For personal time this past weekend, a group of friends and I decided to travel to Croatia. We thought that this was a good weekend to relax by the sea and even splurge on a place to stay. After hours of searching Airbnb, we decided we had found the perfect spot to enhance our relaxing weekend: a “lavish bungalow by the sea” as stated by Airbnb. The problem was that the woman who owns it didn’t have any reviews on this specific property, but she did have reviews for her other properties and all those reviews were good. So, we thought that this was the perfect place to stay in, and we were all so excited to arrive at our lavish bungalow. On the way to Croatia, everything was going so smoothly. Our luggage was checked with a breeze, our flight was perfect, and passport control was quick. It wasn’t until we were in the taxi pulling up to the location that we realized we had a problem. Our taxi driver pointed out a trailer park that we were passing, and we all thought that was weird, but we just dismissed it. That was until he pulled up into it and said we were here. We all told him it had to be a mistake and that we would call the woman who owned the property for him to talk to. When he got off the phone he said that this was it, so we decided to give it a chance. We checked into our “lavish bungalow” at the reception and after trekking through loose gravel with all of our luggage, we arrived at what was actually a mobile home surrounded by other trailers. We ended up finding a nice hotel to stay in for the rest of the weekend but there were a few lessons I learned and were reminded of: 1. Do the research 2. Only book places that have reviews. 3. Google map the area to avoid false advertisement. 4. Even when things don’t go as planned, better things might be falling into place.
Sarah Brown

When things go better than expected: the view from our hotel.