Favorite Travel Disaster Stories

Twenty years ago, Mel and Patricia Ziegler, founders of Banana Republic, launched a magazine called Trips with the unique idea that mishaps are what make travel (not tourism) wonderful. I agree with that idea, even though Trips only got to publish one issue before the Gap (which controlled the funding) pulled the plug. I probably still have my copy of that issue in a box somewhere.

I still remember sitting in a bus station in Reims during college, with my friend Gail, sobbing because the cheap hotel we'd been dropped off at didn't have a room for us, and our traveling companions had our tents/sleeping bags. We decided the bus station would be a safe warm place for the night. A Frenchman offered to take us back to his house (turned out to be a trailer) and we (I know, stupid stupid) went. Somewhere out in the countryside we realized how dangerous that could be, and it took a while to fall asleep on his foldout sofa. We woke safe but covered with bedbug bites, and he drove us back to our rendezvous with friends in the morning. I hope my daughter is never so stupid, but I look back on that misadventure as proof that most people can be trusted.

Mine was hiking in Norway with my husband. We were on a glacier with a group leader, making our way through some difficult terrain: ice bridges, rushing glacial streams, crevasses...you get the picture. I was not a particularly hearty hiker...so was feeling a bit nervous when I slipped and broke my finger. I was in so much pain, I insisted we go back. The guide had a whole group so he wouldn't turn around....so my husband and I tried to retrace our steps back to the lodge. BIG MISTAKE.

After we both were sucked into the permafrost at several junctures, we were starting to have a very bad feeling.

We muscled on and finally made it to the lodge...sort of soured us on the Norway hiking thingie.

One of my travel-related disasters had an Italian accent -- and a surprisingly happy ending.

It was a variation on that old "ripped off by a taxi driver" ordeal that a lot of us have probably experienced. This happened in Rome -- it was my first visit there -- and involved a less-than-honest cabbie who vastly overcharged for a relatively short trip from the railway station to our hotel. On top of that, when it came to making change, he insisted (wrongly, I should add) that I had given him a much smaller bill for the fare. Oddly enough, his passable English, which he spoke during the drive, vanished when we started arguing over the fare.

The hotel suggested I call the taxi company and report the incident. Astonishingly enough, someone from the company showed up at the hotel the next morning to apologize and refund some of the money that was owed to me. To this day, I'm still amazed! On the other hand, I've never again stepped foot inside a taxi in Rome.

Two years ago my wife and my 5 kids and I took the blunge and travelled to the UK. We had talked about it for years and figured this was our brief window of opportunity before the kids began to dispurse.

Our disaster came at the rental car office at Heathrow. Our 7 passenger vehicle had, indeed, seven seats, but absolutely no room for luggage. As we were going to be there for two weeks, and there were seven of us, we had quite abit. They looked around the lot and found a slightly larger Reanault mini van, which, if each of the kids carried a piece of luggage on their laps, we could just close the doors.

As the trip went on, we got better and better at packing and driving with no ability to see out the back window. Two glorious weeks later, we dropped our trusty Renault and flew home.

Many many years ago, my brother and I trekked across Europe. Our curiosity lead us to St. Tropez to checkout the European style beaches, if you know what I mean. Anyway, we ended staying too long at the beach and we missed the last bus back to our hotel on the other side of town. As it was getting dark, the only place we could find to sleep was in an Italian cemetery.

So Many but possibly the one that stands out was the time (1969) I missed the Van at The Extinct Volcano when I took a wrong turn on St.Eustatius (Statia), NA getting caught in a storm that throughly soaked me missing the the last plane back to St Martin by the time I got to town. Worked out well as I checked into Old Gin House falling in love with the place staying for 3 nights. The Van owner felt so bad at leaving me that the first night drinks & dinner were on him.

I have returned several times over the years but have skipped further trips to the Volcano.

Not my travel story, but my son's. he was with a school group in France. the teacher to student ratio was 3 to 8, so you'd think it was safe. They were in the metro (Paris, yes) and the teachers got way ahead. (My daughter was there too, she is the eye-witness narrator. he was 12 and she 10.) Some young man, drunk or stoned or both, decided to pick a fight with my son, swiped his beret off his head and while the boy was trying to snatch it back, used his leg to kick my son's legs out from under him. By the time the teachers noticed and backtracked to help him, my son was on the ground being kicked by the nutball. Parisians fought him off, rescued my son, and the attacker ran away. At some point the boy had his cheekbone slashed with a knife, and went to the hospital for 4 stitches. he used to say he would never go to Paris again, but then he did, because he spent his 2nd semester junior year there.