What was your worst holiday experience?

[wolram]

What was your most memorable holiday good or bad?

 

[Andre]

Good question. I had nothing to do between 30 Nov 1977 and 28 January 1978 and we happened to be in Canada (Cold Lake/Grand Centre, Alberta). So we took the car and did a long trek for the sun all the way to Los Angelos, trying to visit as many National Parks as possible.

 

[Evo]

My favorite vacation was a car trip to Florida from my home in Houston, TX. My mom got my grandmother (my father's mother), my brother and sister and I in the car and headed off to visit my Dad's family. We even took my pet turtle Roger with us.

We stayed at a little motel owned by a nice old man in Gulfport, Mississippi right on the water. Because of my terrible allergies I had to sleep propped up and even though I had brought my hypo-allergenic pillow, I couldn't stay upright enough to breath, so I slept in the bathtub.

My aunt and uncle were strawberry farmers outside of Tampa. I was in hog heaven on their farm, I didn't want to leave.

Good times. Thanks for bringing back the memories Wolram.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Once, several years ago, I went to a friend's parents house for the 4th of July. There were several people there. We hung out and talked to one another outside in the shade of trees listening to jazz and blues. I watched a house wife, a hippy, and a greaser all chit chat together. People in the neighbourhood were out having a nice time with their families. Everyone are all closely packed here in long beach so one persons activities tend to spill over into other people's activities. It was just nice and a sharp contrast to my family who tend to eat a lot and then sit down in front of a tv.

edit: Ah! I am not thinking brit speak for "holiday". I generally do not take holiday, no time, but once flew to another state and spent a few days with a lady friend I met online. We mostly stayed in bed.

 

[wolram]

My best holiday was a working one in east Germany right on the boarder with Poland, there were so many picturesque places to see/visit, all in my own free time of course.

 

[lisab]

Hard to say what the best was...one that I really liked was a hiking vacation at Silver Falls State Park in Oregon. Had a fantastic hike there -

http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org/wiki/Trail_of_Ten_Falls_Loop_Hike

Back in camp that afternoon, I saw my favorite bird foraging - the American Dipper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ERPmoYsoMg&feature=related

What a great day!

I think some of my worst vacation memories are looooong car rides with the family when I was a kid. We went across Death Valley one year, with no air conditioning. I remember opening a can of *hot* root beer (because there was nothing else to drink) and it turned into a gusher, spraying up onto the roof of the station wagon...and dripping down on everyone. Sticky. Very sticky.

I was not anyone's favorite person that day.

 

[magpies]

Do birthdays count? When I was like 8 my parents forgot my birthday so they made up for it was pretty funny imo.

Worst hurm... I'd have to say valentines day is probably my worst as I am terrible with women and really lonely.

 

[BobG]

Christmas as a 10-year-old. My mom was in the hospital for a gall bladder operation and it was getting close to my sister's birthday and getting close to Christmas (they were a week apart). She didn't get out in time for my sister's birthday, but she did get out in time for Christmas.

I made a Christmas card in school. The outside was blue construction paper, the inside was oversized white paper folded and cut to make a pop-up snowflake when the card was opened, plus it had a copied Christmas poem written inside. I brought it home after school on Christmas Eve only to realize I'd somehow lost it on the way home.

Surprisingly, my dad took me out to look for it. Surprising, because he always harped on doing the smart thing and searching for a paper Christmas card on the windy plains of Kansas isn't exactly the smart thing. We searched until it got dark and he never once suggested giving up. I finally had to accept it was lost and suggested we go on back home. I'll still always remember that, though.

Even without the Christmas card, it was pretty much the dream Christmas. My mom made oatmeal cookies (with no raisins), which I ate out of a tupperware container. The silly things you love when you're 10-years-old.

It was pretty much the dream Christmas right up until she collapsed on the kitchen floor. Eventually, we were herded to the nextdoor neighbors with an ambulance and flashing lights in the front yard. And, several hours later, my dad finally came back from the hospital. My mom was doing okay in the hospital, but we were going off to my Aunt's and Uncle's house until she got out.

Just to add a finishing touch to the evening, when we entered the house, we discovered the cat had killed our three fish (one for each kid) and left the half eaten bodies littered around the living room.

The next morning, we did a rather subdued version of the ritual of opening presents, then hauled them off to our room and were allowed to pick out a couple of them to take with us to the Aunt's and Uncle's house.

Some things in life just aren't fair. That was our last Christmas together. It turned out my mom developed an infection from the gall bladder operation. She eventually recovered from that and got out of the hospital, but it turned out she caught hepatitus during her hospital stay. At the end of a gall bladder operation and serious infection, the hepatitus wound up being too much and she died that Spring.

 

[turbo]

Years ago, I planned a trip to Washington DC, so we could see monuments (at least at a distance) and visit several Smithsonian museums over the weekend. Our cab driver played a neat sleight-of-hand and stole my wife's smaller bag that contained her jewelry. Worse of all, he probably got nothing from it because he was too ignorant to recognize the rare gems and custom-cut and custom-set stones that he had stolen.

In hindsight, I'm glad that he didn't get a nice payday, but I am still sad that my wife lost so many pieces of jewelry that I had crafted for her over the years. I faceted stones for family and for profit, but my wife got over half of the best gems, just because.

 

[lisab]

Christmas as a 10-year-old. My mom was in the hospital for a gall bladder operation and it was getting close to my sister's birthday and getting close to Christmas (they were a week apart). She didn't get out in time for my sister's birthday, but she did get out in time for Christmas.

I made a Christmas card in school. The outside was blue construction paper, the inside was oversized white paper folded and cut to make a pop-up snowflake when the card was opened, plus it had a copied Christmas poem written inside. I brought it home after school on Christmas Eve only to realize I'd somehow lost it on the way home.

Surprisingly, my dad took me out to look for it. Surprising, because he always harped on doing the smart thing and searching for a paper Christmas card on the windy plains of Kansas isn't exactly the smart thing. We searched until it got dark and he never once suggested giving up. I finally had to accept it was lost and suggested we go on back home. I'll still always remember that, though.

Even without the Christmas card, it was pretty much the dream Christmas. My mom made oatmeal cookies (with no raisins), which I ate out of a tupperware container. The silly things you love when you're 10-years-old.

It was pretty much the dream Christmas right up until she collapsed on the kitchen floor. Eventually, we were herded to the nextdoor neighbors with an ambulance and flashing lights in the front yard. And, several hours later, my dad finally came back from the hospital. My mom was doing okay in the hospital, but we were going off to my Aunt's and Uncle's house until she got out.

Just to add a finishing touch to the evening, when we entered the house, we discovered the cat had killed our three fish (one for each kid) and left the half eaten bodies littered around the living room.

The next morning, we did a rather subdued version of the ritual of opening presents, then hauled them off to our room and were allowed to pick out a couple of them to take with us to the Aunt's and Uncle's house.

Some things in life just aren't fair. That was our last Christmas together. It turned out my mom developed an infection from the gall bladder operation. She eventually recovered from that and got out of the hospital, but it turned out she caught hepatitus during her hospital stay. At the end of a gall bladder operation and serious infection, the hepatitus wound up being too much and she died that Spring.

That's so, so sad, Bob, I'm sorry to hear it. What a horrible tragedy.

 

[Evo]

Christmas as a 10-year-old. My mom was in the hospital for a gall bladder operation and it was getting close to my sister's birthday and getting close to Christmas (they were a week apart). She didn't get out in time for my sister's birthday, but she did get out in time for Christmas.

I made a Christmas card in school. The outside was blue construction paper, the inside was oversized white paper folded and cut to make a pop-up snowflake when the card was opened, plus it had a copied Christmas poem written inside. I brought it home after school on Christmas Eve only to realize I'd somehow lost it on the way home.

Surprisingly, my dad took me out to look for it. Surprising, because he always harped on doing the smart thing and searching for a paper Christmas card on the windy plains of Kansas isn't exactly the smart thing. We searched until it got dark and he never once suggested giving up. I finally had to accept it was lost and suggested we go on back home. I'll still always remember that, though.

Even without the Christmas card, it was pretty much the dream Christmas. My mom made oatmeal cookies (with no raisins), which I ate out of a tupperware container. The silly things you love when you're 10-years-old.

It was pretty much the dream Christmas right up until she collapsed on the kitchen floor. Eventually, we were herded to the nextdoor neighbors with an ambulance and flashing lights in the front yard. And, several hours later, my dad finally came back from the hospital. My mom was doing okay in the hospital, but we were going off to my Aunt's and Uncle's house until she got out.

Just to add a finishing touch to the evening, when we entered the house, we discovered the cat had killed our three fish (one for each kid) and left the half eaten bodies littered around the living room.

The next morning, we did a rather subdued version of the ritual of opening presents, then hauled them off to our room and were allowed to pick out a couple of them to take with us to the Aunt's and Uncle's house.

Some things in life just aren't fair. That was our last Christmas together. It turned out my mom developed an infection from the gall bladder operation. She eventually recovered from that and got out of the hospital, but it turned out she caught hepatitus during her hospital stay. At the end of a gall bladder operation and serious infection, the hepatitus wound up being too much and she died that Spring.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

My most memorable holiday has to be that time we went to New Mexico. Or was it Arizona.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

When I was a pure city kid living in the concrete jungles the suburbs of Los Angeles, we made two trips back to the family farm, in South Dakota. My dad had spent spent a fair amount of time there during his childhood. I had a male cousin who lived there who was my age. Dad pretty much turned us loose as he knew the area. We had free reign, riding horses and motorcycles, driving the farm equipment, shooting guns, torching behives with gasoline, hiking into the Black Hills, swimming and fishing in local ponds, and even going to see a dirty movie at the drive-in with our crazy cousin Bobby - driving 100 mph on dirt country roads, and getting my first taste of booze. We got in just about as much trouble as we could manage. From my pov, it was unlike any other place on Earth. And to make it even stranger, just about everyone for miles in any direction, were relatives. For a city kid who had never even seen a real farm, it was better than Disneyland.

I always loved the story that my cousin told me. One warm, summer afternoon, he decided to go for a long, slow ride, on Snipper, the most loyal and trusted horse on the farm. He [my cousin] fell asleep for hours. Can you imagine being so at ease in the environment that one can jump on a horse, fall asleep, and ride for hours?? When he awoke, he was many miles from the farm, slowly walking along on a dirt road somewhere back in the hills.

 

[wolram]

My worst one one was a week in a caravan down Cornwall, it rained all week and we couldn't get out of the park as it had become a quagmire.

Nothing to compare to Bobs though.