Hubby and I dined at a nice place in Mazatlan, Mexico. Strolling leisurely back towards the resort, I became aware that I had to, well, pee. Really bad. Yes, I'd had a drop or two of Pacifica Clara beer. Hubby urged me into an alley, saying, "If you can't wait any longer, I'll stand in front of you. Hurry up!" Just as the Policia approached, hubby jumped aside, leaving me and my activity in full view. Policeman shouts, "Senora! No se permite orinar in la calle!" Hubby stammers, "My wife isn't feeling well. She's pregnant!" Policeman:"When she pregnant? She no look pregnant!" Hubby sings out, "Last night, she got pregnant last night!" With that, he whistles for a pulmonia, stuffs a $20 in the driver's hand, and shouts, "Get us to the hotel, go!" And therefore, we escaped Mexican jail that night.

On my first trip to Paris I had to find a beret. During the first full day we were looking in shops somewhere just off the Seine and I found just what I was looking for, a black, Basque beret. I wore it everywhere. Unfortunately, I wore it when I went into Sacre Coeur. A guard actually ran up to me pointing at my head and saying

"Monsieur, monsieur! Votre chappeau."

Realize what I had done, and not wanting him to think of me as a inconsiderate American tourist, I took it off and said

"ja,ja"

8-)
Pjk

A few years ago I was in London with my brother-in-law and his wife. It was one of those rainy London evenings and as we exited the restaurant, my dear sister-in-law playfully poked her husband in the ahem--rear end. To her horror, it wasn't her husband at all, but a very proper Englishman. She kept apologizing over and over and he said, "Not to worry madam, I rather liked it." We laughed all the way back to our hotel.

Oh, vistas, that was hilarious - especially the reaction from the "very proper Englishman".

Vistas, Very very funny!!!

Virgogirl, If I put my embarrassing travel story at 2 on a scale of 1 to 10, I will give you a complete 10! The only thing that I have ever heard someone do that comes close was hearing about a then colleague U professor who gave a lecture for a whole 50 minutes to a class of 35 undergraduate students in a university with his fly open (and not one student said anything to him during the class!!, although according to him, he got some odd looks he didn't quite understand until he went back to his office) :)

St. Cirq - you are more confused than you know: "seis", with two hard "s's" could be mispronounced to sound like "seize", which is sixteen in French. Soixante is sixty. That's why the poster got so many croissants: clearly she used a soft "s" at the end of her Spanish word seis.

Well, I have another one. Hubby pulled up to a gas pump in Spain, in our rented Citroen. A man in a BMW at the next pump kept looking over our way. Hubby started pumping gas, and reassured me the man was probably just staring at my blond hair.Yes, that's it, I thought. I smiled politely. Down the road a bit, hubby turned green and grabbed my arm. In a few seconds, he said hoarsely, the car is going to sputter out. Look for a spot I can get it off the road, NOW! What a blessing, there was one right away. Pull over there, I urged, and sure enough, the car shook and choked out as we coasted into the empty parking place.
Turns out, the Spanish man was staring because we were filling the tank with diesel gas. It wasn't my hair at all. And that wonderful parking space? City bus stop, and here came the bus, honking the horn for that Citroen to move! Hubby and I called the car rental agency, and I pleaded in broken Spanish. We waited across the street on a park bench, eating ice cream as people shook their fists at that stalled car.Whose car is that, we pretended? Eventually, a low-boy arrived and rescued us from that awful afternoon. The ice cream was good...

There was the time very shortly after we arrived in Germany that I was trying to ask for directions to a hotel, and the barkeeper I was asking thought I wanted him to go to the hotel with me...It didn't help that he was older (I was 29, he was mid-60s), married, gray, and fat...and he turned me down...LOL...my husband still teases me about this

This thread is so much fun! Please don't be bashful about your mis-adventures, share them so we can all be amused! Did you spill, drop, babble swear words by accident, tear, lose, forget, fumble, break, smash or otherwise mortify yourself and your family in an unforgettable display from hell? Tell us all about it! bttt

In 1971, when I was in college I went to England for my first time. A friend had given me an intro to some of his buddies, and I was hanging with them. They used to do major pub crawls, drinking round after round of 20 pints.

One night, when the last pub closed, we were walking back to my B and B, and several of the last rounds really hit me big time and I needed a loo. This was the old days in London when everything was closed after 11. We ran down to the tube, and the facilities there were closed. Nothing in sight

As the damn was about to break, my friend, or the person I thought was a friend, suggested I duck inside a door way and give in to nature. He said he would be across the street and whistle if anyone came.

Well, I had no choice in the matter, so he skipped across the street, and I ducked into the doorway, all pursuant to plan.

While I was releiving myself, I heard a voice behind me say, "We don't do that sort of thing 'ere, mate."

That was not part of the plan, as I remembered it. I mean, I thought it was supposed to be a whistle if anyone came, not "We don't do that sort of thing 'ere mate." But the latter was what I heard. I turned around and had my first introduction to the famed London Bobbies.

In pain, I explained the situation, including attempts to find proper facilities. Finally, he looked at me, took sympathy, and said, "Well, might as well finish it off."

Ever since then I have had an admiration for the English sense of justice and the wonderful law enforcement that protect that magnificent city.

Well this one didn't happen to me - but definitely is about a traveler in an embarrassing situation.

Last week, one of my friends was driving with her family between Fargo, North Dakota and Minneapolis - a distance of about 250 miles in very sparsely settled country. As it was getting dark, they stopped at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere to use the facilities. (For non-US residents, "rest stops" are places by the side of the freeway in somewhat remote areas with bathrooms and a place to walk around a little and stretch your legs - nothing else, no gas, no attendants,etc.)

As she walked by the pay phone at the rest stop, she saw a man from India, about 30 years old, dressed only in pajamas (boxer shorts and undershirt), holding a toothbrush and toothpaste, obviously very upset, talking very excitedly into the phone, using very broken, heavily accented English. They were the only people at the rest stop and when the man saw her, he rushed up and began asking her to do something.

She finally was able to understand what had happened. The man and his father were evidently driving a big semi truck across the country, and this man had been sleeping in the bed that those big trucks have up behind the cab. When his father got out at the rest stop, this man had woken up and decided to go brush his teeth. Meanwhile, his father, not knowing the son had gotten out of the truck, got back in the truck and drove off!

The son was left with no wallet, no ID, no money, no clothes, except the pajamas he was wearing, and only very rudimentary English skills. He had been on the phone to 911 trying to explain what had happened. He wanted my friend and her family to try to catch up with his father. When she asked him which way they had been headed, to Minneapolis or Fargo, he didn't know! He could only point and say, "That way". (It was the way she was headed, so she did try to watch for the father's truck on the road, but never did see it. She stopped and called the highway patrol at the first opportunity she got, and they said they had already received the report and were looking for the truck.)

We presume the story has a happy ending, but I find myself thinking about the poor guy and hoping that things are going OK for him now! I think his situation sort of takes the cake for being stranded in a foreign country...

In 2003, I flew from NYC to Paris. Then I was turning around right away and flying to Dublin for the weekend. I had bought some cologne for a friend in Dublin in a duty free shop and had it in a bag along with my passport. I was terribly jetlagged when I got to Paris and was worried about missing my Dublin flight so I was hustling to get to the other gate. I had to go through security again and no problems. Then I realized I needed to go to the bathroom which was outside security so I went but I inadvertently left the bag on a ledge. When I went back to go through security, I realized I had lost my passport but wasn't sure if it was in the secure area or outside of it and they had started to call people for my plane. I was thinking well I could just stay in Paris and never leave but I realized that I had to retrace my steps and I eventually found the bag. The cologne was taken but the passport was left for me. :D

This is a very funny thread!

In Turkey on our honeymoon. I woke in the night and saw very dimly a huge insect on the bed. Obligingly it wasn't moving so I managed to flip it into the bin, gave it a huge spray of insect repellant and covered the bin so that it couldn't escape. My husband killed himself laughing the following morning when he checked the bin and found I'd zapped my hair scrunchie, which had slipped off during the night!!!

I just found this thread and am in pain!

I have lots of them, but this one's recent and funny. DH and I were in St Martin and picked up a small bottle of French "personal lubricant". When I got home from my trip, daughter was looking for her present and found the bottle and asked what it was. I told her it was French glue. ( she was 12) I hadn't thought anything about it...stuck it on a shelf somewhere. Well, about a year later she's in the den with 4 classmates working on a project and she's all upset that they can't get their pictures to stick on the poster board with my "lousy French glue!!"

I was in Rome a couple of years ago, walking near the Coliseum when nature called, urgently. I ran into the nearby subway station, and, miraculously, there was no line and the door to the stall was wide open. I ran in, closed the door and found myself in a large, pitch black room. I fumbled around for a light switch, niente. I finally found the toilet and relief. I completed my business, forced to "drip dry" as I couldn't find the toilet paper.

As I rose from the toilet, I heard a whoosh, as a giant spray of water spurted upwards, from the floor or toilet I couldn't tell, but all over me. There I was, soaking wet in the dark.

I managed to dry myself off a bit with some used tissues from my purse, and went to the door. Locked. I groped all around the walls, looking for a light switch. No luck. I started yelling "Aiuto!" After a couple of minutes, some functionary from the station came. I explained my plight, and he said he'd be back. He returned about five minutes later with some tools. Much hammering and banging ensued, to no avail. He left again for about ten more minutes. He returned with some new tools, more banging, and finally opened the door.

I emerged and scurried away. I later learned that I was supposed to pay on entry, which presumably would have turned on the lights, and that this was a self-cleaning bathroom. Who knew?

These are great guys! Seems I have one I could add for every trip I've ever taken. One of the latest. . .

Last September we rented an apartment in an agriturismo outside of Florence. We were driving down from Varenna and were supposed to meet the hostess no later than 6:00 PM. Well, due to road construction delays we were a little late. Relying solely on our navigation system, we made it to what we thought was our destination by about 6:30 and were hoping someone would still be there to give us keys. Our place had a gated entrance that was closed and no one was answering the intercom. After awhile we noticed just up the winding hill about a 100 feet or so was another gate and it was open. We figured we had mistaken our destination so drove through the gates, parked our car and knocked on the door. No one answered, but we heard voices coming from a small outbuilding. We peeked in the windows and saw a long table with many people eating some wonderful smelling food. We figured we had found the place, so we opened the door and walked in. The whole place got totally quiet. Anyway - to make a long story a little shorter, we had barged into the private dinner of a farmer and his extended family. Our place was the first place we had stopped at and we just didn't give the hostess enough time to open the gates. The farmer was nice enough to walk us down the road to our place - even though I heard him chastising someone for leaving the gate open. I don't know that much Italian, but enough to understand he was not a happy camper about our intrusion into his evening meal. And wouldn't you know it, all the Italian I had learned was completely erased from my mind when trying to explain to him our situation and how sorry we were. Hopefully our red faces and our tails between our legs bridged the language barrier!

My friend was doing a fellowship and staying at the Barbican in London. She had a lovely apartment and we would cook sometimes. One night we went to dinner at an Italian restaurant and I couldnt finish my meal so I asked for a doggie bag and he said you are a tourist, you don't have a dog. I was mortified. Never asked again!

Funniest thread ever!

Many years ago I was courting the lady who would later become my practice wife. We flew from San Francisco to England to meet her parents. I was describing to her Mother how wonderful and popular her daughter was in the Sierra Club, and how we chaps would vie to follow her on mountain hikes. She had a fetching derriere, you see. I confided that we had nicknamed her among we fellows as the "Fanny".

Her Mother literally turned white, went silent, and sat down abruptly. Did not speak to me for the rest of the night. I realized I had made some sort of faux pas, but made it through the rest of the evening, somehow. Only later did I learn that the word "Fanny" in Britain is a crude slang word for a female's genitalia. What must her Mom have thought her dear daughter had been doing in the States to earn such a nickname! :-(