“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” —Zig Ziglar
What would be the fun of travel if you couldn’t bring home stories of your adventures, even if they had to be exaggerated sometimes in the telling. My stories of getting lost don’t need to be inflated, however. They really happened like this:
In 2009 four of us (Ellen Gunn, Phyllis Parker, Sue Spitchley and I) traveled to Italy with a company called Untours. Appropriately named, this company does NOT take you on a tour. Rather they provide lodging and a car, a local contact, maps and brochures, then turn you loose to design your own schedule. With a very nice station wagon and Sue as the driver, we set out on our first morning with the directions in hand to meet our hostess at an Umbrian agritourismo (farm with guest accommodations). Even though I consider myself a pretty good navigator, the little roads and villages, foreign road signs, and an Italian map gave me fits. We turned around 3 or 4 times as we made our way, arriving at the farm 10 minutes late. Upon leaving we made another wrong turn on the farm road before we could make it back to the highway. This was a precursor of our “do-it-yourself” trip.
Later that week we took a day trip to Todi and on to Orvieto in the afternoon. We had learned that there would be a 5 p.m. concert by a youth orchestra in the Duomo there. On our return trip (almost 2 hours back to our apartment) we took an exit that put us on a country road which dead ended in a pig farmer’s front yard. We pulled to a stop and saw another car turning around headed out, also lost. As I tried to ask for directions with no Italiano to the farmer with no Inglese, we jabbered back and forth, looking at the map, pointing up the road, with little understanding on either side. My three companions were in the car giggling. As he repeatedly pointed at our gas tank, it dawned on me that he was indicating a place to buy gas, thus a landmark further along. Eventually I got enough information to get us back on the right road to Il Casa Grande before nightfall.
And so it went…Umbria and Tuscany…then time to return to Rome for our flight home the next day. Our new friends, Dino and Laura (a college friend of Marietta’s) had given us a tour of Cortona earlier in the week and realized that we were very nervous about driving into Rome and delivering the rental car at the airport. They offered to accompany us, Dino driving our car with Sue and Ellen, Laura taking Phyllis and me on the train. Upon debarking we planned to use our map of Rome to get us to the hotel (big mistake!), but even though Laura can read and speak Italian, the three of us walked in circles for at least 3 miles. Finally connecting with Dino back at the train station, he put us in a taxi which got us to our destination.
At least we were together when we got lost in Italy. But getting lost by myself in Madrid was a different story. Our trip from Atlanta to Spain included a connection in Frankfurt where we stood in lo-o-o-mg security lines to clear passport control. The two hour flight to Madrid started with a screaming child whose mother kept whipping her to make her shut up! Arriving at the Hotel Tryp Cibeles on Gran Via (the main street of Madrid), we took naps before going out for a walking tour of the city center. By this time it had gotten dark but there were lots of people on the streets. Our program director, Victor Santos, was giving a running description of what we were seeing while we were snapping pictures along the way. At one stop I was trying to get a shot of a building inside a wrought iron fence but upon turning around, my group was nowhere in sight. I looked on every side street, but saw no one that I recognized. At this point I told myself I should not panic because I knew the name of the hotel and I could get a taxi to take me there. Also I had a slip of paper with Victor’s name and cell phone number in my pocket; he had handed them out before we left. (This is the only time I remember being given the phone number of the leader upon arriving in a country.)
I had no cell phone (that would work in Spain) but I began to look for someone who might help me. I noticed a middle-aged woman reach in her purse for her cellphone and before she could dial, I hurried over saying “por favore” (please). She looked at me, puzzled, as I put my fingers to my ear to signal “telephone”. I handed her the slip of paper indicating that I was lost and needed to find my group. She called Victor, who answered immediately. He told her where they were and said they would wait for me. With hand signals she was able to show me which way to walk to find them. At breakfast the next morning I thanked Victor for providing me with the phone number. He said, “It was good. You didn’t panic. Some people would call the police and go back to U. S.”
My first trip to France was with Ellen, Sue and Kay Adkins in 2000. We were traveling with the handbell choir from University of Southern Mississippi. They played concerts in many venues on this trip, starting with one on Sunday afternoon at the American Church. After the concert, the bus took everyone to the Eiffel Tower so they could climb to the top. Ellen decided to make the climb but Sue, Kay and I chose to walk and eat our picnic while we waited. It was very cool by the Seine, so we started walking back to find the bus and wait for the group out of the cold. Kay looked ahead and said, “There’s a Meyers’ bus” (the name of our bus company) and I said, “but it can’t be ours because it’s full of people and they are leaving”. That’s when we noticed everyone on the bus waving frantically. When they couldn’t get tickets to the tower, they just got back on the bus and drove away! Ellen was saying, “Please don’t leave my friends”. At that point, the bus began to circle so everyone could search the crowds for 3 women who did not know they were lost!
Technically, getting separated from a tour group in London did not mean that we were lost, but it was very, very annoying since we thought it was someone else’s fault. On a trip to England in 2010, a fellow art student and I decided to take a day tour of London. The bus took us by many of the famous sights, also touring inside St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London. From there we took a boat trip on the Thames, just riding and looking at Big Ben and the London Eye along the way. My friend and I were sitting near the front of the boat when we realized that we didn’t see anyone we recognized. We asked a crew member about the tour group; he said that some people got off the boat at the last stop (apparently from the back of the boat). We had no choice but to continue on the river until the next stop, then walk 1/2 mile to the closest underground station to travel back to our hotel in Kensington.
This was my second time for a tour guide to fail to “count heads”. And since I had intended to return to the bus, I left my sketchbook in my seat. Thankfully, it was early in the trip and I hadn’t done much work in it, but I had to get another one before our art classes started the next day.
A friend of mine said to me recently that she would hesitate to travel with me, considering all my stories of getting “lost”. And yet, none of those experiences made me afraid to travel; keeping cool, using good sense and paying attention has always paid off for me. Also not hesitating to seek help from strangers and receiving kindness in return has been a worthwhile lesson.
