Even pros get lost along the way

IT'S not easy to admit a mistake, especially if you're supposed to be a professional. Yet we all make them. Here, the Travel staff of The Times comes clean about great goof-ups we have known and made.

1. Mind the details

Don't ignore the fine points when booking a ticket online. Alternate airports can be a godsend, offering cheaper fares or better schedules. But they are neither cheaper nor better if you book yourself out of one airport and back into another.

I was flying to Boston from San Jose and assumed I would come and go from the same place. Wrong. I booked myself from San Jose (SJC) but returned to San Francisco (SFO). This wouldn't have been quite the pain it was if I hadn't left my car at the San Jose airport.

Lesson: Slow down and check, even if you think you know what you're doing.

-- Catharine Hamm

2. Be consistent

If you're going to be a budget traveler, be consistent about it. Imagine my glee this last summer when I landed a $72 room at the Hyatt Embarcadero in San Francisco by using Priceline. The room was lovely, and I felt pretty darn proud until I discovered that parking was $49 a night. A smart budget traveler would have inquired beforehand and arranged to return the rental car a day early.

Lesson: Consider all the expenses of a hotel stay, especially parking and taxes.

-- C.H.

3. Check the map

If you travel by rail, especially in foreign cities, make sure you know which station your train departs from. In Paris, for instance, there are six major train stations -- Montparnasse, Austerlitz, Lyon, l'Est, Nord and St. Lazare. Each one serves trains headed to different places. It's the same in the Chinese capital, where I once tried to catch a train to Xi'an from the Beijing Train Station. Good thing I got there early, because the train actually left from Beijing West Train Station, a 45-minute taxi ride. My driver ran red lights all across town and got me there just before the train pulled out.

Lesson: Look closely at your tickets and study your map.

-- Susan Spano

4. Buyer beware

Hotels are cheap for a reason, and it's not charity. I was sure I'd found a rare weekend deal in Las Vegas when, for $44 plus tax, I booked a hotel near the Strip that chat rooms rated as "basic but clean."

What I got was a big but drab room with mismatched furniture, stained ceiling, rusted shower head, thin towels and some kind of fuzz coating the exhaust fan. So far so good; I once stayed at a B&B in Greece where I had to wrestle towels from my host, and it was OK.