Contemplating the Mysteries of the World - Part 17: Travel

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Travel can be frustrating... but I have some things to say first.

I am back. It has been almost 6 months and life has been interesting. I wrote a whole other blog about it and posted it as unlisted so I didn't clog up the RUB feed. If you want to read it click here. Anyways, I am continuing with my Mysteries of the World series, if you don't know what this is, I direct you here. On to the ranting!

Why Can't Travel Just Be Easy??!!?!?!?!?

Okay. So this is going to be half story time, half normal ranting blog. I recently went on a trip. It was a great trip. I went to France with a group from my high school including myself, my sister, 3 other students and 2 chaperones. We had a great time and got to see Paris, various places in the Loire Valley, St Malo, Mt St Michel, and Normandy (if you want travel blogs, let me know). The travel to Paris was fairly low stress with the exception of minor confusion in the Boston Airport, but whatever.

On the day we are leaving France, the baggage workers at the CDG airport started to strike, which meant lines were insanely long and traffic going to the airport was a nightmare. My group arrived at the airport 5 hours early AND STILL ALMOST MISSED OUR FLIGHT. 3 of those hours were spent in the baggage checking line, 1 hour in customs, and 1 hour in airport security.

I would like to go on a minor tangent here and just say that everyone was stressed from lines and delays, but it is ridiculous how people can be entitled enough to attempt to skip lines and then mock people when they are called out on their crap. There was a family of 6 in front of our group whose youngest child was trying to sneak off and mess with the security staff, and the parents just didn't care. When my teacher tried to alert the mom, the mom just shrugged and then proceeded to gossip about my teacher with her eldest daughter. People suck sometimes. Tangent over.

After SPRINTING to make it to our gate, they delayed our flight. There was no where we could get food and we were all hungry because we had been standing in lines for the past 5 hours. I was in tears because I hurt my ankle while running. It was a nightmare. The 7 of us were already exhausted.

Once we finally got on the plane, the flight was running more than an hour late (this is important later). During the flight, I considered how RIDICULOUS all of the lines were. I get that the workers strike was going to cause delays, but 3 hours in line just to check our luggage! At this point, airports should have figured out how to function properly.

As the flight gets closer to New York City, I get more and more nervous looking at my watch. As someone who is no stranger to travel, a layover of only 2 hours after an international flight made me nervous enough, but after the flight delays I was getting frustrated. The plane landed at 7:45pm local time. Our connecting flight was at 8:30pm. I knew that customs/security lines were going to be long, but the plane had to wait for a gate and did not let anyone off until 8:05pm.

Long story short, the plane left while we were at baggage claim. Only one person of our group actually got their luggage, and the rest of us were told that our luggage was put on our connecting flight, which was really weird, but we were stressed enough about missing our flight that we didn't care. Here is a timeline of what the rest of the night looked like for us...

8:45pm: Food. We hadn't eaten in a few hours so we got food. I believe that I ate Popcorn and pretzels with nutella while drinking hot chocolate. I know, such an amazing dinner.

9:30pm: Travelling from terminal 1 to terminal 2 to find the rebooking line... then going to terminal 4 because we still couldn't find the line.

10:20pm: Found the line, doesn't look too long, maybe an hour long wait.

11:30pm: Rebooked on flight at 8:30pm the next day (through phone calls). Still need to stay in line for a hotel.

1:30am: (Yes, you read that right) Finally getting a hotel... but its an hour away from the airport.

2:45am: Arrive at hotel and finally get to go to bed.

We went back to the airport around 1pm the next day and just sat around until our flight. Fairly low stress day until we arrived back in our city. Went to baggage claim desk for our bags, just to find out that all 6 missing bags were STILL IN PARIS. I was so angry. After all of the lines and everything, it was just another thing. To anyone curious, it took a week for our bags to arrive.

Storytime over... Ranting time. 

I absolutely love to travel. I love flying, sightseeing, and everything like that. Airports have never really bothered me, but the one thing I have always despised was checking luggage. I literally do not own a suitcase larger than a carry-on. I was forced to check my bag by the travel company and I was so mad! On the way to France, I talked with my group all about how much I hated checking bags, so when baggage claim in Paris went well, they all looked at me and said "See, that wasn't bad, we told you it would be fine!" but I think our journey home proved my point. From this trip alone, I have a whole list of things that I hate.

1. Lines at the CDG Paris airport

2. The JFK airport in New York City. Just that whole airport in general.

3. Security in Boston Logan Airport. It was the most confusing experience I have ever had with TSA. Also, the whole international terminal was so weird and confusing. I don't necessarily hate that part, but its close.

4. Delta as an airline. With the delays, lines, and lack of customer service, I will never fly Delta again if I can help it.

5. CHECKING LUGGAGE MORE THAN EVER

All of the stuff my group had to deal with was just so frustrating. I know that delays happen, but so many things went wrong in such a short amount of time, it felt like one of the longest days ever (and not just because of time zone changes). It baffles me that something so structured and streamlined as air travel can go this wrong. We hear all the time about people who miss flights or flights getting delayed, but the truth is that they are so much more common than we think. The only flight that was on time during this trip was the one that we ended up missing. Every other flight was delayed at least half an hour. Flight times seem so structured and set, meanwhile the entire system is just a lie. It is such a mess.

Conclusion 

Travel can be stressful, even for an experienced flyer who loves to travel. My trip was so much fun, but I will remember the nightmare that was the journey home as much as I will remember the beauty of the places we visited. Airports are a mess, especially right now with staff shortages, gas prices, and high demand. I got quite a few things from this trip: memories of beautiful places, a story to tell, a very long list to rant about, and well... covid. I also got covid.

Thank you for your cooperation,

Rosie.

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Level 62
Aug 4, 2022
It was a pleasure to cooperate. xD
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Level 78
Aug 4, 2022
Quality rant !

Traveling can be a thing of extremes, sometimes it goes right and all is well with the world, but when it goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong!

Looking forward to your travel blogs if you decide to make them.

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Level 48
Aug 4, 2022
Totally right! I have already started writing, so hopefully they will start to be out soon!
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Level 73
Aug 4, 2022
Glad you're back! I was actually wondering where you had gone a couple of days ago.

Anyway, travelling is definitely fun but also very hectic. I love travelling for some reason! As toowise said above, sometimes a trip can go horribly wrong. I remember visiting an isolated archipelago once without researching on the internet. It was only later that I realised that there were virtually no mobile networks over there! Spent an entire week without browsing the internet... :'(

I would love to read your travelogues btw! That plane journey back home must have been tiresome.

Also warmest congratulations on your graduation! If you don't mind to share, what course are you planning to study?

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Level 48
Aug 4, 2022
Thank you! I am currently working on all of the travel blogs. And I am planning on double majoring in Geography and Political Science thank you for asking
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Level 59
Aug 5, 2022
Layovers are just horrible. I've never had to get a layover, but from what I've heard, it is some of the most stressful parts of traveling. It also just doesn't make sense to me why you need to go through security again after you've already been checked, airports just really need to be better to keep up with demand. Also, welcome back to blogging and can't wait to see more of them!

P.S. Never travel to LaGuardia, JFK or Newark unless absolutely necessary, it is an absolute nightmare. Luckily I was able to secure early flights so it was less likely to have a delay when I traveled a few weeks ago.

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Level 48
Aug 5, 2022
My group was actually supposed have a layover in Montreal both ways, but the travel company changed our flights like a day before we left. So instead of Montreal, we had to deal with Boston-Logan and JFK