Travel lessons
I love traveling. I still get butterflies in my stomach whenever I head to an airport. The thrill of heading off to an unknown destination, or back home to visit my family and friends fills me with excitement. I especially adore traveling with my husband; that is always an adventure in itself. My first ever-overseas trip was to Malaysia when I was 37 years old. I have made up for lost time in the last ten years and come to realize traveling not only broadens your horizons, but also teaches you so much. Here are a few of the more important lessons I have learnt, a lot of them the hard way!
1. Never wear high heels to an airport. This may seem like common sense, but let me explain. It seems to have become a regular occurrence for my husband and I to do a mad 3km dash from one side of a terminal to the other to make our plane. On our very first trip to Langkawi, I bought a lovely pair of heels at the airport. They went beautifully with what I was wearing, so I slipped them on. Before I had time to take them off, my husband grabbed my hand in panic and said we needed to run to make our connecting plane…and so I did. In high heels, from one end of KL airport to the other. We made the plane, and I didn’t break an ankle, but I vowed that I would NEVER wear high heels at an airport again.
2. Make sure you have a suitcase with good wheels. When you have to make a 3km dash across the airport, you want to make sure your suitcase can keep up the pace.
3. Maintain a reasonable level of fitness. It can make the difference between making your plane and waiting hours for the next one. (And people think I exercise because I enjoy it!!)
4. Check and double-check your flight date and time, (and get a friend or hotel concierge to check it too.) We have missed a few flights over the years. The worst was in London when we thoroughly enjoyed our last day in this amazing city. We had a leisurely breakfast, watched a matinee show of The Lord of The Rings and then headed to the airport for our 10pm flight home. We realized way too late it was actually a 10am flight that morning!
5. Make sure you research the country you are visiting weeks before you go, not on the plane as you’re about to land. Neither my husband nor I are great detail people (as you probably gathered from the previous point), and we tend to leave things to the last minute.
6. If you haven’t researched the city you are arriving in, then make friends with people that have been there for a few days, and look like seasoned travellers Ask them their recommendations and use that as a travel guide. This worked well for us in Madrid. We found some great places that we had never heard of…probably because we hadn’t read the guidebook!
7. NEVER believe your children when they tell you they have taken all the scissors out of the pencil case they are carrying in their carry on luggage. (We once had three pairs extracted, along with a lethal looking compass all to the protest of “but Im sure I took them all out”!!)
8. I ALWAYS sneak two extra polo shirts and two extra pairs of socks and jocks into my husband’s suitcase. He is constantly surprised when he runs out of clean clothes after two days when we are staying for a week. He takes packing light to a whole new level!
9. Don’t let my husband assure me that the lovely lady in the lounge will let us know when our flight is boarding. There have been too many dashes across airports to fall for that one again!
If you have any of your own travel stories or lessons you would like to share, I would love to hear them.