Is it just me, or is WordPress funnelling a lot of travel-based prompts at us lately?
Anyway, the worst travel experience I’ve ever had becomes a straight choice between two, one of which I would certainly regard as far worse, so I guess it’s actually a straight choice between one, and perhaps half of one?
Actually, I could make a case for two and a half possibilities.
The ‘half’ scenario concerns a train ride home a friend and I took one evening after we’d visited London. The trains were in a period of heavy disruption following a train crash in the area, but all things being equal, we were on the first train back home, which should have taken 30 minutes.
We sat on the train, in a carriage filled with semi-drunken (albeit harmless) Geordies, for… I think an hour and a half, in King’s Cross station, before it finally got moving. It then stopped for another 20 minutes, in the middle of nowhere.
All things considered, this was in fact a mild issue, compared to other experiences.
As a young meerkat, I was flying home with my parents and brother from Faro Airport in Portugal. The flight had been due to depart at around midnight, but a storm in the area kept planes grounded, and we didn’t actually take off till around 6 am, if I am recalling correctly. I do recall having a weird panic attack in the airport; I’d dozed off, and woke up in a brief state of hysterics.
Once we were airborne, we still caught the fringes of the storm. I’ve never been in a flight that has bounced quite so much as this one. It was horrible, and it marks the only time I’ve actually vomited on a plane.
The second occasion is one I might have already told, and it took relates to flying. This time, we were flying out from Luton Airport to go to Majorca. The plane taxied to the runway, accelerated… and slammed on the brakes, briefly making everyone wonder if this was it. We then taxied back to the gate, and everyone had to disembark. We learned a tyre had decompressed as we were about to take off, and by all accounts if that had happened upon landing, the scenario might have been a lot worse.
What followed were several hours spent waiting for news. Our flight had been a morning one, with the aim of being at our destination by the early afternoon, but instead my family and I sat around Luton Airport (not a great place back then), bored out of our minds as they fitted a new tyre to the plane. Spares were not kept at Luton, so they had to get one from up north somewhere.
I’ve never heard so many people applaud a plane successfully take off before.
What was your worst travel experience?!
Arriving at Tel Aviv airport on my way to South Africa 1979. Greeted by more bullet proof vests and Uzis than I imagined possible.
Truly, very disturbing and quite unsettling.