“5x The Standard Fee”: 30 Of The Worst Mistakes Travelers Have Made While Abroad

My family has a travel weather curse. My grandparents' siblings and friends used to refuse to go on holiday with them because there would always be a meteorological disaster. Sure enough, when I came around, it transmitted to my mum and me. By age 11 I'd been evacuated in a forest fire in France and witnessed a tropical storm floating 4x4s in Menorca. Tried leaving my mum behind in my 20s in case she was the problem and went to Edinburgh just me and my boyfriend... there was a storm so bad it was blowing old people into the side of busses and killing them.

I missed a flight because I was eating a Big Mac. My buddy got on the flight without me.

Not me but someone i traveled with. Missed his plane cause he bought a novelty item shaped like a bullet (think it was a bottle opener or something) and left it in his locked bag. Security were not too happy when they found that.

I made hotel reservations for the wrong weekend. Had to find a hotel 30 minutes away. The original reservations were for a hotel we could walk out of our room onto the beach.

I accidently missed a Saturday 12:15 am flight showing up at Sunday 12:15 am.  My brain said: Saturday 12:15 = "Saturday Night".

Lost my passport a week before I was due to go indefinitely travelling. To make it worse, I was living in Denmark and I'm a UK citizen. So I had to get an emergency passport from the British Embassy in Copenhagen, fly back to Manchester, train to Durham, pay for fast tracking passport, then back in time for the travels. Nightmare, 1/10 would not recommend.

Accidentally joked to a Manchester Airport security agent about my carry on being stuffed so full it might explode. I am a Muslim woman who wears hijab.

Went to Germany many years ago, first time travelling abroad and first time in a country speaking a different language. A long stopover in Hong Kong coupled with a long a*s flight from there to Munich meant the brain wasn't at the full 10%. I needed a drink bad so I stepped into a little airport shop, grabbed a Coke, and took it to the counter, fully ready to have to deal with German for the first time while running on fumes. When the cashier asked me a question, I fired back in the most broken Deutsch possible, "My German is good not." She cracked up laughing, as did her colleague, and then said, "That was English! I asked for your flight number!"

My German has barely improved since.

Was bored waiting in a room coming back from Mexico. I didn't know you weren't supposed to mess with your phone while waiting for customs. They thought I was taking photos of the room. So I was there waiting the entire time because when they finally got to me it was a room full of security and they took my phone, went through every single item I had on me and asked me a million questions. They finally realized I was just playing games on my phone, not photographing everything after going through every app on my phone and days worth of photos and social media posts.

My partner and I were flying from London to Naples, but our flight was delayed by 5 hours due to the weather. When we finally got on the plane, there was an announcement made in Italian and all the passengers started kicking off, yelling at staff, and getting off the plane. They eventually relayed in English that by the time we would arrive in Naples, the airport would be closed so they were re-routing us to Rome.

We were told when we land, they would organise a bus to Naples from Rome, and to go to the Veuling service desk for more details.... noone at the desk knew anything about this. I think we waited about 2 hours for a taxi to take us from Rome to Naples airport in the end, which is about a 3 hour drive. And then take another taxi to our hotel.

We were meant to arrive in Naples at 10pm the night we left and we ended up at our hotel at around 8 am the following morning.