Holidaymakers take to Reddit to reveal their biggest travel blunders, from packing a

It only takes the slightest slip-up to turn a dream holiday into a nightmare.

As travellers have been revealing in an online forum.

The pitfalls are plentiful, from packing blunders to airport mix-ups and booking the wrong dates. 

These examples and more were served up in a Reddit forum after user ‘Medium-Decision6899’ asked: ‘What is the dumbest travel mistake you’ve made?’

The replies came thick and fast. 

‘JustGenericName’ contributed to the debate with their painful hotel mishap, writing: ‘Ouch! I booked a hotel on the wrong side of the Grand Canyon (pictured)’

‘JustGenericName’ contributed to the debate with their painful hotel mishap, writing: ‘Ouch! I booked a hotel on the wrong side of the Grand Canyon.

‘Fun fact, that “10 miles” from the trailhead is a five-hour drive.’

In a similar vein, ‘Bruce_e’ chimed in with: ‘I once booked a month-long Airbnb for the wrong month.’

‘Cubsfanjohn’ contributed to the thread with this tale of woe: ‘I forgot to write down where I was staying and had to make a transatlantic telephone call on a pay phone in Berlin to my mom to have her check my e-mail. The worst part of it, she was out walking the dog and didn’t answer.’

And ‘jtonkinson’ – he booked a hotel for Portland in Oregon instead of Portland in the state of Maine.

Botching the booking basics was a common theme.

‘MaddBadger’ said: ‘I booked a train from Venice. When the train never arrived, I discovered I’d booked a bus. We missed it.’

Replying to this comment, ‘Medium-Decision6899’ wrote: ‘I did something similar. Showed up to the train station to catch my bus, obviously missed it. Bought a train ticket, read the arrival time as the departure time and missed that as well. Good times.’

‘Horkbajirbandit’ kept the missed-train theme going with this remark: ‘At least you didn’t miss your train because you were too busy filming it arriving. The doors closed in front of me and I had to wait three hours to get to the next one (I had booked the ticket for it two months in advance, too). That was the day I stopped filming story reels for social media.’ 

Not all ticket mishaps were related to trains. One user recalled waiting in line for the Anne Frank museum tour in Amsterdam before realising their ticket was ‘for the following year’.

‘ShinjukuAce’ said: ‘I booked a trip to Istanbul in December, assumed it would be warm because it was on the Mediterranean and in the Middle East. Didn’t check the weather predictions, didn’t pack any warm clothes, and it was snowing when I arrived’

‘Riceingonthecake’ shared a passport error – ‘packing a passport in the check-in bag’ 

Several travellers made crucial errors when packing for their holiday.

‘ShinjukuAce’ said: ‘I booked a trip to Istanbul in December, assumed it would be warm because it was on the Mediterranean and in the Middle East.

‘Didn’t check the weather predictions, didn’t pack any warm clothes, and it was snowing when I arrived.’

‘Hugobosslovescandles’ said: ‘Went on a weeklong hiking trip to the Grand Canyon in college and I forgot to pack a single pair of underwear.

‘I had to go to the doctor when I got home because I had such a bad rash on my scrotum.’

‘JennItalia269’ shared a similar experience after forgetting to pack underwear on a three-week trip to South America.

‘No offence to the Brazilians here, but let’s say their men’s style of underwear was not my idea of comfortable,’ they said. 

Airports proved to be another holiday hazard in the Reddit thread.

One user said: ‘Went to the wrong airport in Berlin and missed my flight.’

Fellow Redditor ‘cheesetrain’ shared a similar tale during their visit to Belfast, Northern Ireland.

‘When I get to the bus station, I ask for a ticket “to the airport”. I get my ticket and get on the bus,’ they penned.

‘Thirty mins into the trip, where we should be getting close to the airport, I check my Google maps and see we’re headed the wrong direction.

A traveller visited Barcelona alone after their husband noticed his passport had expired the night before their trip

‘I ask someone if the bus is going to the Belfast airport. He looks horrified and tells me it’s going to Dublin airport. Missed my flight, had to get a new, way more expensive flight from Dublin airport.’

While ‘Trekker_Cynthia’ shared their husband’s passport blunder, which resulted in him missing out on their holiday altogether.

‘The night before our first trip to Barcelona, he noticed his passport had expired,’ they wrote. 

‘Hotels were nonrefundable at that point so I waved goodbye and did the trip solo.’

In another passport mishap, ‘brainonvacation78’ told how they grabbed their son’s passport instead of their own ‘before driving three hours to Chicago for a flight to Cuba early the next day’.

They continued: ‘Thankfully I have an amazing friend who went and got mine from my house and met me halfway. Got back to Chicago at 2am, and made my 6.30am flight. I gave my friend $100 for saving my a***.’

‘Riceingonthecake’ shared a passport error, too – ‘packing a passport in the check-in bag’. 

Another user, ‘KjunFries’, shared how they booked a rental car – for the wrong day.

‘The rental company was completely inflexible, so I ended up shelling out over $500 twice for a four-day rental,’ they wrote.

‘Then I discovered a cab to and from my destination – where I didn’t need a car anyway. Would’ve only cost $150.’