20 Travel OOPS Moments Worthy of a Comedy Movie

Travel is all excitement and adventure—until you step off the plane and realize you’re in the wrong country. Like those dreaming of a Caribbean getaway in Grenada—only to land in Granada, Spain. Massive oops!

Adventure and awkward moments often go hand in hand. Get ready for some laugh-out-loud tales of trips gone very wrong.

• I had a personal alarm on my bag, one where if you pull the strap, a loud alarm goes off. I got it because I’m a solo traveler and hike a lot, and wanted something to set off if I twisted my ankle in the middle of the woods.
  I forgot about it and left it on my bag, which I don’t normally check, and got my bag back without it attached. I imagine the cord got pulled during handling, and the poor airport employees had to smash it to get it to stop yelling at them. Sorry, guys. — © Medium-Decision6899 / Reddit
• I booked a train from Venice at the Trenitalia site. When the train never arrived, I discovered I’d booked a bus. We missed it. — © MaddBadger / Reddit
• 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. — © Medium-Decision6899 / Reddit
• 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 3 hours to get to the next one (I had booked the ticket for it 2 months in advance too).
  That was the day I stopped filming story reels for social media, lol. — © horkbajirbandit / Reddit
• I booked a hotel in the wrong country. — © buttterz1 / Reddit

• I drove up to Niagara Falls from New Jersey and realized when my GPS directed me to the border that I had booked a hotel in Niagara Falls, Ontario, instead of Niagara Falls, New York. And I hadn’t packed my passport. — © happy_expat / Reddit
• Not me but my husband. The night before our first trip to Barcelona, he noticed his passport had expired. Hotels were nonrefundable at that point, so I waved goodbye and did the trip solo. — © Trekker_Cynthia / Reddit
• I had been exchanging an apartment with a friend in Paris for about 10 years, and on this trip, I had just completed a trip around the world and had purchased a one-way trip to Montréal on a charter airline. Since I had always traveled with Air Canada or Air France, I always used Charles de Gaulle Airport. To make matters worse, I had arrived at the airport with only 2 hours to spare before departure.
  I panicked when I realized my flight departed from Orly, on the opposite side of the city. I grabbed a taxi and arrived at the gate 35 minutes before the scheduled departure and was sure to miss my flight.
  When I walked up to the airline counter, there were other people who were checking in. My flight had been delayed, and I miraculously managed to board this last flight home. I learned a lesson. — © keralaf / Reddit
• Showed up for my flight exactly 24 hours before departure. Luckily they got me on, or I would’ve had to go home and repeat the whole process the next day.
  Extra vacation day, I guess, so that was cool. — © brian_sahn / Reddit
• I booked a hotel on the wrong side of the Grand Canyon... Fun fact: “10 miles” from the trailhead is a five-hour drive, lol. — © JustGenericName / Reddit

• Spent an entire month in London and never once ventured outside of the city. I was a 20-year-old who didn’t realize the ease of train travel there. I remember the only day trip I had looked into was a coach tour bus to Stonehenge, and it was super expensive, so I didn’t do it. — © catsporvida / Reddit
• Most notable: leaving all cash and IDs in my safe in the hotel room in Mexico and going into town with only one credit card. Didn’t realize it until I had to try and get a ride back to the hotel and no one had the ability to take credit. No banks would give me a cash advance, obviously. Had to beg a shopkeeper to charge my card for cash—he charged me $80 and gave me $30. — © CalmAsYouAre / Reddit
• My wife and I traveled to New Zealand for six weeks of camping, then flew to Hawaii for a week to visit friends. I had a car and condo rented in Hawaii, but on the plane to Hawaii, I realized the day we lost going to New Zealand, we were gaining back going to Hawaii (International Date Line).
  So, we had to scramble as we had no car or housing for our first day there. We literally arrived in Hawaii hours before we left New Zealand. Oops. — © UserJH4202 / Reddit
• I forgot underwear on a three-week trip to South America. No offense to the Brazilians here, but let’s say their men’s style of underwear was not my idea of comfortable. — © Jenn******2** / Reddit
• I ate a meal with raw vegetables at a gas station on the bus from Kathmandu to Delhi. Big mistake; I was ill for the remainder of the trip. — © Kaste / Reddit

“I paid $10 to NOT see Mount Rushmore.”

• Our family, complete with small children, spent a week on the beach. They wanted to bring every shell and beach toy home. This was well before all the charges for bags. So we checked it.
  When we got home, we had an identical bag full of nice men’s suits, shoes, and dress clothes. The airlines straightened it out, but I bet he was really frustrated when he opened his bag of beach treasure. — © 61797 / Reddit
• “How hard can it be to get from Heathrow to Gatwick ... very late at night? It’s still the same city.” — © ExitingBear / Reddit
• I booked a trip to Istanbul in December and 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. — © ShinjukuAce / Reddit
• I was a park ranger in the PNW (Pacific Northwest, Region in Canada) and got all these people to follow me on an interpretive hike on a socked-in-foggy day because I promised a spot where they could see the mountain. At the end of a mile or two route, I took out a folded placement pic from the gift shop and said, “Ta-da! Mountains!”
  They complained to my supervisor. — © neo-privateer / Reddit
• I got food poisoning once on a trip, and the 1st puke was while I was walking around in a tour group. I ran to an alley to puke behind a dumpster, and a different tour group passed me as this happened.
  And for some strange reason, the entire group started snapping pictures of me getting sick. So I guess some random folks have saved pictures of me puking in their trip albums. It makes me laugh now, but then I was like, “What? Why?” — © Travelcat67 / Reddit

After all, traveling is all about the memories—some magical, some mildly traumatizing. While these travel fails may have led to facepalm moments, they also make for the best stories.