Wanderlust to woe: the many chapters of travel

Ithink we can all agree that 3pm on a windy and rainy winter’s day is the best time to think about booking that next holiday to anywhere other than where you are at that moment.

There’s the promise of exotic lands far away, climates much more desirable than the one you’re in, different cultures to be explored and new foods to be tried – even if the experience results in you spitting it out discreetly into your napkin.

Travel is surely one of life’s great joys, but even the road to joy is plagued with a road bump here and there.

Like most millennials, most of my daydreaming time involves me imagining I’m somewhere under the sun in Santorini or Tahiti because it’s been nearly two years since I took a decent trip overseas.

What a trip that was – with the whole fam bam in tow, we hit up six countries over four weeks.

But for all my planning and dreaming about what a great time I was going to have, alas I was not immune to the perils of international travel.

If I had to pick a book title appropriate for that trip, it would have been ‘‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’’.

And it’s a book that would have many, many unfortunate chapters.

Chapter 1: the airline loses my suitcase.

Arriving in France after 30+ hours of flying, transiting and waiting in seemingly endless security lines, all I wanted was a shower and my hotel bed.

I think it was the sleep deprivation which allowed me not to completely lose my marbles when I waited 30 minutes at that damn conveyor belt, staring dejectedly at the bags moving past that didn’t have my name tag on them.

I found myself in Paris, one of the fashion capitals of the world, traipsing round in little more than ratty old T-shirt and a pair of Skins because that’s what I’d packed in my carry on.

Always. Carry. Spare. Underwear. Always.

Two days later, the bag showed up and I moved on to the next saga.

Chapter 2: what are those things on my legs?

The London stage of the trip was an itchy one. Two random welts show up on, bizarrely, the exact same spot on both my legs without any idea/explanation how they got there.

Whatever you do, never Google your symptoms – you’ll convince yourself you’ve been bitten by an infected tick and now you’ve got lyme disease.

Eventually they went away, but not before a flurry of frantic messages to Bestie and Mother Dearest asking if I was at imminent risk of dying (I wasn’t).

Chapter 3: some jerk skims $600 off my card.

Do yourselves a favour. Don’t use the ATM machines closest to major tourist attractions.

At first, I was mad when I got an email from my bank saying they’d frozen my card because there’d been some dicey overseas transactions.

For real, I’m in six different countries over a month – I’m only making overseas transactions.

Then when I saw $600 had been withdrawn in Philippine peso, but I was eating lunch in the middle of Glasgow. I was glad the bank was very good at its job.

Now, I could have let these situations hang over my holiday like a black cloud and been miserable about my misfortune.

Or, I could have taken on the chin, moved on and flashed the credit card like there was no tomorrow.

I chose the latter option (though with modest use of the plastic).

Travel is all about what you make of the experiences you have.

Don’t be that guy who comes back from a holiday with nothing but complaints about how the hotel breakfast didn’t include bacon – which is a legitimate online hotel review from someone who was mad the Italian breakfast was not suited to his American palate.