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For the past few weeks I’ve been a cohost for Travel Tuesday with Bonnie from A Compass Rose and Christine from A Keane Sense of
Adventure. Last week was my turn in choosing a prompt for Travel Tuesday.
So, I asked:
Although traveling can provide some of the best experiences/memories, it’s not
ALWAYS fun and games. What is your worst travel experience? Or most
embarrassing experience? Or biggest #travelfail? Where were you and what
happened?
Well, since I seem to have very unfortunate situations which I end up (sometimes)
laughing about later, I actually have more than just 1 #travelfail to share with you!
Here are my top 3.
1. The time we traveled for over an hour to get to Abbey Road and
ended up at the wrong Abbey Road.
So, just a PSA. The “Abbey Road” tube station is not, in fact, the tube station where
the famous Abbey Road is. Talk about confusing, right? No, if you want to check out
the famous Abbey Road crosswalk, you actually need to take the tube to St. John’s
Wood. Which is on a completely different tube line. On the other side of the city.
It was one of those moments where we were so exhausted from a long day and had
made a special effort to trek out there to see this, so we were a bit frustrated and
annoyed that it was the wrong place. But in the end, we just had to laugh it off. See a
more detailed recount of the story here.
Wrong Abbey Road:
Right Abbey Road:
2. The time I fell down the elevator and onto my
friend.
I don’t have any pictures of this super embarrassing and painful moment, so let me
just paint you a picture.
Let me start off by saying that I have an over-packing problem. It’s a real disease and
there is no known cure yet.
So, during my month-long post-grad Euro trip last summer, I was hauling around a
huge 50 lb suitcase through airports, train stations, subways, etc. So at one train
station in Verona, Italy, I put my suitcase in front of me on the escalator going up.
Well, the suitcase was too big for the step on the escalator, so one of the wheels
slipped off and made the suitcase fall backwards, onto me, who then fell backwards
onto my friend, who then fell backwards onto a poor innocent stranger. My friend
spilled Diet Coke all over herself (which she was made about because she LOVES her
some Diet Coke), and we both actually hurt ourselves. My shirt had gotten caught on
the side of the escalator so it was all grimy, and my pillow popped from getting stuck
as well so the little stuffing beads were flying out everywhere. My wrist and ankle
were sore from the suitcase. Overall, it was a super embarrassing and painful scene.
Bystanders must’ve thought we were certifiably insane!
3. The time Pisa really let us down.
I think if I had to choose my least favorite stop on my Europe trips, it would be Pisa,
Italy. I guess in general it was a bit of a let-down. We were in Rome for a long
weekend and decided to go to Pisa on the last night to see another place. The
Leaning Tower of Pisa is there, so I figured it would be a cool place with things to do.
But turns out, The Leaning Tower is basically the ONLY thing to do there.
Not only that, but our hostel had NO air conditioning…in Italy…in July. When I tell
you we were basically sleeping naked I’m not kidding. I remember being absolutely
miserable that night. It was like sleeping in a sauna!
THEN, to top it all off, my friend had an allergic reaction to some sort of cheese and
we had to rush to the pharmacy and try to explain what we needed medicine for.
The lady didn’t speak much English so I tried to use Spanish (since it’s so close to
Italian). Eventually we got the message across, and she gave us some medicine. Her
eyes were swollen shut, she was breaking out in hives…it was really scary!
In the end, I wish we would’ve spent more time in Rome, specifically Vatican City,
instead of cutting our time there short to go to Pisa. After we visited The Leaning
Tower and Baptistry we just wandered around and saw a few cool sites, but in
general not what I was expecting!