After my last three flights, I'm thinking seriously about not traveling anywhere for awhile. Or maybe I should just travel by train
I have a confession to make. It’s been more than two months since I’ve traveled anywhere farther than the grocery store. Now, I realize that it’s not much of a confession, but as a travel journalist, well, traveling is generally a big part of my life.
Lately, however, I just haven’t wanted to go anywhere. It’s certainly not because no destinations hold any appeal to me. Certainly not. I’ve been thinking a lot about Spain, specifically Barcelona, Malaga and Madrid. I’ve made plans with a friend to hit Amsterdam for a weekend. I also spoke with some former colleagues about a quick trip to Vienna. Another friend wants to run a marathon in Paris.
But the fact of that matter is that traveling has gotten to be a frustrating, expensive experience. For example, on my last flight to the U.S., I flew from Nice, France to Frankfurt, Germany. The layover in Germany was about five hours and the airport was packed. So packed, in fact, that there wasn’t a place to sit. Eventually, I boarded the plane only to have it be delayed - twice. By the time the plane made it to its destination of Chicago, we were extremely late and I missed my connection to Boise. Because there were no more flights from Chicago to Boise, I ended up spending the night – at my expense, of course.
My next flight was delayed because the pilot was sent on another flight. A few weeks later, I was flying from San Francisco to Boise and the plane was overbooked. My friend was not given a boarding pass and asked to wait to see if someone else would give up their seat. Eventually, someone did give up their seat, and we got home on time, but not until after a lot of stress, phone calls, many visits to the airline’s customer service counter and some yelling.
And those are just the past couple of flights. That doesn’t include the overbooked hotels, crazy hotel curfews or run ins with the law. OK, that’s for another post. And come to think of it, those were kind of fun. Wonder when my friend wants to head to Amsterdam.
