Guest Post by Sara

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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:

Abbey Road fail

Right Abbey Road:

Abbey Road fail

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!

allergic reaction

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!

 

 



  • LydiaCLee

    That’s so funny – I spent 4 days in Pisa (tho one of those days was in Lucca). I only spent 2 hours at the Tower and it was so packed with tourists, I hated it. But as for the rest of the town, I loved it….it’s funny how cities speak to different people in different ways….