Paris to Bologna: My Expensive Travel Mistake – Funny travel stories

My most expensive and now funny travel mistake (it wasn’t funny at the time) happened about six-months into my hubby, David’s, and my first year of full-time travel.

Because I enjoy the hunt, the research and the challenge of getting us the best travel deals, I’m the travel planner of the family. My wonderful hubby loves not having to worry about anything except packing his suitcase and showing up when and where I tell him!

So, in April 2016, we’re in Paris, France and just as I’m getting ready to book the tickets from Paris to Bologna, David interrupts me. A few hours later, after a light bite and a little exploring, I log back on and finally buy the tickets I was looking at earlier that morning. And then immediately book the bus tickets to the airport!

Travel day arrives. It’s a bright, sunny and blue-skied spring day in Paris. Without a care in the world, except getting to the airport on time, we load up on the bus heading to Charles de Gaulle airport.

 

As we’re cruising through the city, I glance down at the tickets and realize – WE WERE HEADED TO THE WRONG FREAKING AIRPORT.

I hadn’t checked the departure airport the second time I looked at the flights because who knew Ryanair would have two flights flying from Paris to Bologna on the same day and time?

Well, you know what they say: When you assume…

I freaked out!

We had to be on our flight because we had arranged to stay at a WorkAway in Perugia, Italy and the people were picking us up from the train station.

I went through all stages of worry. “Should we get off the bus?” “Should we stay on the bus?” “How were we going to get to the right airport from the wrong one?”

Yep, I was a complete mess!

The bus driver settled the “Stay on or get off “decision for us. No one off the bus until we arrived, so we were along for the ride!

Dropped at the front doors of the Charles de Gaulle airport, my wonderful hubby took over cleaning up my mess. He popped over to the cab stand, found someone who spoke English, and got us a cab to the Beauvais-Tille airport.

I quietly loaded my stuff into the cab and sat, watching miserably, as the meter ticked up euro after euro.

Two hours later and 150 euros poorer, we’re sitting in the Beauvais-Tille Airport lounge sharing a bottle of wine before our flight to Bologna with me feeling like a complete idiot because I hadn’t double checked the tickets before we left.

As you can imagine, lesson learnt!

Now, I always carefully check our tickets several times before flight day and booking any coordinating tickets because the bus ride from Paris to Beauvais-Tille should have only cost us 20 euros, not 150.

We laugh about it now, but really – who knew Ryanair would have two flights leaving from Paris to Bologna on the exact same day and time?

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This is a guest post for the Travellers’ Tales series by Heidi from FlyawayU.com. Travellers’ Tales is a collection of personal travel experiences from people around the globe. If you have an inspiring, interesting or funny story to share from your travels, please get in touch at europediaries(at)gmail.com . Connect with Heidi and David on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. 

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