Made any travel mistakes lately?

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Not preloading my Wise card with some European currencies last week. Woke up this morning to see that the A$ had dropped a LOT overnight. I guess I'll just wait until I depart in the hope that things improve a bit. I might load a little now in case the fall continues.

On the bright side, I have pre-paid as much as I could over the last couple of months including most of the accommodation and train fares etc. I did get our Eurail passes last year at 20% off - looks even better now. However, I can see we might be shopping a lot at the market during this trip to save a few dollars.
 
Was planning on taking The Jacobite steam train from Fort William to Mallaig in western Scotland in August this year. Haven't looked at tickets, as European trains don't go on sale until about 3 months prior.

Had a peak yesterday ... sold out! Looks like they release the years schedule up front. Damn.

Scotrail regular service it is.
 
RooFlyer said:
Was planning on taking The Jacobite steam train from Fort William to Mallaig in western Scotland in August this year. Haven't looked at tickets, as European trains don't go on sale until about 3 months prior.

Had a peak yesterday ... sold out! Looks like they release the years schedule up front. Damn.

Scotrail regular service it is.
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Peak season too but keep an eye out for cancellations
 
Overnighted in HKG last night on the way to Yantai via PVG today on MU. Checked in at HKG this morning and then didn't bother digging out my glasses to read the gate on the boarding pass so thought it said 52D - a long search for gate 52D sent me down a dead end that stopped at Gate 50. I eventually found a map on a wall and couldn't find either gate 52D - or even a gate 52. Took another look at the boarding pass and realised that the gate was actually 520. Was a very quick but extremely long hike through the airport to get from gate 50 to gate 520 before boarding closed.

Am currently in the Pullman Yantai Center - nice enough hotel with one interesting quirk. Floors 2-25 are offices. Reception in on the 26th floor, and I'm on the 33rd floor. The offices have floor to ceiling windows, and someone obviously wanted the outside of the building to look uniform all the way to the top - so the bathrooms and toilets in the hotel section on the upper floors also have floor to ceiling windows!
 
RooFlyer said:
Was planning on taking The Jacobite steam train from Fort William to Mallaig in western Scotland in August this year. Haven't looked at tickets, as European trains don't go on sale until about 3 months prior.

Had a peak yesterday ... sold out! Looks like they release the years schedule up front. Damn.

Scotrail regular service it is.
Click to expand...
Thanks for posting. I have pencilled in the Edinburgh Tattoo for 2026. They say the tickets will go on sale in late autumn or early winter this year. So will have to look soon after for a rail trip or 2 at about the same time.
 
drron said:
Thanks for posting. I have pencilled in the Edinburgh Tattoo for 2026. They say the tickets will go on sale in late autumn or early winter this year. So will have to look soon after for a rail trip or 2 at about the same time.
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I'm going to the Tattoo this year :) . The accommodation is expensive (of course), so do that as soon as you know your dates. I didn't book until the middle of last January and could only get the Ibis which was both 'reasonably' priced and also within walking distance.

The ticket buying site is pretty good - seats sold & priced in stadium blocks. You select seats then you can choose to look at the view from that seat (more or less). Only funny thing is that, while you get an e-mail acknowledgement of purchase, the actual ticket will only appear in the tattoo app sometime before the event.
 
Seeing what the hotel prices were for this years tattoo I will organise that when it first opens then buy the tattoo tickets. As this is a long standing bucket list item of mine we will go the whole hog and get a tattoo package. Dinner then seated in the VIP enclosure. There are several dates for the package we want still on sale for this years tattoo but seats in the very back row.
 
Booked a classic reward LHR-DXB-SIN for July this year. First leg BA and second EK. Just read Matt G's article re no baggage interline between these airlines so now have to waste time immigrating, collecting bags, transferring landside between terminals and checking back in. Precious time that I could have spent in the lounge sipping champagne!
 
Flew BNE-MEL-PER last week rather than going direct so as to utilize the A330 across the continent. Mistakes were not having the upgrade materialise and having a one hour delay in the second sector (after an initial 2 hour transit stretched to three) :(. Hopefully J PER-BNE on VA satisfies my wife to make up for the forward journey and they have a gluten-free meal option for her.
 
I only need to go to the office as required, generally for the occasional meeting that has to be done F2F.

So I planned one yesterday, and then a farewell lunch for a colleague today prior to her maternity leave.
I thought a nice train trip would be easier than driving so didn't book a car park.

Got to the station yesterday morning and there is Bustitution! Oh heck!!!

Eventually got to the office and made the meeting but it was close.

Then today was better prepared (no car parks left though) and on the way home another train line was disrupted and there were thousands of people looking for the buses to their destination. And of course the traffic was disgusting and the bus trip took twice as long as normal. Normal being at least twice as long as the train trip.

WFH is so awesome and it takes things like this to really show how good it is.
 
RooFlyer said:
Nooooooooo!
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Good so here goes - had SQ R on 232 ex SYD last month so decided to fly to SYD night before so no chance missing flight - arrived at Rydges to check in and my booking was for 1 day later - no biggie staff gave me same room at slightly higher rate so all is good

Arrived PVG after o/n in SIN and DiDi to JingAn Shangri-La only to find when attempting to check in that I had booked room 1 month later than I should have. Luckily staff up in EL know me well and secured same room at same rate.

2 incorrect bookings at 2 different hotels - guess I best pay more attention in future huh?
 
Was in a restaurant in Yantai tonight and relied on the pictures in the menu as the wording was all in Chinese. Looked like potato wedges in the menu so ordered them as a side, when they arrived they had morphed into sort of potato wedgy shaped bits of very spicy chicken that was full of bones - I've no idea how the Chinese eat them!
 
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I made a stupid little travel mistake today but thought I had made a really big one.

We were out getting food, across the road from our accommodation when I realised I couldn't find my wallet which I was convinced I had brought with me. After much running around and pestering Security people I went back to our flat and found it on the bedside table.

I am much happier being thought slightly stupid and forgetful than have to go through all the effort of cancelling cards etc.
 

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