31 Days of Traveling to Europe: Day 3 - Double Check Everything

I lost count of the number of times I checked all the paperwork for my trip - plane tickets, train tickets, tour information, everything. I didn't want any surprises when I got oversees. I emailed PDF scans of everything to several email accounts, just to be safe and in case I forgot to take something with me I would have access to it. We left copies of all our paperwork with our mom, in the event that we lost our luggage along the way. We thought we had it all covered.

However, when we got to Florence and met our tour guide, we realized we didn't have one piece of documentation - proof that the tour included passage to Rome. Unbeknownst to us, we were joining a tour that had already been going on for several days and was continuing on for several more days, instead of the three-day tour we had booked. It all worked out fine but we had to find the tour information on the Viator website, email the link to the very nice woman working the front desk of our hotel, who then printed it off so that we had hard evidence that the company was supposed to get us to Rome on the third day of the tour. If we had packed the itinerary of the tour, we would have saved ourselves several steps.

I wish I had taken the double-checking mentality to Paris with me. I bought several of the same souvenir for people back home and it wasn't until I was packing for Florence that I discovered that the clerk had neglected to put two of the souvenirs in my sack. It was probably an honest mistake on her part but it was very frustrating for me and I kicked myself for days for not counting what was in my sack when I could return to the store and do something about it. When I figured it out, it was too late to do anything about it.

The lesson here is: pack all the paperwork you have double checked before you leave home, not matter how trivial you think it is and keep double checking everything until you're back home.

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