Hartford Courant (Sunday)

Chaotic stories from summer

Readers chime in with the highs and lows of traveling last season

- By Tacey Rychter — Kristie Boles, Portland, Oregon

If 2020 was the year travel stopped, 2021 was when it lurched erraticall­y and veered sideways, like a teenager behind the wheel of a bumper car.

Summer travel was particular­ly chaotic, as travelers were emboldened by vaccines, looser restrictio­ns and cheap airfares. For many, their trips turned into one headache after another: Airline schedules were in chaos, extreme weather pummeled the country and internatio­nal destinatio­ns flip-flopped on COVID19 rules as the delta variant surged.

Nancy Newhouse, a former editor of The New York Times’ Travel section, traveled this summer from Albuquerqu­e,

New Mexico, to New York on American Airlines, with what was meant to be a brief stopover to change planes at DallasFort Worth. Instead, she sat on the tarmac for two hours upon arriving in Texas, had her next flight canceled and stood in line for hours trying to rebook. Her connecting flight was rebooked and canceled four times before she got to LaGuardia Airport two days later — without her baggage, which the airline left behind and then charged her $40 to deliver.

“Although I was a travel editor for many years and of course will continue to travel, my assumption­s have changed since the trauma of the pandemic,” she wrote to the Times. “Smooth sailing is a thing of the past.”

Her story inspired our callout to readers asking for their chaotic stories of travel from the summer. The selection of responses here have been edited for length and clarity.

The early bird special

I was staying at a hotel outside Port Antonio, Jamaica. I was told about the restaurant on the grounds and the free breakfast, but nobody mentioned the COVID-19 curfew. When I showed up around 7:30 p.m. for dinner, I was told that curfew was 6 p.m., and the restaurant staff had left long ago! However, the bar was open, so I had a strawberry daiquiri for dinner!

— Alice Mathis, Madison, Wisconsin

It’s always wine o’clock in quarantine

Upon testing positive for a breakthrou­gh case of COVID19 in the Azores, the Portuguese archipelag­o, my wife and I were taken by ambulance, complete with a hazmat-suited driver, to a less-than-appealing hotel in Ponta Delgada. We were taken to a room via service elevator. Heartbroke­n and shocked upon seeing our confinemen­t quarters for the next two weeks, we wandered onto the balcony — at least we’d have that. We were then greeted by our quarantine neighbors who, upon seeing the look on our faces, immediatel­y passed over a near-full bottle of delicious Portuguese red wine. Surely there are so many worse quarantine experience­s than the time we spent embedded among this lovely family who helped make it all so much more tolerable.

— Tim Jones, Boston A fish explosion

My family and I rented cabins and drove to Yellowston­e, which was magnificen­t. Every flight I took this summer was a complete disaster, though — delays for every possible reason, including a container of fish bursting open in the cargo hold with the fish barring the cargo door shut.

It was ultimately pried open by very limited numbers of staff on the tarmac. There was another night when I was stranded on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and contemplat­ed driving back to Maryland since it would be faster than flying — except all of the rental cars were already booked.

— Deepa Galaiya, Baltimore

Bait and switch

We live about half the year in Tuscany, Italy, and half in Florida, so we’re used to flying back and forth. This summer, American Airlines pulled a fast one on us (yet again) by scheduling and reconfigur­ing whole blocks of internatio­nal flights on a whim. A couple of days before our Rome to Philadelph­ia flight, we were notified that we were being sent to Philly from Rome, by way of Dallas! They refused our request to exchange the ticket for a flight to a different destinatio­n nearby, instead treating it as an opportunit­y for an upsell, with us incurring a fare increase to avoid this new, unexpected stopover: salt in the wound!

— Russell Maulitz, Tuscany and Philadelph­ia

Avoid uncertaint­y, make pizza instead

I started my summer travels in Greece in early July. I was supposed to go to Malta next, but they changed their policy, effective two days before I was to fly there. They required proof of vaccinatio­n, and I had my card with me, but they weren’t accepting Americans because our cards can be easily forged. I scrambled and decided to go to Naples, Italy, instead. A few days later, Malta decided they would accept U.S. vaccinatio­n cards after all. But by then I was enrolled in a pizza-making workshop at the school where pizzaioli train. Oh well. Malta will still be there later.

— Stacy Kissel, Somerville, Massachuse­tts

When the chaos is daily

I didn’t get to travel this summer because, brace for it, I am a customer service supervisor for a major airline and, with a labor shortage and stressed-out workforce, I needed to be at work for the inundation of a return to travel. From where I stand, everyone was on a Vegas vacation.

Not literally, but figurative­ly, just trying to make up for lost time and do what they want no matter whether it was right or not. And often it was not. I’ve never had a more difficult summer at work, and I’ve been at it for 16 years. People forgot how to act and how to treat each other. And that we were there helping them reclaim their lost time with family or adventure.

 ?? TALLULAH FONTAINE/THE NEW YORK TIMES PHOTOS ?? These tales of chaos from the road, from fishy explosions to surprise quarantine­s, could have only happened in 2021.
TALLULAH FONTAINE/THE NEW YORK TIMES PHOTOS These tales of chaos from the road, from fishy explosions to surprise quarantine­s, could have only happened in 2021.
 ?? ?? On one flight, a container of fish burst open in the cargo hold with fish barring the door shut, causing delays.
On one flight, a container of fish burst open in the cargo hold with fish barring the door shut, causing delays.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States