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The good times may be sweet, but the bad times keep you humble! I firmly believe that, and that’s why I always write about my worst travel moments of the year. I love looking back and remembering the bad, scary, and oftentimes funny moments that happened on my travels.
This is one of my favorite messages to write and one of your favorite messages to read each year!
I want people to know that travel is amazing, but it isn’t all fun and games 24/7. No matter how well prepared you are, you’re going to have some not-so-great moments. Go into your trip knowing that. It will help you roll with the punches better.
Please join me in a journey through my WORST travel moments of 2021!
This year I saw a lot of my neighborhood square in Prague.
Everything Covid Hath Wrought
I don’t have to tell you about COVID. You know what happened this year. here in Prague, we spent the first 3.5 months of the year in lockdown, and the cases were so high that Charlie and I even stopped seeing the friends in our bubble.
It felt like we were finally getting back to something close to normal in the late spring, but then Delta swept in and cases enhanced again, first in the us over the summer, then central Europe in late fall.
I did get in some fantastic travels in 2021, but this year wasn’t what it could have been.
I had been wishing to do a series of Christmas Market messages all over Europe — Vienna! Strasbourg! Rothenberg! Brno! — and this happened to coincide with Delta breaking case records in central Europe. Oh well. At least I got Budapest in. I can’t even write about the Prague Christmas Markets because they aren’t happening this year.
The worst day was when our entire vet’s office was exposed to COVID and closed down. This was when we were taking Lewis for his daily FIP shots and we had no idea what to do. If he missed a single shot, he could relapse.
Charlie and I tried to give Lewis his shot at home, but it wasn’t working — by that point in his treatment he was shrieking and jerking so hard that half the medicine would spill out. In a fit of desperation, we called our old vet to see if he could help with the injections. He was shocked Lewis was still alive and agreed to help us.
(That actually worked out for the best. The vet provided to do the daily shots for 100 crowns each — $4 — and it was a five-minute walk from our place instead of a 15-minute drive.)
The Cornish-Windsor Bridge, the only covered bridge connecting new Hampshire to Vermont.
Getting Swindled by Thrifty
Ugh. I’ve written about this several different times this year — many extensively, in the Adventurous Kate Patreon — and it still makes my blood boil.
Long story short: I booked a two-week car rental out of Boston for the ridiculously low price of $288 on Priceline. Priceline told me it would be with Thrifty and gave me the Thrifty confirmation number. but when I showed up at the counter, Thrifty had no record of that reservation.
With no other options, I booked a rental on the spot, and it concerned $1,964. YIKES.
After the rental period ended, I started making calls to get my money back. Priceline refunded me the $288 immediately. Chase refused to do a chargeback. and I called Thrifty again and again and again, kept getting promises of return phone calls and emails, and THEY never DID. They hoped I would go away.
I refused to give up.
Thrifty finally agreed to refund me $800 after I emailed their media relations team and told them I was writing a story about the incident, had documentation of each time they failed to call me back, and wanted to confirm the details before publication. Yeah, they acted pretty rapidly when I sent them that!
But what about all the swindled Thrifty customers who don’t have the audience I do?!
Overall, this is a lesson to book car rentals directly with the company, not with a travel booking engine like Priceline. (But in some cases the deals are SO TEMPTING.) one of my Patreon members had a suggestion — as soon as you book with another company, call the rental company and have them confirm your reservation, ideally by email.
This was NOT the place where we got food poisoning in London.
Food Poisoning…Times Two
I used to joke that I had a cast-iron stomach. despite all my travels, I’ve only had food poisoning three times: in Cambodia in 2013, in Thailand in 2013, and in new York the morning aftenullnull