I seem to have had a lot of issues when travelling. Some people may say that I have bad luck when travelling. My dad has said that he would never get on a train with me because a problem always arises; whether that be cancellations, delays or issues with other passengers. As well as train issues in the UK, I’ve had a few incidents abroad that probably should put me off travelling, but they haven’t.

There are plenty of examples of issues when travelling. Cancelled flights seem to be a regular occurrence for me but I have also ended up in lockdown twice on two different continents. I’ve also accidentally ended up in the wrong country.

Getting stuck in Luxembourg

In May 2018, I went on a solo trip to Luxembourg. I’d booked my flights with Ryanair and planned for 3 days in Luxembourg City. I spent the three days exploring and managed to fit in everything I wanted to do. On the final day, I left my luggage at the hostel I was staying at and I started to walk back there to pick it up so I could head to the airport when I got a text from Ryanair. My flight to Stansted was cancelled.

I had no idea what I was meant to do in that situation, I tried to contact Ryanair and they were useless. The link I was sent in the text didn’t lead me anywhere, the online chat wasn’t connecting and I couldn’t get through on the phone. I decided to just head to the airport with my lugagge and hope that somebody from Ryanair would be there and would be able to help me. There was only one flight to Stansted per day which was at 21:45.

Eventually, after finally getting through to Ryanair and speaking to someone at the LuxAir desk at Luxembourg airport, I had a plan. I was booked onto the flight the next day and the airport sorted me out with a hotel for the night. It wasn’t easy trying to get a hotel – I had to explain that I was a young female, on her own, in a foreign country and I didn’t have the money to book a last minute hotel. I was put up in the Novotel Luxembourg Centre and they also paid for me to get a taxi over there.

The second cancelled flight

The next day, I had my fingers crossed that my flight would be fine. When I got to the airport it was on time. I went through security and checked my case in before waiting at the gate. 25 minutes before the flight was due to depart, the board announced that it was an hour delayed. I then got a text to say it was two hours delayed and would be leaving at 23:50. I got a text from Ryanair saying that the flight was leaving at 3am making the flight 5 hours delayed.

At around midnight, a member of airport staff told us that the plane could not land in Luxembourg as it was too late. We could ourselves a hotel and trying to get on the flight the following evening. Or, we could get on a coach that was waiting outside. This coach would take us to Frankfurt Hahn Airport in Germany and we would fly from there at 3am. I decided to go to Germany.

Leaving Germany

When we got to Germany, none of the airport staff knew anything about our flight. There was no Ryanair flight scheduled to leave there until after 6am and none were going to Stansted. There were actually no staff for a good four hours after we arrived. I found this particularly difficult as I was the only English person on the flight. In Luxembourg they either speak French or German – my knowledge of both languages is very basic. At Frankfurt Hahn airport, they spoke mostly German. I ended up spending the night either sat on the floor or lying on the luggage belt. I didn’t want to try to sleep in case I missed something.

Finally, our flight came up on the board and we were leaving Germany at 5:00am! At 5:30am, we were ushered onto a Ryanair plane and we finally departed at 5:50am. It was 32 hours after my original flight was meant to depart. Once I got to Stansted, I had to wait two hours for my suitcase. As you can imagine, I was exhausted.

Accidentally going to Belgium

Most of my issues when travelling have not been my fault – this one was. I was in Luxembourg, having a lovely day out in Vianden. I caught a train from Luxembourg City to Ettelbruck and then got a bus from there to Vianden, which is near the German border. The train journey wasn’t very long at all. It took 20-30 minutes which was great.

When I was finished in Vianden, I got the bus back to Ettelbruck and boarded the train. Stupidly, I was too busy reading on my kindle and didn’t realise that the train back was taking a while. Eventually, I clocked that the journey wasn’t this long on the way there and I opened up Google Maps. I was horrified to see that the little dot that represented me was travelling north towards the Belgian border. The next stop on the train was Gouvy which is in Belgium.

I ended up getting off in Gouvy, I didn’t say anything to anyone because I was worried that I’d get in trouble for crossing the border. My passport was back in my hostel which made me panic. Luckily nobody needed to check it and I didn’t have to explain what I was doing to anybody. I ended up checking the train times online and at the station and found one going in the opposite direction, back to Luxembourg City an hour later. Luckily, nobody on the train back checked my ticket until I was between Ettelbruck and Luxembourg City, so I didn’t get told off for going too far. On the plus side, there was a waffle van outside of the station so I got to have a Belgian waffle.

A 24 hour lockdown in Florida

In October 2016, I went to Walt Disney World in Florida for two weeks. We arrived late on October 4th and our first full day was. October 5th which was my 27th birthday. We enjoyed our first day in Magic Kingdom with no issues, but when we woke up on the morning of October 6th, we found out that Hurrican Matthew was on the way.

There were no official rules from our resort or Disney, but the first thing we did was stock up on snacks. We went to the shop at our resort at around 7:30am and it seemed like everyone had had the same idea. Although we had no idea what was going to happen, we bought enough snacks for the four of us to live on for a couple of days! We then made our way to Epcot and carried on as normal until we got an official notice. We were told that the parks would be shutting early, at 5pm and a county wide curfew would be issued. Everyone had to stay indoors from 7pm until further notice.

When we got back to our room, it all felt a bit exciting. None of us had experienced a hurricane before, so we didn’t realise how serious it could be. Luckily, Orlando wasn’t expected to be hit too bad. We brought in all of the furniture off our balcony and settled in for the night. Hurricane Matthew hit us overnight, we were all asleep and didn’t even notice it at its worst. I had a lot of people back home contacting me to make sure I was alright. To me, the worst of the hurricane just seemed like a very windy day back at home.

The aftermath of Hurricane Matthew

Waking up on October 7th, we found that there was minimal damage to our resort. We still had to stay indoors until we were told otherwise. Finally, we got a call to say that we could leave our rooms late in the afternoon. All parks were shut for the first time since 9/11 but some parts of Disney Springs were open. We ended up going to Disney Springs for pizza and for a walk around to stretch our legs.

We were really lucky that the hurricane didn’t badly affect us. Overall, we just missed one day in the parks and then the rest of our trip was fine. Being stuck in the room for 24 hours was annoying, but not the end of the world.

Being in Italy when they went into lockdown

In March 2020, Kariss and I flew over to Venice for a 3 day city break. While there were a lot of COVID cases in some parts of Italy at that time, Venice was fine. There were no restrictions and we were told we were fine to travel. We got a bargain deal in the British Airways sale and neither of us had been to Italy before, so we were really excited.

There were only 21 people on our flight out there, which felt very strange but we still weren’t concerned. We managed to explore parts of Venice when we arrived and noticed that it seemed quiet. Although, as neither of us had been before, we had nothing to compare it to. We had a lovely meal in a tiny traditional Italian restaurant.

The following day we used the water buses to travel over to Murano and Burano. Most places were open and we had a great day and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe in the evening before grabbing a coffee and dessert from the McDonalds next to our hotel. We’d planned to have another Italian meal on our final day and were determined to find the best tiramisu that Venice had to offer.

Venice in lockdown

On our final day, we woke up to the news that Venice had been put on lockdown. We went down to our hotel’s reception to ask what this meant. We were told that Venice was operating as normal, there was just no non-essential travel allowed out of the city. So, we carried on with our plans of exploring. Unfortunately in the afternoon we noticed that a lot of places were starting to close early. We didn’t plan on going on a gondola ride, but the people running them seemed to be desperate for our custom. We ended up getting a ride for just 40€. After the gondola ride, we went in search of food. By this time there were no restaurants open and even the 24 hour McDonalds next to our hotel was shut. I had to have a sandwich from the Spar which was about to close.

No flights leaving Venice

On our way back to the hotel we both got texts to say that our flight back to Stansted was cancelled. Obviously, we then started to panic a bit. The virus was becoming a bit more real and scary. Our first port of call was British Airways. We called them but they said that there were no flights leaving Venice. Their suggestion was to hire a car and drive to another airport in Southern Italy or even Austria. We spent ages trying to figure things out with several calls to British Airways. There was nobody else we could call and we realised that travel insurance isn’t much use unless you need to claim for something.

Eventually, we spoke to somebody who told us that there was a flight to Heathrow leaving fro Bologna the following day. We got booked onto that one and went to bed worrying about getting the train out of Venice. We’d heard that people were getting stopped by police and questioned if they were trying to leave the city. As British citizens, we were allowed to travel back to Britain, we just needed to prove we had a flight booked. Nobody stopped us, the train to Bologna was fine and we got back to Heathrow earlier than we should have landed at Stansted on our original flight.

After all the drama of leaving Italy, I forgot how awful London can be at rush hour. I was stuck on a packed train out of Euston at 5pm hoping and praying that nobody noticed my suitcase and asked me where I’d been. Luckily, nobody paid me any attention and I soon got home. Even though NHS Direct said I was fine, I still isolated for 14 days.

Getting stuck in Romania

In September 2023, I booked another city break with Kariss. We joked that we were cursed because of what happened in Florida and Venice when we were together. We booked flights to Bucharest in Romania, flying from Stansted with Ryanair and the return flight was to Heathrow with BlueAir. I’d not heard of BlueAir before, but it appeared to be the Romanian version of Ryanair, so what could go wrong?

As soon as we touched down in Bucharest and switched our phones back on, we both got emails from BlueAir. Our return flight was cancelled. Usually, we’d just speak to someone from the airline and see if we could get on another flight but not this time. All BlueAir flights were suspended until mid October due to them not paying a government fine of 2,000,000€. We landed just after 6pm Friday, so there were no phone lines open and we couldn’t get any help at the airport.

No flights to the UK

As soon as we got to our hotel, we began searching for a way home. There are a few airlines flying from Bucharest back to the UK, but everything was fully booked or really expensive. Queen Elizabeth had died the day before, so we assumed that journalists were flying to London to report on it. We contacted our parents to see if they had any ideas, we used Google, asked for ideas on Twitter.. we tried everything. I thought I booked a flight home, but something glitched so I had to wait 12 hours to see if I got a confirmation. That wait was excruciating, I had no idea when I’d be able to leave Romania!

The next morning, the money hadn’t left my account so I tried again. Kariss managed to get a direct flight to Heathrow leaving Monday morning, the same day we were meant to leave. Unfortunately for her, this cost her £550. I didn’t want to fork out that much money when there were cheaper ways around it. My job was a bit more flexible, so I looked at longer routes.

The journey I took to get home was ridiculous, but I was not prepared to pay £600 for the only direct flight to Birmingham. I ended up catching three different flights, in three different countries and it took me just over 21 hours. It only cost me £240 though. Some people said they would have paid the £600 to save the hassle, but I just saw it as a bit of an adventure.

A long journey home

I started my journey off at Bucharest OTP airport. At 21:55 on Monday night, I flew from Bucharest to Sofia in Bulgaria. I then had 7 hours and 55 minutes to wait until my next flight. So, I spent around 4 of those hours trying to sleep across a some hard chairs in the airport. I went through to the terminal as soon as I was able to. If it hadn’t been the middle of the night, I would have loved to have left the airport. Sofia is on my travel bucket list.

At 6:45am I left Sofia and flew to Chania on the island of Crete in Greece. I landed at 8:15am and had 6 hours and 45 minutes until my next flight. As this was in the daytime, I managed to leave the airport. I did some research and found that there was a bus to Chania Old Town from the airport. By 9 am, I was through passport control and on the bus. It was only a 20 minute journey to the town. I gave myself around 2.5 hours to explore the town before getting the bus back to the airport.

It’s safe to say that I fell in love with Chania. I’d never been to Greece before and I’d never considered visiting Crete. From what I saw, it’s such a beautiful island and I definitely want to go back and spend a few days visiting the archaeological sites.

My final flight was at 15:00 to Birmingham. It took just over four hours and I landed at 17:15 BST. After a long day of travelling and barely any sleep, I was exhausted. I don’t regret choosing the longer option though. It saved me £360 and I briefly got to see part of a new country.

Why have I had so many issues when travelling?

Honestly, most of the issues are down to bad luck. Getting on the wrong train and ending up in Belgium was completely my fault, but nothing bad came of it and now I have a funny story to tell. When we flew to Venice, we had no idea how bad the Coronavirus pandemic was going to be. We followed government guidelines and wouldn’t have travelled if we had been advised not to.

None of these issues have put me off travelling.. maybe I will think twice before I book a trip with Kariss though. We are definitely cursed when we travel together! I’ve not even been put off budget airlines, I always find a way home eventually. Out of the 24 countries I’ve been to, I’ve only encountered problems in 4. I’ve probably jinxed myself with this post though!

Have you ever had any issues when travelling? Have you ended up in the wrong country by accident?