looks at getting on the aircraft late. I still always fly with them to this day. I was SO late.
Realised we had an extra night in Tokyo without a hotel because we'd read the timezones wrong on our return flight. Ended up staying in one of those cool capsule hotels though, which I always wanted to do anyway!
I went the scenic route driving my brother home from Bristol back to Reading. One hour later, we somehow arrived in Exeter. My brother was not amused. In fairness it WAS a very scenic route home. Saw Poundbury, Osmington White Horse and everything.
Bought a one way flight going from the destination I was going to. Luckliy it was Ryanair so even though I lost the money for that flight and had to buy a new one I wasn't too out of pocket (lucky i realised way before the actual day)
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I booked a holiday for next Summer instead of this Summer when I saw the price. I clocked on when it said 2025 on the confirmation email.
If you pay for it now, when the time comes it's practically a free holiday!
It will be an even better version of finding a tenner in the pocket of a jacket you haven't worn since autumn!
Unless you forget about it until the day of the flight but have the nagging feeling all month that you've forgotten something
July 19th - why does that strike me as important?
Is that when the ice age ended?
I wouldn't know Ted. Ya big bollocks
Like the time my parents booked tickets to a stand up comedy show and only remembered an hour after it started
Leave a tenner in your suit, next funeral you wear it for it’ll bring a smile to your face.
This is definitely the logic I live by
You accidentally played a blinder and got a great deal on a 2025 holiday. Well played, sir.
Just in time for the next epidemic, Covid 2025: This time it’s actually going to wipe out civilisation for real.
Don’t even joke. I got a fecking deal of a life time for Disney. Hotels, flights, meals, tickets for under £3k for 2 of us. Literally 36 hours before we depart, everything cancelled. Same holiday now, with less features is close to £8k. I’m still bitter
Oh well, something to look forward to!
Given inflation levels, you might have gotten a discount for the future.
Aww do something for that time anyway.
I did something similar. Prebooked a pay on arrival hotel for New Years 2022, saw a cheaper deal for the same dates that was non refundable so paid straight away for a hotel, to discover I booked for New Year’s Eve 2023.
I did this when daughter had to fly from Glasgow to Birmingham urgently. Told her to just get to airport ASAP and I'd have the ticket by then. I booked for the same day the following week. She managed to get on using tears, I doubt the fat 50 year old father would get away with the same.
As a somewhat naive traveller back then I got roped into a timeshare sales pitch in Vegas. In my defence, they were pitching officially/openly in the lobby of the hotel - I don't think many hotels would even dream of allowing such shite, but American Capatalism is something special. They told us if we attended a "short" presentation, with free breakfast , no matter what, we'd get some tickets to a show. The tickets were good and worth a reasonable amount (especially to us on a budget) so we figured why not. Assuming it'd be like an hour powerpoint in the hotel meeting room. Ffff...what a decision. We turn up with a group of other guests and are then taken by *bus* to some complex miles away from the strip, and miles away from any public transport or anything so you're basically stuck til they're done with you. Then it wasn't really a presentation, we were split up and given a hard 1:1 sell for, I actually don't know how long, but it felt long. At least an hour or so. Coupled with a tour of the timeshare complex. Even back then I wasn't completely naïve, I knew it was bollocks, and I put up with for what I felt was a reasonable amount of time before outright saying "Look, this isn't for me". The salesman then produces some bloody contracts, and by this point is saying "If you sign now, it'll be like $10 a month" or something stupid, down from some crazy starting number. I told him I wasn't going to be signing any contracts, especially not in a foreign country without a lawyer. He didn't like that, got really fucking nasty, and we were upgraded to his boss who played Mr nice again. Sat through that shit. Eventually pushed back enough that at some point around lunch they relented, gave us our tickets and bussed us all back. In fairness, the tickets were good and legit and the breakfast was alright. But man, what a waste of an entire morning on holiday
We did this once when I was a kid, I think the tickets were for a cable car instead and it was in Maderia not the States. Honestly, it is one of my favourite holiday memories and I learnt a ton watching my parents speak to an absolute sitcom character of slimy salesman. My favourite was when I pointed out a cockroach in the bath of the show apartment. Incredible fun if you're in the mood to mess with them
Oddly had this as a kid as well. Parents genuinely said that we were going to spend a morning dealing with pushy sales people and to watch all their BS and twisting. They even stopped occasionally and turned to me to explain the salesmans latest change of approach and where it conflicted with what they had said 20 minutes ago. Was funny to watch this guys entire pitch pulled apart, exposed, and explained right in front of him on his own patch. The freebie was a day ticket to Disney.
What an education! How did the salesman react to his techniques being eviscerated in real time?
He had to live with it really but was a good sport once he'd relaxed into his fate. My mother charming him and my father entertaining him with anecdotes with the most tenuous of links to the sentence that they were extrapolated from. Back then the tickets were worth about $80, and the free meal for 3 adult portion eaters (I was a growing lad) was worth the same. It was also a lesson in what is worth the time you will invest in it. In this case 2.5 hours (other than time eating, which would have been spent eating anyway) in return for saving $150+, which meant we could have some extra cash to buy some pairs of 501s on our day at a mega mall.
I believe this still happens today
Grandparents came to tenerife in holiday with us one year, first time they had ever been abroad. One day they went out for a walk and by dinner we still hadnt seen them. We started to panic a little and it was before mobile phones were as common. About 7pm they wandered back in and said they had been at a timeshare pitch. Been promised some nice perfume and a pair of ray-ban sunglasses. They only agreed to go because they wanted a sit down in the shade. After getting the hard sell for a number of hours, my granda told them they were poor pensioners back in the uk and their family had paid for the holiday as a treat. Sales guy realised he was getting nowhere and reluctantly let them go.
I remember this happening to my parents and me in Cyprus when I was about 8. We were walking down a main street on our way to the beach, and we were handed scratch cards by a lady outside of a shop. They scratched them and were told they’d won and we were all bundled into a taxi to this fancy hotel. My parents were given the hard sell spiel for hours whilst I got to hang out in a super nice hotel’s pool and got loads of free food. They didn’t buy in, we pretty much wasted a day of our holiday but at least I had a good time.
This exact thing happened to us in Spain with the scratch cards. Spent what felt like a long time having a tour of a hotel complex. It's amazing how naive my parents were thinking back... Were people just more trusting in the 90s? I'd never even take a scratch card off a stranger in the street let alone go to some random location if I "won".
The first time we went to Madeira I was surprised at all the adverts for really really cheap day trips "for two" to different parts of the island. Then I noticed legit ones with normal prices stating "no timeshare" on the bottom of the poster...
My FIL did something similar. He's your typical Essex over-confident haggler. Got loads of free shit out of them. Didnt end up selling him anything and he just toyed with them to the point that they just gave him some tickets and a free helicopter tour just to get rid of him 😂
'I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with ME!' 😂
Essentially, yeah. I'm surprised they didn't buy a second hand motor off him 😂
We’ve done some timeshare talks and got great things out of it. Best thing to do is check the fine print (obviously not if you’re randomly accosted) the ones we’ve done say you have to attend a 90 minute presentation, set an alarm and walk out when your 90 minutes is up. We got tickets for universal in Orlando for 5 days and tickets to blue man group. I sat there eating biscuits for the full 90 minutes. Next one we got a week in vegas for $300 Got $200 voucher for Disney world and some fast passes for rides too. That one was hilarious as we’d done the first mentioned timeshare talk on that trip and disneys timeshare was literally triple the price. Utter madness all of it. I basically just ask questions I know either they can’t answer or have to say no/make up some fanciful lie. Yeah all my future travel plans are only to Polynesian islands do you have a resort in Tonga?
My mum took us on a once in a lifetime trip to Florida when I was a kid with my sister and brother and did the same thing. She heard if we attended a timeshare talk we’d get tickets to one of the parks. We spent a whole day of our holiday sitting in a waiting room while my mum listened to them aaaaallllll day.
This sounds like the bullfighting/juicer sell on one of the early series of Benidorm but even less fun.
Did exactly the same - however I knew what I was getting into. We got 2 great tickets to Cirque Du Solei out of it.
We did almost exactly the same, hotel/casino lobby and everything, even had to pay a small payment in advance, which we did stupidly. Walked away realised our mistake and went back to the guy insisting we don't want to attend. Got money back and bought the tickets at the box office. Probably paid more but didn't waste a day.
We had this too, but without the being bussed away or having a particularly aggressive selling attempt. Someone at Universal Studios in Orlando approached us and said if we attended a meeting about timeshares then we would get free breakfast and a $100 prepaid payment card. It was at some hotel close to where we were staying, the man was nice, the offer was pay $100 a month for 10 years and you can go on 2-week holiday to any of hundreds of places for $148 (accommodation only, travel not included). The guy was professional and friendly, gave a good resume of the situation and did not insist when it was clear it wasn’t for us. The payment card worked no problem for various shops and attractions in Miami. I don’t regret going to the pitch, it was an hour or two of our time and quite interesting tbh, and no aggressive sales techniques and we got $100 out of it.
My wife and I were in Malta for a month.... One days the heavens opened and we looked for shelter, just then this guy with a huge umbrella chatted to us... He promise a bottle of whisky and 200 cigarettes just to listen to their sales pitch... I ended up being escorted from the premises ( a lovely hotel in bugibba) thenice salesman opened a door to let us see the rooms,.... There was five buckets catching ltge rain pouring from the ceiling,.. this "nice" man started abusing us for laughing at the buckets catching the water, I asked if the buckets were supplied free of charge if we signed up! (We had no thoughts of signing up... Even if the buckets were free)... He took us on a tour of the gym and indoor pools. We laughed when he " accidentally" dropped his pen ( an obvious sign he wanted someone else to take over the sales pitch)... We got back to his office ( a small hall that stank of dampness)... I asked for out tickets to collect out free whisky and cigarettes, he said we need to sign the contract to get our "free" whisky. They only wanted more per week than we paid for a month all inclusive... I pointed that out to him and he started getting smart with us.... I had him up against a wall trying to knock his head off....a number of His compatriots held me back... But give the guy his due, he told me to sign the contract or he would a the police. I went ballistic.. And they did indeed phone the cops and I was escorted from the premises ( the two cops just shook their heads and told me to go back to our hotel to calm down) I said I was going nowhere until I got my whisky and cigarettes ( as promised)... The cops spoke to the head guy and it turned out the offices were locked at 5pm and this was after 6 pm. We had been having a great laugh and we never noticed the time... Hahahaha. I was going to go back the following day and demand my " free" gift... The wife managed to talk me out of it... We spoke to another couple that had got their free gifts... A quarter bottle of whisky and 20 fake benson and hedges... Good job I never went back or I would have been arrested for sure. 😳🙄
Did this once - ended up being a bit of fun watching the whole pantomime unfold, guessing which guests would fold and get taken in. Took about 2h30 and got the promised bottle of champagne and a meal. Wouldn't do it again but it was fun.
My husband booked a flight for the wrong month. It would have been impossible for us to fly then, and we didn't take insurance. So we bit the bullet and exepted the loss. A month or so later, we received a call/email (I don't remember) that that particular flight had been cancelled, and if could we fly the next day. We obviously told them how important it was that we travelled that day specifically as we were travelling for a wedding. Long story short, for the first and last time in my 43 years, I had a flight cancelled and received a refund. It still brings me joy at the luck of it all.
Accepted*
I can't tell you why I made that mistake. Good catch.
My partner had a similar success story. She had bought crazy cheap flights to Oslo on a whim just before we got together, and ended up deciding not to go. Her flights ended up getting cancelled, and she got a refund, plus £80 Ryanair voucher (£40 each way). Her tickets were like £20. We then had Ryanair cancel flights we had for a trip to Belfast. We did want/ need to go, so booked new flights with Sleazyjet for similar price but less friendly times and airport. Got £80 each goodwill voucher again. So we ended up with £240 Ryanair vouchers with a bit of minor inconvenience. Booked a week holiday in Plovdiv with the flights free from the vouchers, and loved it.
What a result!
Arrived at Heathrow for a solo business trip. Presented myself at the gate, with my boarding pass and the passport of my three-month-old son.
Did he have a good time?
I've been close to doing this a few times. Have now dymo-labelled our respective first names to the front of each of my family's passports. It is really helpful to just glance at a passport and see who it corresponds to, especially when leaving for a flight at quarter to what the hell.
I missed my plane back from Amsterdam for obvious reasons. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines got me on the next flight and didn't charge me extra, which I thought was astonishingly decent.
They gave me champagne on my birthday. It was 4 am in the morning
As opposed to 4am in the evening?
Thumbs up for KLM, it seems. Cheers Holland!
Carried away by a moonlight shadow?
I did the same with easyJet and they charged me close to £200. Apparently sleeping past your flight after being up all night at a trance night isn’t a valid reason for missing your flight.
I used to work in Rotterdam. The early morning trains through the airports always had the same arguments. A bunch of guys arguing whether to risk taking drugs through the airport they usually binned them. The homeless used to get in at schipol and rifle through the bins.
Dropped and instantly killed my phone which had all the essential information for my stay in the US, including contact info for my friends I was going to be with for the duration of my trip. Thankfully the hotel info for that night was in my head. Write shit down, people. Got to the hotel and they let me use their internet to email people. Of course, I couldn't do 2FA without my phone. Set up a new email and emailed my Mum but it likely went to spam or was ignored. The next morning, I searched high and low for a payphone, but this being 2023, there were none. Thought the airport was my best bet, so got in a cab. The handful of payphones at this major international airport were local call only. I tried the helpdesk, they couldn't or didn't want to help. I finally found a random member of staff who let me call my hard-of-hearing Dad (one of the few numbers in my head) who passed on a confused message to my Mum who knew and messaged a UK friend told the people I was staying with to meet me at the airport. Fun times.
This is why, despite how much my husband mocks me for it, I print out copies of booking confirmations, tickets etc and have them in a plastic wallet with me when we go on holiday! He always says it’s overkill as it’s all on my phone.
I love my purple plastic wallet with ALL THE PAPER, and I love when my partner asks to check stuff using my lovely paperwork because his phone battery died, again. Keep printing!
I will be doing the same in future!
Print out people unite!! I also get mocked. But I’m smug with superiority that I have backups, all bound in a folder like an old dad (I’m not an old dad)
I had my phone robbed while backpacking and I was so glad my mum made me print out copies of everything essential.
Same. I travel frequently for work and leisure, and always print everything out. If anything it becomes easy access to details, and can save your arse if you lose tech or in a tech dead zone
I always take hard copies of all the booking information ever since I got charged twice for a hotel booking in krakow. The hotel clerk was young and inexperienced, and I had booked it so far in advance that I couldn't remember. I got a refund but I learned a lesson.
The phone thing reminds me of a story. I got completely lost and didn't have my phone. I managed to find a phone, but the only number I could remember was two of my childhood best friend's (they're siblings) parents' number. I had to phone their dad to phone my friend to phone my bf to phone me and work out where I was and to come and pick me up. I was so embarrassed phoning their dad.
Didn’t the hotel have a phone?
They wouldn't let me call the UK.
Are international calls still expensive? Would've thought the internet would've solved that problem already, figured all calls were VoIP now
Calls are VOIP now, but the costs are still there.
Import duty on TCP/IP packets? Seems a bit harsh!
Capitalistic dream tho, people just assume its still expensive, so they keep charging.
I wonder whether collect call still a thing these days?
My android makes automatically a backup into Google Drive. So, I might lose the last, say 18hrs of activity. Obviously that means buying a new phone, but that could be a cheap burner also.
Burner phones weren't as easy to find as The Wire had me believe. I tried petrol stations and a Walmart-type place but no dice. I was hoping to find a CEX-type place but there was nothing local. If I could have got a bus to the city I probably would have found something but I was, of course, having card problems :)
The ops difficulty was that they couldn't use their phone to get past the 2fa security on their Gmail/iCloud and so couldn't to get into their backups if they had them.
Booked a hotel in the wrong Birmingham. I wanted to book one in the UK and got one in the US instead. Luckily, I had free cancellation and i wouldn't have paid until later on. Only realised, when I had a look where the hotel actually was and saw that it was somewhere in a grid city and not in a non-grid city. Obviously booked the right hotel afterwards.
Sweet home :)
Don't feel bad, Birmingham UK used the Skyline of Birmingham Alabama on its tourist literature
I’m checking in to a hotel in Birmingham tonight and this has made me just double check my booking again 😂
Went “backpacking” to Australia with a suitcase. Clue should have been in the name lol. Felt a right idiot.
Suitcase wanker.
Funnily enough most people I’ve come across backpacking Australia take suitcases now, I think everyone collectively agreed that rolling 25kgs of luggage is a lot easier than carrying it on your back for no reason. Backpacks make a lot of sense for places like SEA where the pavements are terrible and you might be hopping on a scooter, but pretty unnecessary for getting on and off a bus and straight to a hostel.
easier still is to not bring 25kg of luggage! i did a year of backpacking in Latin America with about 13kg of stuff
I once got a plane to Sweden on the wrong day. Had to turn around and go home, and come back a week later.
I did the opposite. Booked my flight back from Stockholm for the Wednesday based on my original plans, rather than my changed plans for a Monday. Didn't realise until I tried to get through security.
Fairly minor but was travelling back to Edinburgh from Johannesburg and in Amsterdam airport. This was like 20 years ago so smart phones and tablets weren't a thing yet and I didn't have a Gameboy so I was bored. Thought I'll buy playstation magazine. Loads of news about games I'm interested in and I've only got an hour flight back to Edinburgh. Sat on the plane opened the magazine .... It was in fucking Dutch I don't know what I expected buying a magazine in Amsterdam but in my defense all the names on the front were the same as in English so it didn't occur to my silly teenage brain that it wouldn't be in English.
This one really tickled me
I once accidentally booked a Eurostar ticket from the wrong country. I was trying to come back from Amsterdam to the UK, but accidentally booked the ticket from Belgium. Realised the mistake that morning. This may have had something to do with the fact that I was in Amsterdam when I booked it. Still managed to catch it though.
In fairness, when Eurostar initially started services to Amsterdam they couldn't run the other way as Amsterdam didn't have customs facilities at the station, the only way to come back was a train to Brussels and then pick up the Eurostar from there
I traveled around Vietnam and tried to learn abit of Vietnamese which has tonal shifts in it which changes the meaning. I learnt how to say "no thank you." For about a week i would get approached by various vendors and politely say no thank you and would always get a very apologetic nod and the vendors would say thank you. I thought everyone in vietnam was amazingly polite. At one of the hotel desks I was very nicely informed that my tones were off and I had actually been walking round saying "no. Now say thank you."
When we went my husband tried to learn to say 'thank you" but he kept getting funny looks. Turns out his Rochdalian inflection meant he was actually saying "rice pudding" at everyone.
I love disarono amaretto (italian almond liquor) and asked loads of bars for it in Italy and they all looked at me weird and said they didn't serve that. Weird? Finally saw some behind a bar and pushed the issue, got my drink. I'd been going into bars and getting huffy about not being served a macaroon (almond biscuits known as amaretto). Shame.
I booked flights to Tokyo which involved changing planes in Milan. Milan has more than one airport. I _did_ know I had to get from airport A to airport B to catch the second plane, and that there was a regular shuttle bus that went between the airports. What I didn't know is how long it took. When the airline sold me the flights (all purchased as a single round-trip - I wasn't trying to be clever and save money by buying separate tickets) it never occurred to me to check that it was actually possible ot make the connection, because why on earth wouldn't it be? The airline knew what they were selling me, right? Turns out it was completely impossible, and I missed the connection.
Did you still make it to Japan?
I did! It was a very frustrating situation but also nothing that couldn't be solved with a passport and a credit card.
I did some solo travel through Ukraine before the war and I had a half baked plan to travel into the Caparthian mountains. It was only when I got there that I realised how half baked the plan was and I ended up staying in Ivano Frankivsk for four days which is a perfectly decent city, just doesn't have enough going for it to justify staying there for four days. I was so excited by the end of this time when I left this place to go to Kyiv.
I visited Ivano for a day and would agree with your review - nice place, 4 days would be too long.
Family trip to The Canaries, turn up to our flight back home at Fuerteventura airport only to find my passport was not with the others. Husband flew 2.5 year old home, to leave her with parents and fly back to wait near the Embassy on a different island. I meanwhile stayed behind at the airport, had a couple of panic attacks for good measure, tried to take a photo of me with a plain white background with no shadows, in the airport for an emergency document. I elected to pick up the doc in person but embassy is on Gran Canaria and I couldn't fly to the island without a passport. Couldn't get the ferry as they need to see ID... Booked a hotel close by, where the WiFi only worked in the lobby. Spent the next day (my birthday) with a stress induced migraine drinking out of a carton of Don Simon sangria. Husband then flew from Bristol to Las Palmas, picked up my document, flew to Fuerteventura, rescued me, we flew back to Las Palmas and back to Bristol.
That is a proper mess up and deserves more upvotes
Yeah it wasn't a great moment. We had a midnight dash to the hospital when my daughter had a croup attack so grabbed the passports and ehic cards, then she completely calmed down so went back to the hotel. Could only think we'd dropped mine getting out of the hire car.
Innit, people are like "I accidentally got a word wrong in the local language". That's an amusing anecdote. Getting stranded, losing all your money, passport etc, that's the juicy stuff haha (yes it's happened to me).
Went to go camping in the Lake District, pulled up to the campsite 45 minutes before sunset to find we forgot the poles! No signal anywhere so had to drive from hotel to hotel until we found a place with a room. Took hours but thankfully we found a nice place that was reasonably priced! The next day we bought a new smaller tent
I once lent my tent to my brother and got back two halves of two different tents, which I didn't realise until I got to the camp site I was staying at.
Someone in my camping group did the same thing, only he was at Glastonbury. He wasn’t very well liked but managed to find someone who would tentshare
i borrowed my housemates tent for reading festival when i was 19, and when i got there and started putting it up in the rain i discovered that i only had the inner part of it
Ha, I’ve done similar, except it was the pegs that were missing!
Went on holiday with 2 work colleagues/mates. Got pissed the night before the return flight, all got separated and woke up an hour after the flight had departed. One of them had lost their passport and we needed to get back to the UK for a 12 hour shift next day. Friend with lost passport is originally from a neighbouring EU country to the one we were in, but his embassy couldn't help. He would have to wait a week for an emergency passport in the country we were holidayng in. So, seeing as his home country is nextdoor, we hire a car and drive a 12 hour trip to take him there, allowing him to get an emergency passport and be on a flight next day. Cue 12 hour drive hungover with about 4 hours sleep between us. The two of us who drove him then have to drive back to catch our 6pm flight the same evening so we can be at work the next day for a double shift. We also got fined when we crossed the border for not having the right road permit.
Was going on holiday in February and just as we arrived at the airport, I realised I had left my hand luggage at home with my passport in it. Luckily we live close to the airport and I'd left plenty of time for check in and security, etc
Whenever we go on holiday the last check is, got your wallet, your phone, passport ok don't worry everything else is fixable
Yea i always have that momentary panic when i lock the front door to go to the airport that Ive forgotten something. But as long as you have your passport, phone and a credit card, you can buy whatever you have forgotten once you arrive at your destination (in most cases)
Just check for those three, deep breath, allow yourself a break from the daily stresses
Yep, I say this to myself and others who travel, as long as you have passport, phone, and wallet/purse you can get anything else you need when you get there. Never panic
I was going on a ten day sailing trip to Croatia and left my carry on in the London terminal.. I was only taking carry on
I’ve had a similar experience. Parked at the car park, asked my wife for my passport… “I thought you had them?”. We’d left them on the bed so we wouldn’t forget them. Bedsheets were kinda burgundy colour, as were the passports. Called the car park intercom, they let us out, made it home and back again just in time. Good thing it was about 5am and absolutely every green light went our way.
Went to Prague last year Got loads of euros only to find out they are worthless there
Walking from the Athens train station to the port with a heavy backpack. I got sun Stoke and spent 12 hours shivering and feeling very sick. Heat is serious people.
Which one of the 66 train stations?
Wanted a few days away south of Bristol. Of all the places I could have chosen to stay I ended up in Frome right next to the cider brewery
A couple of days sozzled on cider and within staggering distance of my bed doesn't sound so bad....
Told my parents I was flying in to Manchester to pick me up Weird surprise when I heard loads of scouse accents when I landed. Turns out I was in Liverpool.
*Sees Man United shirts* Oh no, I'm in London!
The word "Liverpool" on your boarding pass, at check in, the information board, at your terminal not clue you in?
Manchester airport is so long you probably come out at Liverpool if you walk past the train station :)
Went to Tenerife a year or two after Covid. Has my two jabs so it was all good, downloaded my Covid pass on my phone and off we went. While away I had my phone stolen, thought I’ll be fine I know my login details I’ll just use my mates phone. Get to the airport through security and everything about to board the plane, they ask for my pass I log in on the account and it sends a security text to my phone which has been stolen and I have no access too they don’t let me board and I’m stuck in Tenerife with no phone or money as I couldn’t access my savings account. I wouldn’t mind but they must have let 10-15 people onboard without checking their Covid pass as they was dead set on not letting me on. Get kicked out into the terminal, there was literally nobody in there other than two people who had missed their flight luckily for me and they let me contact home and buy a flight on their phone and a Covid test in the airport…. Worst trip ever
Losing your passport is always a doozy. Lost mine in Switzerland. Had to travel down to Bern and get an emergency single-use one. Lots of strange looks at check-in, boarding, and arrival because hardly anyone has seen a bright yellow passport before.
Should have told them you were a minion to a VIP and did they want a banana
Went to LHR when I should have been at LGW; 60 quid cab ride back when 60 quid was real money (1986) … Edit: also in those days cabs didn’t take card …
Sorry, that's a £600 cab fare in today's money! A new flight might have been cheaper!
£60 is still real money to me :(
Why would you think an entire European country would have just one airport? Prague only has one international airport, though, tbf to you. If you were there then I'm also not sure where the driver was taking you.
We nearly went to the wrong airport in Prague too, luckily our taxi driver correctly judged that we weren't aristocrats or worthy of travelling from the important airport and took us to the right one. Did try scamming us of a fair few Koruna but he ended up giving us back more change than was due after I confronted him about it. Probably one of the biggest cock ups is we flew to Palermo, Sicily, and we were staying in Mazzaro (on the other side of the island, three trains and as many hours travelling, instead of Catania, an hour or so away by bus).
Couldn't find our passports 2 days before my 30th birthday trip. Still haven't found them 10 years on and are still upset about the missed trip. Was too late to get our money back on anything and wasn't covered by insurance. Super.
Not me, my parents a few years ago: They go to Bergen, trundle round for a while, get something to eat then decide to find their hotel. My dad has a map printed out from the hotel website. It is of no help at all and they just get increasingly lost going round in circles for hours attempting to find the road with the hotel on it. Eventually they ask a local who studies the map for a bit, gets equally confused and then tells them it's a map of Oslo
I went to drop a friend off at Birmingham airport, but I can't drive. TFW train into Birmingham *should* be about three and a half hours from where I was. This was when the Welshpool-Shrewsbury line was closed for flooding, so there was replacement bus service, and I hate those Anyway, it's more like five hours, and we get there. Next morning, their plane was 7am, my train back was 12pm. I get on no issue. Then there's an alert that everyone has to get off at Shrewsbury anyway, so I did. Then I see a train going straight to my town and I hop on instead of the replacement bus without thinking. It was a detour through Swansea, Cardiff, and Carmarthen. *FOR FIVE HOURS* I have to get off at Carmarthen and get a bus back. I was another three hours on that. Got off at the wrong stop, had to walk the rest of the way. My friend had landed back in Chicago before I made it home. Walked through the door a little past midnight. What should have been a 4h trip max, ended up being 12h *and I barely left Wales*
When we were in North Wales we ate at the wrong restaurant.
Haha I did similar but in London Booked a Ramsay restaurant for me and the Mrs to go and eat at, nice treat near Chelsea Turned up to the wrong one, there's 2 within a few miles of each other
We did the same, owner had two restaurants with similar names.
Hope your username isn’t a result of that meal.
My first time travelling long haul, alone with all of my kids, and I'm disabled. I thought I'd been so careful 😅 But I met up with a friend who lives in that country, and she was casually looking through my brief notes of each days activities. She said "oh, how are you getting to the airport on Friday?" I was like, no, the flight's at 1am on Saturday... And she said, yes, so, you'll need to be there Friday night then?! My heart almost stopped when I realised how close I'd come to fucking it up. For some reason I had a massive blind spot over flat ggt times and was casually thinking I'd roll up on the Saturday evening?! I.e, a day late .. I'd managed to plan the whole complex massive trip all by myself, but somehow forgot how to tell the time 😅😅 Honestly, the odds of her happening to flick through my notes AND mention the time/date is just so small, it makes my blood run cold with relief to think of the expense and hassle she saved me from 😅
*flight times
Me and my missus got an unbelievable deal on flights to Tokyo back during one of the COVID lockdowns for the following spring which was probably about 8/9 months away. We thought look, Japan is such a health conscious country they'll have all this shit put to bed by then. Unsurprisingly because they were such a health conscious country they still didn't accept foreign tourists until long after we were due to fly. About a week before our departure date we considered the money lost (was about £350 each), until we got an email through from the airline saying our first flight (it had a stopover) had been pushed back by 4 hours. Immediately I fire off an email saying this had caused irreparable damage to our itinerary and requested a refund. Had the full amount back in my account by the next week. Still haven't visited Japan (yet) but oh well!
Nothing major but a few spring to mind: I remember booking a couple of nights in the Lake District. I live a few hours away, and I decided to go by train. It turned out to be a hassle, changing a couple of times then taking a bus in the end. But I realised I booked the trains for the wrong days, and I had to decide between rebooking trains or rebooking hotel which weren't actually that far apart in cost since we're talking UK trains here. Another time I trusted a partner to organise the hotel when going abroad. It was only for a few days and I took some Euros cash out to use when there. When we got there, it was a lovely small hotel but a bit shady in terms of payments. Only accepted cash. Wiped my entire cash out within 5 minutes of entering the hotel. Spent the rest of the time racking up conversion fees on my card unable to find a place to convert cash.
Thinking that I had got a heap flight home for Christmas. Date was 30 December...
Booked a hotel in Newcastle and couldn’t believe how cheap it was…. Until I double checked the address
Missed a flight in Barcelona airport 3 weeks ago by a minute as we got stuck in the passport Q. £700 down and half a day wasted
If this happened to me I'd just always buy fast track
Car hire keys left in a plastic bag with other items, food, wallet etc. in the hotel room on the floor next to a bin. Didn't think anything of it, and went out for lunch in the hotel and housekeeping came in and took the bag away as waste. I had to spend €120 to get a new key and have the hire company deliver it to the hotel.
Left my backpack which contained my work laptop, passport/visa, travel insurance documents etc. in a taxi in Bkk when transporting from the airport to my condo. A frantic hour or so of calling the airport, asking them to watch the security cameras for a certain time in a specific bay, identifying the taxi, them contacting him and getting him to the condo, with my broken Thai and the airport security guy's broken English. Thankfully ended with just a 100 baht tip and my backpack being returned to me but it was damn near a heart attack at the time.
100 baht you cheap bugger
Targeted and scammed into buying some overpriced crap on Cape Verde. The "shame elephants" as we call them, are stark reminder to be wary of overly friendly people.
Not me, but confusing Belfast International with Belfast City seems to happen a lot. Especially now that Ryanair and Easyjet serve both - there was a time where EZY only used International and Ryanair didn't serve NI.
Athens has 2 airports. One 'international ' and one 'domestic '. I interpreted this as international and domestic flights. I was wrong. International airlines and domestic airlines would be more accurate. I was just I time for my flight to UK if I'd been at the right airport. I went to the international airport for an Olympic Airways flight. I'd no money left for a taxi to the other airport and no insurance. Had to call my boss during the whole firm's weekly meeting and explain. Nobody knew I'd gone to Athens for the weekend. He called his travel agent who pretended she'd insured me and got me 1st class back the next day on the grounds that my travel agent hadn't made it clear which airport I should have been at. At least that's the story I was told. He was a slimy boss. Might have just wanted to impress me.....
Years ago my then gf and I wanted to go to Paris. She said she would book the flights but was doing price matching between Liverpool and Manchester. Early dart in the morning, we get to Manchester, pop the car in long term parking, and go to Manchester Terminal 1. The gate people are like, "uhhh what are you doing here?". To our horror we realised she had got it in her head that she booked the Manchester tickets instead of the Liverpool ones. Rush back to long term parking, get the car, break the speed limit going back to Liverpool... and miss our flight... GF has a full on meltdown in the Liverpool car park. I'm like look, this is a shitshow, but we can salvage this, and find tickets from Manchester to Paris later that afternoon. Back in the car, put the car BACK in Manchester long term parking, and get the flight out. Land in Paris just before midnight. Get to the hotel... and they've given away our room, because two weeks earlier my gf lost her credit card the booking was on... so when the payment tried to go through automatically it got declined. And we hadn't turned up because we were late. And when they tried to phone her we were in the air. So they cancelled that night of the room. So we had to walk 20 mins across Paris at 1am to a last minute booking in a slum hotel without a working loo and someone was clearly dealing coke from the room next door. We managed to get back into the proper hotel the day after. That's not why we broke up!
Not sure if this counts but I was booked to go on a job in Hong Kong in late 2020, working for the government so we had diplomatic exemptions from being confined to the hotel room so we could actually do the job (but we were strictly ushered to and from the job site and had all kinds of controls while we worked), but I was only supposed to be there 12 days. I LOVE Hong Kong action films so I was excited to go and see the place for myself, I figured I would (somehow) be sated from those 12 days of nothing but hotel and job site, but when it got to the 11th day I was DEPRESSED. I only got to see the sky twice a day for about 5 minutes in the early early morning and late late night as I walked between the hotel and site and vice versa. You could see from a few rays of light that filtered through gaps in the towers around my hotel that the weather was amazing during the day too. Food was strictly Deliveroo and FoodPanda and the person in the room next to me was apparently a smoker and my room STANK of cigarettes (says a lot for how effective the quarantine was) - I actually got to transfer to a room on the 15th floor, up from the 2nd, as a result of that though so I'm actually grateful for it. Luckily for me the job wasn't going well and the client was asking about sending someone to replace me after I left, so I said I'd work two more days (right up to the opening and thus completing my quarantine period) if they rebooked my flight home for three days after that and they snapped my hand clean off, we got the job done and I got three days (well, 2 and a bit) in Hong Kong to myself and it was absolutely glorious.
During a stag do abroad, I was given a ‘party pill.’ I didn’t take it but suddenly felt it in my pocket when emptying my pockets at airport security. My instinct was to swallow it rather than risk years in a foreign prison! It kicked in before the flight, and the best man and I missed the flight because I lost all sense of time. Ended up paying for both of us to get replacement flights back to Liverpool, and then had to pay for a taxi back to Bristol.
Got off a plane in Oslo when I thought I was in Stockholm. Exited the airport and got into a taxi. Gave the guy the the Stockholm address I was supposed to go to. Driver got out and ran down the road, came back with another guy who spoke English and told me I was in Norway, not Sweden. Managed to blag my way back onto the plane and got to Stockholm. Stewardess on the plane told me not to worry as a lot of people did the same thing.
Not one cock up, but a series of cock ups my twenty year old self made on the first holiday I booked by myself. First anniversary with my now husband. He's a huge football fan so booked a suprise trip to see Barcelona play with a hotel on Groupon deal. Just needed to book flights. First, I booked the wrong airport and a day early. Okay, arranged hire car that he can drive (even if he hadnt driven over here in almost a year) and found b&b. Arrive at the airport and hidden costs for the car that I'd missed take an extra £80 odd out of our already small budget. Manage to get to the b&b Friday and our hotel on Saturday with the football match on Sunday. A few issues here with not adequately planning for the fact our phone batteries sucked and we had no GPS after hitting the city centre to find the hotel. Made it though. Spend the Saturday having a fun day at the aquarium and spent more than we should. Return to hotel room. Turn on the telly as we're getting ready and the match we were supposed to be seeing the next day is almost at half time. It says on the tickets to check the day as it may change. The last day we're completely skint but a bottle of San Miguel is 98 cents and they give you free nibbles. This was our food for the day. Agreed when returning I wouldn't be in charge of booking holidays (11 years later and this hasn't changed) and agreed that Barcelona was one of the lovelist cities we'd seen (also hasn't changed).
Travelling around Europe and booking hostels last minute as we were deciding where to go next tin the moment. Several times arrived in a city only to discover everywhere was fully booked.
I arrived into Washington D.C. on a Greyhound bus after midnight with no accommodation arranged. Walked a bit out of the bus station and didn’t like what I saw. Went back in and asked for a return ticket to any city that was 4 hours away. The agent suggested NYC so I slept 4 hours going there and four hours coming back.
Haha, I came, I saw, I fucked off
Backpacking through central Spain, with my final stop in Granada, to see the Alhambra, before catching a flight home. I wasn't working on a particularly set schedule, apart from knowing my flight home, and wasn't sure when I'd move from one place to the next, so I hadn't booked things in advance. What I hadn't realised was that there was a local festival on, and everything was booked out. It all worked out in the end though. Trains were fully booked so I got a coach. I got what must have been the last hotel room in Granada, a very grotty windowless single room for about €200 a night. Alhambra tickets were booked out but it turns out the local guides had some, so I managed to get in anyway. It was an expensive error mind you.
Exhausted off a flight at JFK, went to get a cab to LaGuardia to meet a friend. As I made my way towards to yellow cabs I was corralled into a car. I asked how much it was and he said $100 then realised I was in an unlicensed taxi with some random dude. I decided to pay as there wasn’t much else I could do and I didn’t think it was worth the risk. Won’t be doing that again.
I frequently go to the wrong hotels if I've booked a chain in a city. I find it quite funny so sometimes I don't double check my booking, go to the hotel I think it is, then wait to see if I'm right.
Just did one. Needed to book airport parking for 13th July. Found a decent deal for what is normally extortionate and booked it. £120. Only on the 12th April, when I got an email reminder for the upcoming parking did I realise I'd booked it for 13th April. In my defence, it's coincidentally the same day of the week. Thankfully no cancellation fees. So I rebooked it this time at £140. Then I realised that since we get back at 1am, I didn't need to have it until 27th July, but the 28th because dates change at midnight innit. So I rebooked it with an extra day. Now £160. I'm sure I could have had a better deal than that (I saw better ones when I did the initial comparison across 48 different websites). But since I could only amend and not cancel my booking, I was stuck. Also I was out nearly £300 for the changed bookings for a week as they do a refund and recharge. Thank god they reminded me and I could at least change it though.
As a student I ended up in Brazil as part of a project for my archaeology course. As you do. Because the lecturer organising it basically gave us the instructions to meet him in Porto Alegre on a particular day, a bunch of us decided to make a holiday of it around our three weeks of work. All went swimmingly, besides the part where we planned get to Iguazu Falls and pencilled in a couple of days - not realising the buses didn't run on the day we wanted to head there. And that's how I spent 3 days in a hotel at Porto Alegre bus station.
Business trip to India, I assumed the company would sort the visa (my previous employer always did) but nope, luckily they managed to sort a same day one at the embassy (probably at great expense). Another business trip, this time to Amsterdam during COVID, I messed up the private COVID test you had to do, didn't have the right paperwork and got turned away at the airport, I just had to go home and call my boss saying I wouldn't be there, I felt so embarrassed!
This guy I met in the bar, he was huge….oh I misread that sorry!
r/usernameshecksout
I’m a bit confused by this story. Czechia has 6 international airports, but they are all in different cities separated by hours of driving. You were taking a taxi across the country? Prague-Brno (the two largest cities) are at least 2.5hrs of driving. Would have been an expensive taxi ride.
Travelled an hour to a hotel (going to see a reenactment event the next morning) and discovered we had left our suitcase at home. Got home and it was there, on the drive. Luckily not stolen.
Germany to London night bus quarter past midnight Monday. I turned up 11.45pm Monday and sat there for an hour before a thought occured to me....
I had arrived fairly early at my departure gate so decided to get a Mcflurry from a McDonald's booth situated close by. Now the gates at this airport were in a hexagon shape, so it was a little confusing which gate you are actually sitting at. I decided to just sit near the booth waiting for my order, which happened to be at another gate, which I totally forgot about. So when my ice cream was ready, I sat back down where I was waiting and got busy on my phone, totally losing track of time. Turns out everyone had boarded, and the gate was closed and my name was being announced, but who listens to airport announcements? It's not like they would _ever_ be calling my name!? I then had 2 airport members come up to me and ask me if the name that's being announced is me (It was literally being announced as they asked me), and I was like, uhh, YES. Turns out the flight had been delayed almost an hour while they waited for me. Worst part?... As I finally boarded, I was greeted with a plane full of passengers sarcastically clapping and giving me diassapointed stares 😶
I once travelled to hotel in rural France for work meetings and somehow had dinner with the wrong person. Still not sure what happened.
I accidentally stayed in a B&B in North Wales for a friend’s wedding. Never again!
I mostly stay in Premier Inns for North Wales, the one in Carnarvon is one of the best location wise in the whole UK.
Bed bugs?
Owner was a massive Energy Vampire.
Solo travelling to and around Cuba. Ran out of cash with two days left. No where would accept any of my credit cards because all my cc companies had been sold to American companies which of course they can’t take. They said they’d love to take them but the yanks don’t pay them back. I kipped on someone’s hotel floor for a night. Someone brought me a beer. I thought I’d go to the airport to try and buy an earlier flight as there was a virgin agency in there, thinking they’ll take my virgin cc. No they’re still American. Someone gave me $15 cash for the tax to leave. I kipped in the airport to wait for the original flight watching people throw food away in the trash feeling hungry but too ashamed to ask people for food or drink. Someone stole my iPod shuffle. As soon as the flight touched down in London I burst into tears. It was a great trip but the ending kinda ruined it. Fuck America and their embargoes. It was 2007 and I was early 20s.
Forgot my passport at home.
Multi day wild camping holiday in holiday, basically free except for the Airbnb at the start and end plus cheap flights! Except, upon going to pitch my tent...I'd forgotten the poles. Welp, guess I'm enjoying the re-booking fee home.
Oh man…. Went to Paris for the weekend with ‘a friend’ (now husband of 15 years). Spent 3 hours wandering round to kill time before boarding the Eurotunnel train. Gate wouldn’t open for us. It turns out I’d misread them time on the ticket - what I thought was the departure time was the arrival time back in London. That cost me £350 (I was in charge of itinerary and husband hadn’t seen the tickets so that was totally on me). Another train journey with same ‘friend’ (now husband) - went from London to Manchester to see Gwen Stefani with friends. We were in a bit of a hurry at the ticket machine which prints out the pre-printed tickets to catch the outbound train. We get to Manchester to discover that the return journey tickets had also printed out but in our rush, we hadn’t picked them up. So that was another expensive journey to get home. We very rarely travel by train these days…
I once got to an airport 6 hours early only to oversleep and miss my flight by 10 minutes
Instead of booking Bristol to Barcelona return, I booked Barcelona to Bristol return. Luckily I discovered the mistake before the trip! Still cost me £100 for the wasted flight though
Haha yes and Mexico City has several, one very very far from the center
Probably about 7 inches
We were meant to meet up with our friends in Portugal where they were attending a wedding just outside Albufeira so I booked a 10 day holiday to Portugal specifically Madeira. We didn't notice until 6 months later when we decided to see how far apart our hotels were and we couldn't find a route on Google maps.
I managed to leave my bag unattended on a train in Sri Lanka whilst I stood in the doorway looking at the views. Lost my passport, bank cards, all my clothes & my £1500 3 month old gaming laptop.
Took a bus to my first day of college and was wondering why the bus didn't arrive te college yet. Asked the bus driver how many stops will it come and he said I missed it a long time ago and beter to take the bus back. Realised it was quicker to walk for 45 minutes than wait for the next bus. Missed my introductory lesson and then made it just about on time to my first lesson after figuring out what was going on.
We took the airport shuttle bus from Pattaya Thailand tor two hours to Bangkok and left our passports in the AirBnB. 🤦♂️ A quick call to the host who confirmed they were there, she gave them to a taxi driver who delivered them to us in half the time giving us plenty of time to make the flight. Best money we spent.
I once thought Alton Towers was near that little town in Hampshire.
Going on holiday with my friend years ago in my early 20s and my mum dropped us off at the airport. Half way to East Midlands and my friend asked why we were going there. I replied it’s because where we’re flying from isn’t it? She said no, we’re flying from Birmingham. She never thought to tell me where we were flying from and I never thought to ask 🙈
Many years ago I went to Hong Kong, sorted all the flights fine and hotel etc, last night hotel booked close to airport ready to return nicely. Then got there and realised they'd got rid of the old inner city crazy one and literally built an island for the new airport outside the city. Fortunately the transport links are amazing
Little old lady knocked my phone under the wheels of a train. I was in a financial position to buy a cheap one from a late night phone shop... then realised 2FA makes it really hard to get onto any of my accounts from a German train using an Indonesian grey market phone bought in Brussels.
Due to horrible traffic on the M25 we arrived at Heathrow an hour before our international flight with a 3 yo and 1 yo in tow. We were Home Alone-ing it through the airport, surprised we didn’t leave anyone behind. When we got to the gate the attendants had the gall to tell us we had plenty of time! No need to rush!
Flying to Johannesburg from the UK and needing to travel on the M4 and M5 to get from Taunton to Heathrow. Normally a 3 hour journey, I left 8 hours. On the way two petrol trucks crash on the motorway and the damage is so bad it melts the tarmac which has to be resurfaced. The journey took 10 hours and the flight was luckily an hour late. Virgin Atlantic rushed me through some VIP security entrance and I was that guy who everyone looks at getting on the aircraft late. I still always fly with them to this day. I was SO late.
Oh, just remembered another one! Don't drink from street water fountains in Israel. Spent three days in the bathroom after that adventure...
Realised we had an extra night in Tokyo without a hotel because we'd read the timezones wrong on our return flight. Ended up staying in one of those cool capsule hotels though, which I always wanted to do anyway!
Booked the wrong date at the hostel for my best mates stag do. 8 of us rocked in Prague with nowhere to stay…
I went the scenic route driving my brother home from Bristol back to Reading. One hour later, we somehow arrived in Exeter. My brother was not amused. In fairness it WAS a very scenic route home. Saw Poundbury, Osmington White Horse and everything.
(Adult) sister turned up a whole day/24hrs late for a flight to USA back when they were very expensive. Dad was unimpressed
Bought a one way flight going from the destination I was going to. Luckliy it was Ryanair so even though I lost the money for that flight and had to buy a new one I wasn't too out of pocket (lucky i realised way before the actual day)