Holiday Fail – Couples Guide How NOT To Travel

If I weren’t such a tight-fisted, controlling, un-decisive and lazy bint, I would be going travelling.

In my head, I dream of single holidays, in which I would enjoy some amazing exploits with interesting people and then write about them in a best-selling book. The reality is somewhat more inglorious and I regularly achieve holiday mediocrity. Here’s are a few suggestions on what NOT to do, so you can avoid some of my recurring pitfalls.

The classic horror story of holidaying starts with someone saying to their travelling partner: “Darling, it doesn’t really matter where we go. As long as I’m with you!” Off trots Darling, plotting a dirt cheap getaway so they can have more booze and more money to spend on booze back home.

Mistake.

The loved-up couple arrive in Ayia Napa. Fellow packagers are of the ‘retro’ (read: racist) variety and dismiss the bus driver as a ‘Manuel.’ As they arrive at the hotel, another packager is complimenting a large lady at the bar: “Ya know who ya look like? That bird from Misery, you know the one. Aw yeah, Kathy Bates, that’s the one!” The holiday is pretty much unsalvageable from there: everyone else is more tanned, enthusiastically enjoying the in-house bingo and confidently flaunting the creeping flesh.

The couple return to their grey, rainy homeland, and swear that they will never do it again: from now on they will go with something exciting like activity holidays in South East Asia. Until The Sun offers £10 holidays the year after.

Let your boyfriend book the tickets

Carol books an amazing hotel in Barcelona for a weekend. What’s more is that she gets it for a song thanks to some nifty internet trawling and well-applied vouchers. She buys the guide book and puts cute stars and hearts next to the places she wants to go with her lover boy: Parc Güell for mosaics and vistas, Las Ramblas for some tacky tourist nicknacks, 4Gats for some classy Spanish nosh and Moog for a bit of tail shaking. In one word: amazing.

Her boyfriend Rob has one job: book the tickets. She nags and nags until he gets them, and now she can breathe. Except that they arrive at Bologna. And the only flights they can get to BCN are going to cost £400 each and leave the next afternoon. That’s a lot of good work wasted, a lot of time and effort added to what’s meant to be a nice, relaxing holiday, and a whole lot of resentment bubbling under the surface.

Pack 14 pairs of socks and only one pair of undies

Some people just don’t have basic life skills when it comes to travelling. Take the example of this man when his wife left him to his own devices when packing his suitcase… Well, you read the subtitle, so you know what he did: just don’t do it yourselves.

Interestingly, this happened when he was aged 45 and ran a successful zip manufacturing business. However, you should know that this is also the man who went travelling in his early twenties and forgot to brush his teeth for six months (another hot tip: don’t do this either).

Packing should be pretty simple really. All you need is a passport, some money, the clothes you are wearing and enough underwear (socks and boxers) to see you through the trip. Everything else can be bought out there (usually for cheaper than the UK), and besides, you’ll want to leave room in your suitcase for souvenirs.

Go on a family reunion holiday

Just drink heavily through the colour coded activity plan, as created by your ‘fun’ father-in-law: lilac for new experiences, yellow for meals and snacks, blue for family relaxation time and black for your mood after 2 weeks of intensive, well-co-ordinated, organised fun.