To me these mishaps are parts of the trips every year that I enjoy. Once we were lost in the Camargue and got stuck in traffic( we thought) and we finally moved and found ourselves going on a car ferry which we didn't worry since we were travelling serindipity but we were srprised. Another time like two other wonderful posts here tell of trying to back around in their car in tight areas, we had the same experience in St Cirq-le-Lapopie but we were stuck in heavy rain riding up a one way narrow street only to find the hotel was at the bottom. couldn't turn around so we had to back drive gingerly while everyone came out to look in amazement
Over dinner that night, we laughed so much thinging about how stupd we looked to the licals(that were very nice to us, let me add)

When I was in Paris, we parked in a car park that said free parking for up to 20 mins. So we went into the grocery store and came back out about 15-20 mins later. It never dawned on us to validate the parking ticket. So we get to the exit and of course the ticket didn't work. So the attentdent comes out and proceeds to try to talk to me in French, of which I did not understand a single word while 5 cars behind me are all honking their horns and a few of them were yelling. So my finacee goes back to validate the ticket and comes back a few mins later. He first had trouble finding the machine to validate the ticket and then he had left his wallet in the car and didn't have any money on him. So at this point, a not so nice French Woman finally figured out that I spoke English and directs me to turn around. After asking me if I wanted her to drive the car. All 5 cars behind me had to back up and she had to stop all traffic that was coming into the place. I had to turn completely around in a huge Mercedes in this tiny car park. I finally got the car turned around just as my finacee came back out with the validated ticket. If that wasn't bad enough later in the day we got locked into yet another parking garage and couldn't figure out how to open the door to get back onto the street. We finally got out when someone else opened the door from the outside. We still laugh at how stupid we looked both times.

We were returning from the Pont du Gard to our Avignon hotel via the ring road without a map of the town. At one point we realised we had missed our street and tried to double back by turning off left at a set of lights and rejoining the ring road on a one-way slip road. As we set off very slowly up this slip road we were confronted by a heavy truck/lorry thundering down towards us. He had evidently decided that he would use this as a short cut to avoid going through the lights first as we had done. We managed to take evasive action and haven't stopped laughing since (just kidding).