I love our long jaunts through Europe. Once you have crossed the English Channel, the world is your oyster, or your lobster as Paul always says. I am very lucky to be married to a man who does not mind driving me everywhere, frequently round the bend! There are very bendy, mountain roads on many of our routes! He even puts up with my rubbish navigating and we always end up in our hotel or apartment in time for dinner!
One disadvantage for me of living out of a suitcase for a few days, is the possibility of losing essential items, and muddling up my clean and dirty clothes! Paul never muddles his up – he has a system! It is often not until we get to our longer self-catering stop (anything from a week up to 3 weeks) that I finally establish whether or not items are lost, left in hotel rooms, dropped out of the car in a manic attempt to find something or were left behind in the UK!
So far this holiday I have managed to lose:
My laptop charger
Half a night’s sleep worrying about the laptop charger and wondering if I can get a new one delivered to our apartment in Croatia
My phone charger
My dressing gown cord
My beach wrap
My make-up bag
My jewellery bag
Filters for the aeropress
My credit card
About 30 euros
My glasses (actually not true – I just forgot to pack them!)
Portable chargers for the mobile phones as we have no USB connection in the car
A quick update:
Everything turned up apart from the beach wrap (left at home), filters (no idea! I do remember packing them so maybe they will turn up in the car in six month’s time!), the dressing gown cord (just spotted by Paul’s mother in her washing machine!), the credit card and the euros – my purse was either lost or stolen in Strasbourg, but thankfully it is less hassle losing a credit card than a ‘phone!
The chargers turned up but were worse than useless! Paul gets a selection of them free from conferences, so maybe we need to buy some better ones! The problem with not being able to charge the phones in the car is that we have long days of driving and inevitably the ‘phones don’t keep their charge that well. So it is touch and go whether or not we’ll manage to find our hotel/apartment at the end of the day!
Once we arrived in Kastel Novi (or Newcastle as we call it) I found another way of losing things, underwear and other items of clothing. We had a lot of washing to do when we arrived, and there is a washing line on the side of our first floor apartment, which you access from the balcony in the second bedroom. It is quite easy to lose knickers and other essential items with a little casual flick of the wrist in the wrong direction! Fortunately my knickers launched themselves into our hosts’ garden rather than onto the awning. However, Kathrin assures me that they have a broom reserved for exactly these situations! See the pictures below of the scene of devastion on our first morning:
What is the most interesting item you have ever lost on holiday?
Beautiful Boots for women
Haha – I enjoyed your amusingly-related tale of woe, Sarah. I’m very sorry about your lost purse, but intrigued by the idea of the knicker-retrieving broom!
I’m very absent-minded, so am capable of losing almost anything that isn’t actually attached to me. I, too, have left a variety of charging leads in places I’ve stayed. I haven’t lost anything very interesting. However, I once hiked up a small mountain, stopped at the top to take a photo and, as I did so, my camera case blew away and disappeared from sight. I was upset; but shortly afterwards, another hiker’s head appeared over the ridge, followed by the rest of him, cheerfully brandishing my wayward camera case in his hand.. He’d caught it, as it was sailing past him, bent on returning to base camp!
Sadly, only a few years after we got married, my husband lost his wedding ring while hiking on Striding Edge in the Lake District. So if anyone reading this happens to go there on a walking holiday, do please look out for it. 🙂
Hi Marie! Thanks for taking the trouble to read and comment! I really could keep adding to this piece with more tales of woe. I had a worrying moment with the memory card for my camera the other night….
I am glad that you retrieved your camera case but so sorry about your husband’s wedding ring. That is a really sad thing to happen. Luckily most of the things that I lose are replaceable, even if it is frustrating at the time!
Sarah