Jayne11159

For some reason a post by montereybob made me think of one of the dumbest mistakes we've (I've) made while on vacation. I may have my geography a little off; anyway, you'll get the gist.

A few years ago my husband and I stayed at the Grand View Inn in Pacific Grove, CA. The morning we left we were headed to Monterey to see the aquarium etc.

(We)I decided that it would be the "quickest" route to go to the highway then drive over and back down to Monterey. Including time getting lost it took us about and hour to get to Monterey.

When we left Monterey, we decided to drive down the road a little ways just to see what was there. About a mile or so into the drive we went around a bend and on the other side was--the Grand View Inn.

Tango

Dumbest mistake ever was thinking that any restaurant in Paris would be good. We ate at a place that served soggy peas and carrots with the meal and jello for dessert! YUCK! Always do research before going anywhere!

SuperMom

When we went to the Dominican Republic many many years ago, we called home from the hotel literally just to say "We arrived, we are fine, bye" Our bill - $50 US dollars!For us Canadians it's more like $80.

We won't make that mistake again

Jayne11159

Tango--LOL

For our first meal in Paris our son ordered a hamburger. After a VERY disdainful look from the waiter, he brought out the "hamburger". We had warned our son, but he didn't believe us--it was a patty-like concoction on one piece of bread with an egg-over-light on top.

I'm sure my son considers that HIS worst mistake!

bradk

reminds me of a story my mother once told me about how she ordered 'french toast' once for breakfast when she was little

AAFrequentFlyer

Waiting at the San Jose Airport, Costa Rica, for my GF to join me, with flowers to boot. The plane landed, everybody came out and no sign of her. Apparently she was enjoying the fine Miami Beach hotel that I have booked for her for the night before the flight, way too much. We both lived in Sarasota. She did show up the following day, and we did have a civilized time together for the next 6 days, but it was over once we got home.

JohnInMiami

Got a rental car in Seattle and didn't take the time to learn how to work the electronic locks. The key chain had a button on it that had to be pressed twice to lock the car. Stupid me only pressed it once.

Stopped at a beach, came back and the doors to the car were open & my leather jacket & CD case were gone. That was a dumb, expensive mistake.

bonniebroad

Climbing onto an unofficial look-out spot on the road to Hana, at my husband's encouragement. Everything was fine ...... beautiful view.......... until the red-dirt clumps shifted under my feet, and I fell down a six-foot drop........... One broken ankle later, I was on my way home to see an orthopedic surgeon....... cutting my vacation short by about ten days!#39;(

FainaAgain

In Vancouver, BC went to a museum, after a computer search at home "knew" hours, location, etc... Came to the closed door to learn it closed 2 weeks before for the lack of funds. Never again going anywhere without a phone call to confirm first!

bennnie

DH and I on a trip to Vegas went to Circus Circus in search of the "great" $6.95 prime rib dinner our brother in law told us about. After wandering around the hotel for an hour, trying to find the restaurant and getting misdirected several times, we finally called home long-distance on a pay phone (pre-cell phone days) to ask said b-i-l where the hell this #$@% dinner was. Got directions, waited in line for an hour and then ate the worst meal of our lives. Disgusted we walked back to our hotel where upon entering the front door we spot a huge sign "PRIME RIB DINNER $5.95".

travleis

Dumbest mistake?
We took a Chicago-Alaska-Cabo San Lucas vacation about 4 years ago (pre-9/11).
We were heading to the Anchorage airport (end of leg 2 of the trip) when I realized for the first time that we'd both forgotten our passports!
We had an hour to figure out a plan.
We ended up connecting in Seattle and getting makeshift documents at the airport to get us into and out of Mexico.

beachkomer

Had a few hours to kill before our flight from Miami home. It's Sunday afternoon, so we went to South Beach to kill a few hours. We parked the rental car on the main drag, (Collins?) and put our valuables in the trunk. Upon returning to our rental car, the trunk lock had been "popped" and everything was gone! Our ID's, plane tickets, cash, credit cards....all gone. We were in shock. We went to the police station, spent an hour doing a report.

The airline rep told us we had to buy new tickets, and my husband explained we had no money. She made some calls, and we had our police statement...long story short, without ID, or tickets we got on the plane with about 2 min. to spare. (this was before security was so tight, 1994) We were grateful to get on the plane.

Insurance covered most of our loss, but there were personal items taken too.

Since then, I make a copy of my tickets and ID and keep them in my suitcase.

You can't be too careful!

travellyn

My mistakes usually have to do with being too cheap and/or jumping to conclusions. Case in point: at Xel-Ha in Mexico, there were lockers for valuables. The rental price was the equivalent of an American dollar or two, but for some reason, I didn't convert from pesos and assumed they wanted $24. I thought this was way too much. My husband said he'd just put our money, credit card, cruise ship cabin keys and boarding passes, as well as his contacts, in a ziplock and carry it with him. That seemed fine until I found out (too late) that his new swimsuit didn't have a zip pocket; he'd just stuck the ziplock in his side pocket, then cavorted around in the water until the ziplock floated away. Luckily, they let us back on the ship and gave us new keys. About 2 months later, we received a package from Mexico containing everything but the cash.

questionmotives

Arrived at DIA nice and early for our trip to D.C. and N.Y. last October, congratulating ourselves all the way for being so nice and early, only to discover that dear spouse left wallet containing all forms of ID at home -- a little over an hour away!

Broke all land speed records (O.K., we took the E-470 toll road too, lol) careened back home, grabbed the troublesome wallet and rocketed back to the airport. RAN with luggage to the check in counter, showed I.D. and had counterperson tell us that we just made within a two minute cutoff time for accepting luggage on the flight.

Now every time we leave the house the first question is.....got your wallet?

Suzie

On our honeymoon we were newbies to travel. We ran out of money a couple of days before we left but managed to scrape enough together for hubby to eat at McDonalds. I still remember sitting on the curb outside the hotel and watching him walk into Mickey D's in Kauai and return with his sad, sorry meal. The next day we took our flight from Kauai to Honolulu for the return to CA. We had many hours to kill and it was Sunday. We were starving and we saw a sign for brunch. We realized, we could use our credit card to pay for a meal. We ate soooo much, like we'd been deprived forever. We also ordered those drinks where you could get the tiki glasses with them. We realized we had been complete idoits in not using the credit card before.

placeu2

My wife would tell you that I have made some dumb mistakes....

Me? I just refuse to stop and ask for directions!

Scarlett

Holding that stupid fish that I caught, in Sanibel Island, Florida and holding it up for the kids to see.
Dropping the wiggly thing on my foot, where it's fin stabbed a hole through my foot, so I had to go find a doctor and among other miseries, get a tetanus shot.
Dumb...next time you catch a fish, just look at it and let someone else take it off the hook.

Jayne11159

Now I don't feel so dumb--but then I had forgotten about the time DH left ALL of our passports in an Amsterdam restaurant. We had copies but amazingly the passports were waiting for him when he returned to the restaurant and hour later.

AA--I think you covered both travel mistakes AND relationship mistakes!

Bonnie--ouch--in more ways than one!

Fodorite018

On a camping trip with another family, to an area far from grocery stores. We had planned the food together but each of the guys got ahold of the coolers before us wives noticed...and the ONLY things we had to eat for several days were hamburgers, buns, bacon, eggs and scotch! Absolutely nothing else! It is still a running joke with us...and the kids double check when we pack coolers from now on.

Donna

I hate to tell this on myself, but my husband and I had just arrived in Paris, checked in, and went around the corner to the bank I had located before leaving home. He was putting in numbers and there was some confusion on the amount we entered - those pesky decimal places. Well, I got impatient and said, "just push this," which I did. He yelled, "no" and sure enough the machine ate our only ATM card! I got sick. Saturday afternoon, $14 dollars in my wallet and the credit cards until Monday. So we had to find restaurants that would take the credit cards - smaller cafes don't - and missed a concert we had scheduled that night because they only accepted cash Monday morning a nice lady at the bank who understood some English returned our card. It was an interesting few days which my husband has not let me forget