Stuck in an Elevator(oops! "lift")
 

Has anyone (besides us, that is) been stuck in a european elevator? They are old, and narrow, and unreliable, and when it stops between floors, pretty scary. We had that happen in an old hotel in London (near the British Musuem) and when they finally got us out, the manager had the nerve to accuse us of breaking the 'lift". I can laugh now, but it was not funny at the time.

At the age of 18, while living with a French family in the resort town of La Baule, I spent nearly 2 hours stuck in an elevator. However, also stuck in with me were two very attractive 19 year old French guys, so the time passed pretty quickly...

Wife and I and our three kids under 10 stuck for an hour in a lift in venice, our fourth child was smart enough to want to run down the stairs and he brought us water until we were extracted.....dinner for free that night.

Yes, six of us were stuck in the lift of the apartment we rented last July. There was no room to even sit. It was no fun watching my daughter hyperventilate and panic. A technician showed up within about 10 mins and we could hear him working which was encouraging. But, then the lift started and opened again to a concrete wall; we all just about lost it that time. We found out that a "capacity of 7" Parisians did not equate to 6 American females. It does make a good travel story, but it was quite frightening at the time. We learned our lesson and on a recent trip, we went one person/one suitcase at a time.

Four or five Europeans at most, 3 Americans, and two folks from Louisanna (they are really big down there. Everything is OLD there.

Julie to say that European lifts are "are old, and narrow, and unreliable" is rather a sweeping statement. In fact the majority of lifts are more liley to be modern and efficient. You really shouldn't take one bad experience as the rule.<BR><BR>In fact, you really can't talk about "Europen lifts". Europe is an immensely diverse continent of some 30 different countries (and languages, customs, prosperity and so on) so please don't lump us all together. It's a little like saying "The World's lifts are old, narrow and unreliable".

About 30 years ago, we got stuck in a small elevator in a hotel in Montreaux, Switzerland. Took about 1/2 hour to get us out, one friend was starting to panic about half-way through. Things like this are never fun but always make a good story later!