don't get me wrong. we had a fantastic time in europe! and we are well aware that we are privileged beyond measure to have had the chance to do all that we did the last few weeks. we are grateful... SO grateful. it's just that if you hear us say we can't afford to do certain things in the coming weeks, it's because of the list of unexpected expenses that we are trying to catch up from.
detroit, michigan, usa :: i found an amazing deal on cheapoair (take note) on a ticket from milan to prague for the later part of our trip. but when i went to purchase it, it didn't go through. i called in, spoke with a nice lady with a very thick accent. she offered me an alternative ticket price that was higher than i wanted but the best it was going to be. we spent a long time repeating and spelling things to each other to make sure we were on the same page. i booked this ticket for thursday, august 8th. in looking at the itinerary just before boarding our flight to amsterdam, i realized the flight was actually scheduled for tuesday, august 21st. how can this happen?! how is tuesday translated to thursday?! how is "eighth" translated into "twenty-first"?!? there is no way we'd still be on the continent to even think of flying that far into august anywhere in europe! we're still fighting this one... hoping we get a refund even though they say they don't do such things. oi vey.
amsterdam, netherlands :: plane got in a few minutes late. practically jogged the length of one terminal to the next to get to our gate just in the nick of time. in the middle of our jog, we had to go through security and they confiscated my knitting needles! (have no fear, i was able to thread yarn through my work so it wasn't lost).
dusseldorf, germany :: after flying basically all day and night (friday am -- to saturday am), we arrived in germany only to find out that our suitcase (which we had wanted to carry on but due to lack of space in the plane by the time we boarded, was force-checked all the way through)did not follow us all the way to our destination... later on a german student kindly helping us communicate with the airline reported that it was even possibly in barcelona :/
cologne, germany :: our reservation through airbnb for a place to sleep after touring the city with our friend heather wasn't quite as nice as it had been described. let's just say no one wanted to use the shower (even though we all definitely could have used one...)
brussels, belgium :: at an ungodly hour of the morning, we arrived at the ryanair ticket counter to check in for our $27 flight (per person) to italy. 120 euros later we had our printed boarding docs (it wasn't fine print, but using a tiny iPhone screen meant i didn't really read any details about this flight and the necessity of printing your own boarding pass at home. southwest, we love you EVEN more now!) thinking i had checked us in AND paid for our one checked bag, we were surprised to learn that checking our bag would cost another 105 euros. what the...?!?! so our $54 trip to italy turned into more like $300. :(
milan, italy :: i hate to say it because this was truly our favorite leg of our travels, but my how i learned not to rely on having internet on my phone at all times! reservations for hotel bristol for one night. killer deal. google mapped it and took pictures on my phone so when we didn't have internet later we'd be able to find it. only there are TWO hotel bristols in milan. guess which one we went to? and it just so happened that the wrong hotel bristol was on holiday (so a sign on their door told us) so we couldn't even talk to someone in person to find that we were at the wrong one. fail. just over $100 for a hotel close by that was clean, available and offered free breakfast (but not free wifi, therefore i didn't find out about the other hotel bristol until the next day)
oh yeah, and there are three airports in milan. we bought roundtrip tickets for the bus to/from the hotel area, only to realize too late that our flight out of milan was from a different airport than the one we flew into. another fail. thankfully this only cost us about 10 euros.
prague, czech republic :: all was going smoothly and we were saving money in unexpected places. (hooray! even though it wasn't coming close to helping us break even...) while laughing and joking as we walked out of the metro (train) in the city center of prague, we are stopped by a gruff czech officer. apparently, though we had purchased our train tickets, because we didn't validate (and didn't see signs telling us to) we now owed an 800 czk fine (or 35 euros). how's that for deflating our excitement for touring a city we thought would be the least expensive in our travels?!
we still loved all of these places, but feel like we had to learn a few too many lessons the hard way about traveling in them. maybe you can learn from our mistakes!
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