If you’ve been traveling long enough, you know crazy travel stories are exchanged on a daily basis every minute of the day in every corner of the planet. Here are the best of the best crazy travel stories I’ve heard over the years:
- Getting kicked out of a hostel in Madrid, and sleeping on the street corner near the train station.
- Getting kidnapped, knocked out, and mugged in Ibiza two blocks from the ferry terminal. Wake up in an ally way with nothing except boxers and one flip flop. Spend 7 days on the island trying to get a new passport needed to get on the ferry to get off the island (there is no embassy on the island, but you NEED a passport to get on the ferry), only to sneak into the back of a cargo truck to sneak a trip back to Barcelona.
- Getting locked out on the balcony of a hotel room on the 6th floor (top floor of the building). Not able to speak enough Spanish to explain the situation to someone across the street or down at street level. Have to climb onto the roof of the building, hop through someone else’s balcony to get back to the hallway and into your own room.
- Crashing a motorcycle within 5 feet of where the attendant gave it to you. Within 1 minute of touching the handlebars.
- Taking the wrong train from the airport and into Amsterdam. Got off instead about 45 minutes North of Amsterdam and had to turn around and catch a 40 minute train back into the city.
- Meeting a Nigerian thought to be a US Soldier at the bar, took him home for a fun night, left for work in the morning only to return to an empty apartment.
- Passed out in the lounge of a Vegas casino, and have to be carted back to the hotel room in a wheelchair.
- Getting to Milan train station 1 hour early for a train, board the train only to be told 1 minute before departure that the train was the wrong one and the correct one was 10 tracks over. Run to the correct train and chase it down the railroad tracks but miss it. Wait 4 more hours for the next train to Interlaken (not an entire fail since another cute girl did the same thing).
- Wake up to your plastic table and all the chairs thrown into the tomato garden next door. Realize someone got locked outside and passed out, woke up and got mad, threw your furniture into the garden next door.
- Not traveling — since then you have no amazing travel stories of your own to share with others.
Have any travel fails to add? Leave them in the comments..
[Photo via http://justchuckinit.com/]
Drew Meyers
Drew Meyers is the co-founder of Horizon & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of Geek Estate Blog, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and myKRO.org, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.
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