by Miles Stiverson
You never plan to have a mishap on what's supposed to be a blissful break from reality, but sometimes the real world refuses to be left behind. Here are true stories from honeymooners who've had a little trouble with paradise.
Love Hurts
"While honeymooning in Los Cabos, Mexico, we booked an excursion to a beach that was supposedly great for snorkeling. Within two minutes of wading in the surf, I felt a searing pain on my hand. The tour guide looked into the water and pulled a jellyfish off me with his sleeve, and then hauled me back up to shore. By then, there were huge welts all over my hand. After sitting on the beach for 20 minutes while they poured vinegar on my arm, the pain got steadily worse and they finally called an emergency boat taxi to take us back to land to a waiting ambulance. Once they started working on me at the hospital I was good as new, but my husband swears at one point he heard me say, 'Just take the arm off!'"--Ann, 28, New York, NY*
Sunken Treasure
"We spent our honeymoon in the Dominican Republic. One day the resort set up a volleyball net and had a tournament that some guests were playing in, including my husband. I was sitting poolside when all of a sudden everyone stopped playing and started looking around. I thought someone had lost a contact until my husband came over looking like he was scared to talk to me, and for good reason -- he said his wedding band had flown off somewhere.
"Eventually one of the resort employees came back with another guy in full scuba gear -- it looked like he was getting ready to go deep-sea diving. The scuba diver got in and looked around for a couple minutes, and then came up with my husband's ring. I held onto the ring until my husband finished his game. You're never supposed to lose your wedding ring, and he managed to do it within the first week of marriage!"--Alexandra, 33, Charlotte, NC
Roomless in Beantown
"We'd spent our honeymoon in Boston and on Martha's Vineyard, but decided at the last minute not to make the long journey from the Vineyard back to Boulder, Colorado in one day, so we took the ferry back to Boston to stay the night. Little did we know (consumed in the rapture of our honeymoon) that the Boston Red Sox were playing a home game against the New York Yankees in the ALCS.
"On the bus back into the city we started making a few calls to get a room and quickly realized that we had no place to stay -- from the most expensive to the cheapest of hotels, nothing was available. There we were in the bus station, luggage in tow, bride in tears and Yellow Pages in hand. We tried for hours, calling every hotel and begging for a room. Finally we got a smoking room around 11 p.m.
"We were determined not to let our Boston strikeout be the last night of our honeymoon, so we booked a suite at a local Marriott as soon as we returned home!"--Pam, 27, Boulder, CO
Um, Try This One
"We were in Mexico on our honeymoon and went to eat at one of the nicest restaurants in town for our last night. We tried to charge the meal on our credit card, but it was denied because it had been maxed out from wedding expenses. The next card that we gave them was sent into 'fraud mode' because we used it in Mexico without informing the card company first -- they thought it was stolen and requested the restaurant take the card from us. We gave him our bank ATM card and that finally worked.
"However, after leaving the restaurant we realized that the credit card we were going to use for our hotel was the one still in 'fraud mode.' My husband's father had to fax a copy of another card so that we could check out of the hotel and come home. But, I have to say, I can think of worse things than being stranded a couple more days south of the border."--Ellen, 28, Minneapolis, MN
A Stranded Ship
"We booked a shoulder-season trip to Greece and Turkey for our honeymoon, when many of the upscale ships that toured the islands between Greece and Turkey had already stopped running. Our travel agent convinced us to take a two-star cruise ship anyway and consider it 'just a place to sleep' for a few nights. Toward the end of our cruise we docked at the port of Kusadasi, Turkey. Our departure time came and went, and we hadn't moved. Eventually the captain of the ship came on the PA system and spoke at length in Greek -- the people who understood started freaking out, and finally someone filled us in. There was 'an issue' between the ship's owner and the Turkish government, and we wouldn't be going anywhere! What made matters worse -- they wouldn't let us off the ship, and they wouldn't return our passports!
"We immediately called our families and our travel agent and finally got through to our travel agent's representative in Turkey. With her help we formed a James Bond-like plan. Already more than 24 hours past our scheduled departure time, we packed our bags, stormed the lobby, and loudly demanded back our passports -- announcing that we would notify the U.S. Embassy if we were refused. After a few tense minutes of conferring in hushed Greek, they returned our passports and we ran off the ship to a waiting driver who drove us through the night to the airport in Izmir where we flew up to Istanbul, our next stop. We later found out that not only was our ship's situation on both the Greek and Turkish news, but that the issue that kept the ship hostage was $1.5 million in unpaid port taxes that the ship's owner owed the Turkish government!"--Melanie, Coral Gables, FL
Honeymooning Heights
"My husband I were honeymooning in Banff, Canada, and one day we went hiking and came upon a gondola car. We decided it would be fun to take a ride. All of a sudden we were more than 7,000 feet above sea level and we remembered: We both hate heights! We were stuck in this tiny car on a tiny cable taking us high into the sky. Needless to say it was not all smiles and pictures -- more like terror and tears! The views were spectacular after we got up there, but the ride down was another experience. We were at the bar after that one."--Erica, 25, Sonoma, CA
Must Have Been Something I Ate
"We were honeymooning in Tahiti when, one morning, I woke up at 5 a.m. and noticed that my lip felt funny. I ran to the bathroom and found that I'd developed some sort of food allergy overnight -- my bottom lip was swollen out an inch! My new husband walked a mile at 7:30 a.m. to the nearest Tahitian pharmacy to get me an antihistamine. Lucky for me it wasn't serious and the lip soon returned to its normal size."--Katrina, 31, Dallas, TX
*Note: Some names have been changed
