Rick Steves’ Travel Blog

Thank you for sharing all your hilarious travel stories this week! I’ve had so much fun reading your comments. I’ve got one last topic for you, and it’s a good one: romantic culture shock. I’m sure many of us travelers have experienced this, and we can laugh about it now.

I remember one time, I fell in love with a Japanese girl I met in Europe back in my student vagabond days. I later traveled around Japan with her. We ventured to the island of Kyushu so I could be introduced to her very traditional family. I couldn’t visit their actual house, as we were not supposed to be that serious yet. So, this gathering was in a kind of mountain spa lodge. Before dinner, I had to soak in a hot tub with her father. He was drunk, and we were both naked. He didn’t speak English, and all he knew about America was how horrible we were to the Indians. While the hot tub was designed to relax you before dinner…all I could do was endure a righteous lecture about American atrocities…in Japanese. He was obsessed with the topic. At dinner, he continued his rant, stabbing the table with his chopsticks to emphasize his points. That was trying…but the girlfriend was well worth the trouble.

How about you? Have you ever experienced romantic culture shock?

It’s rare that I laugh out loud while reading comments online. But I’ve been doing exactly that over the last few days, reading all your crazy travel stories here on the blog and over on Facebook. Thank you! Let’s keep those laughs going. Up next, please share your memories of the most ridiculously awful experiences we’ve had at hotels. (It’s funny after the fact, right?)

For 20 years, I spent a good part of my travels visiting and assessing hotels for my guidebooks. From Helsinki to Lisbon to Istanbul, I’d assemble a list of places in the morning and then spend the entire day looking for winners. When it comes to hotels, I’ve seen just about everything.

Back when I led tours on a minibus, I once checked into a B&B with a small tour group. The place was right on a pagan “ley line” in England’s New-Agey town of Glastonbury. Within five minutes, we were all in the hallway, certain that the place was haunted. We grabbed our bags, and — like characters in a Halloween cartoon — we all ran to our little bus, loaded up, and hightailed it out of there.

While hotel beds are reliably good these days, in the old days, you always had to check them. Mattresses in the Mediterranean region were often big yellow sponges (very sweaty), and saggy bed frames routinely had me moving my mattress to the floor for some support.

In France’s Champagne region, a hotel I was staying at was wonderful in all regards — except for its rubber-lined bottom sheets. (These make me sweat. When I encounter one anywhere — even in the USA — I make a point of taking it off the bed, folding it up, and setting it in the hallway). I asked the owner, “Why the rubber sheets?” He said that using them is the only way he can protect his expensive mattresses…because so many tourists sample too much Champagne, then vomit in bed.

And in a dusty village in Turkey, I remember complaining to the man at the hotel reception desk that my sheet was dirty. He came up, checked the sheet, agreed with me…and turned the sheet over.

What about you? Any hilariously horrible hotel experiences?