I've been travelling to my boyfriend regularly for over a year now by different means of transportation and had a lot of curious things happen to me, but this is a first!
Anyway I'm going to write about this, but first I wanted to ask about the travel experiences of other LFADers. Do you have any weird or funny travel experiences? Please do share! I love to hear about other experiences.
What do you do to save on travel expenses?
So how did this happen:
Let's start with the return journey, because I bought that first (yeah- don't ask lol). Anyway my boyfriend is doing an internship in another city in July, so I'm travelling there. I checked the airfare and there were really cheap one-way connections for my return date, all only about 40€, so naturally I wanted to go for them. The only problem: There were no (cheap) direct flights. They were from the city he'll be staying, with a layover in the capital (conveniently his city) and then a connecting flight to my city - the next morning!
I bought it anyway and will stay with my 'parents in-law' for that night. My mother in law even agreed to take me to the airport as my flight is at 6am.
I'm leaving at about 8pm and arriving about 9am the next day.
For my trip there I was planning to go by train. To get a good price I wanted to buy the first ticket (from my city to a place in Poland) here and then the connection ticket when I arrive at my first destination. Trains are way cheaper in PL than they are here, so that's the cheapest option.
So far, so good - we had the perfect plan worked out and then.... they changed the procedure of buying tickets and when I got around to buying the tickets the connection I initially wanted to take was already quite expensive (60€+), so I went for another one that's leaving my city at midnight and has me arrive at about 8pm the next day. With 1 and 2-hour stops for breakfast and lunch respectively.
I'm actually curious to see how that works out.
So far my most exciting/stressful travel experience was my visit after Christmas. I was leaving from my mum's and the whole trip was supposed to take 8 hours (by train).
Due to technical problems and endless delays, I ended up arriving after 16 hours, 3 of which I spend right after the border in a train without electricity and consequently without heating (remember this was late December!).
Not only was it super cold, but I was over-tired and hungry. I had left home at 7am and was supposed to arrive around 3pm, so I didn't take a whole lot of food as I thought I was gonna sleep most of the time and have lunch when I arrive.
I have more 'interesting' experiences, but I'm not going to bore you: So time for your stories - tell me about the creeps you had to sit next to on your last flight, the 10 hour delay, your upgrade to 1st class including free on-board spa or whatever else happened to you
My friend and I were in Peru for about 20 days. We had planned to go from Arequipa to Puno, then Puno to Cusco. Well of course the entire nation decided to riot and the buses stopped running. We had to stay 2 extra days in Arequipa before finally making it out to Puno. Then once in Puno ALL of the transportation shut down. In fact the Peruvians had thrown glass all over the roads making it near impossible to travel. We had pre-booked a fancy tour bus to take us to Cusco which was going to go by all these neat landmarks and feed us lunch and stuff. Well finally that bus was going to run, just not on the normal route. It had to take an alternative route since all the "main roads" had riots. That meant that instead of the normal 6 hour bus ride... it was 18 hours across dirt roads. The bus got stuck at one point and we all had to get off while the guys pushed! I shit you not! It was blaring hot and impossible to put the windows down since we were on a dirt road. It was painful and when we were almost there we had to turn around and go another way because... a truck had jack knifed and blocked the entire "road".
Needless to say we were really happy to make it to finally get in a hostel in Cusco!!!
See it as a free added adventure. Honestly travelling would be a lot less boring without those incidents.
I got free tea and a 50% refund - that I instantly invested in a new train ticket - out of it, so it wasn't too bad either.
When I went back home after Easter I somehow ended up in the 1st class for my first train (5,5h) - so yeah, they made up for it.