Everyone who travels inevitably makes mistakes. Most of the time, we spend our time trying to avoid disastrous travel mistakes. Sometimes, the best memories come out of wrong turns and mishaps. Share on X If everything always went perfectly, it would be much more boring. Throughout my travels, I’ve learned that some mistakes are good to make. Here are 6 of the best travel mistakes I’ve made.
1. Get Lost
Getting lost is one of the best travel mistakes! Don’t be scared of getting lost. If your phones doesn’t work and you live in the technological age where no one carries maps anymore, just wander until you run into something amazing. Talk to locals and ask where you should go; they’ll usually give great recommendations and directions.
In Marrakech, the main languages are Arabic and French. If I thought I could get around with my 2 years of high school French, I was wrong. I knew there was a castle I wanted to see, but I wasn’t sure which one, so I found some WiFi and pulled out my map app to look for something that looked like a castle. I headed to where I thought I wanted to go, but it turned out to be the ruins of an old castle. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but it was still pretty cool to see.
From there, it was a pretty good walk back to the medina/city center so we hopped in a cab and told them in broken French we wanted to go back to the center of town. He dropped us off in the middle of a bazaar in front of a spice market, and we had no clue where we were. But we figured as long as we were there, let’s go look at the spices.
When we left the spice shop, it was like a maze to get out of the bazaar, and then we still had no idea where we were. We ended up just walking down the street until we came to the empty square of the medina. Maybe all roads lead to the medina, or maybe we just took an exciting adventure and eventually found somewhere we knew, but I’m glad we did because now, I have to go back to Morocco to get some of those famous spices and oils!
Moral of the story: be spontaneous and get lost. You never know where you could end up.
2. Don’t Plan Ahead
I know for all you planners like me out there, this is going to be hard to hear, but sometimes it’s better to not plan. Go to a destination you know very little about. Find a free walking tour, talk to a local, and explore like a child who’s learning for the first time. You might miss out on some things, but you might find exciting other things. If you don’t have time or forget to plan, don’t stress out, it can be a good travel mistake!
3. Forget to Exchange Money
Most people who plan ahead exchange their money at a bank or airport to prepare for their trip. You get hit with lots of fees this way though. If you forget to exchange your money, you can use your ATM card to take local currency out of an ATM. Most European ATMs don’t charge a fee, and you’ll find the best exchange rate at ATMs.
When traveling around Europe, I didn’t plan for European countries who didn’t use in the euro. In Iceland, a 13,000 euro bill at a restaurant shocked me! Then I realized it wasn’t euros, it was krona, only about 100 euros. Iceland will take euros and give you change in krona. However, Croatia doesn’t use euros and most places won’t even accept anything besides kuna! There are ATMs everywhere though, and soon after I learned about kuna, I was paying like a local.
4. Overtip
There’s no such thing as over tipping. While most people in Europe don’t tip often and workers don’t expect it, tipping shows the hard workers serving you that they’re doing a good job. Over tipping is better than not tipping at all, so if you’re confused about whether that “VAT included” line at the end of a check is a tip or not, play it safe and overtip. You won’t regret it.
By the way, VAT is not an included tip. It’s a service tax and the server doesn’t get that money! Show your appreciation and tip.
5. Be Forgetful
I don’t know about you, but I tend to stress out before a trip and worry that I’ll forget something. Then I learned, it’s not the end of the world! Wherever you’re going, there will be a store where you can buy anything you forget. If you forget your clothes, go out and buy something new that’s typical of your destination so you fit in with the locals fashion statements. Toiletries are easy to forget or if you can’t fit your liquids in your carry on, try buying something new. You never know, you might find that you like your new buys better!
6. Plans Go Awry
I have a friend who lives about 2 hours away by plane, so I don’t get to see her much. We met in Cancun, so we decided to reunite in Cancun and both booked a spontaneous trip one summer day. One of our friends who lived in Cancun offered to pick us up from the airport and we were thrilled to travel like locals. We arrived and got in his car and got halfway to our hotel when his tire blew out.
We pulled into a Mexican gas station while they put a spare tire on, but by that point he was too nervous to drive any more than he had to, so we ended up driving back to his house instead of our hotel. I had never been to anywhere in Cancun besides the tourist areas before, so seeing the “real” Cancun where people lived and worked was amazing to me. We met his mother, laid out at the community pool, and have a wonderful story to tell all because of a flat tire. Turn those lemons into lemonade and roll with the punches – travel mistakes can have a silver lining!
Have you ever made a travel mistake that turned into a good thing? I’d love to hear about it!
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