The Worst Travel Day I've Ever Had
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I have had a lot of difficult travel days in my life. Some have involved missed connections, delayed flights, rough ferry rides, and questionable airport food. But one particular day stands out as the undisputed winner for worst travel day ever.
I was a pretty seasoned international traveler even at just 13 years old. I had been to Greece plenty of times before, but this trip was going to be different. It was my first time traveling to Greece without my mom.
I was traveling solo with my grandfather.
I packed my bags — last minute, as usual — said goodbye to my mom, and headed to the airport with my grandfather. It was a familiar feeling being at the airport and getting ready to travel, but it was also strange knowing that my mom wasn’t coming with us.
Security was a breeze, and I even got to visit an airport lounge for the first time because my grandfather was a United Club member. We settled in and waited for our afternoon flight.
Everything was going pretty smoothly.
Little did I know, this was going to be the worst travel day I’ve ever had.
We Missed Our Flight. While Being On Time.
About 20 minutes before boarding was even scheduled to begin, we left the lounge to go find our gate.
We got to the end of the hallway and found one gate upstairs and another gate downstairs. Neither of us was sure which one was ours, so we did what seemed like the obvious thing: we asked an airport employee.
They told us our gate was downstairs.
So we went downstairs, found the gate, and waited by the gate agent’s desk.
Twenty minutes went by.
Nothing.
My grandfather finally asked if the flight was delayed, and the gate agent looked confused.
“Our flight is upstairs,” she told us.
Excuse me?
We hurried upstairs, only to find that our flight had already left without us.
Ugh.
We were completely on time, had left the lounge with plenty of time to get to the gate, and we had even asked an airport employee where to go.
Somehow, we had still missed our flight.
I remember thinking, You’ve got to be kidding me.
My grandfather was especially shocked. He had never missed a flight in his entire life, and now, on his first trip traveling with me without my mom, we had somehow managed to miss one because we had been directed to the wrong gate.
Since it wasn’t just one flight that needed to be rebooked, we had to go all the way back through the airport to the airline desk and figure out an entirely new itinerary to Greece.
The new flights meant that instead of arriving at a reasonable hour, we would be getting to Athens in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, there was also a transit strike happening, which meant there weren’t going to be any easy transportation options once we landed.
Normally, we would arrive in Athens and immediately make our way to our family’s home via public transportation. This time, because of our new arrival time, that wasn’t going to work.
So we called some family friends in Athens to see if they could pick us up from the airport and let us stay with them for the night.
It was inconvenient. It was annoying.
But we had a new plan.
I figured our problems were probably behind us.
Boy, was I wrong.
At Least the Second Flight Went Smoothly
After another three hours in the Portland airport, we finally made our way to the gate for our rescheduled flight.
And, ironically, it was at the exact downstairs gate where we had originally been waiting.
At least we knew where to go this time.
Our first rescheduled flight was to LAX, and I was actually kind of excited about that part. It was my first time in Los Angeles, and under normal circumstances, I probably would have been excited to see a new airport and city.
Instead, we got off the plane at LAX with one goal:
Please just let us make it to Greece without anything else going wrong.
Unfortunately, our travel problems were not behind us.
In fact, they had barely begun.
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The LAX Delay
We found out that our next flight, from LAX to Germany, had been delayed by several hours.
At this point, we had already been traveling much longer than we were supposed to, and our trip had barely gotten started.
The airline gave us food vouchers, so my grandfather got food from some random restaurant and I got McDonald’s.
Probably not the healthiest choice, especially when you’re already traveling for much longer than planned, but at 13 years old in an airport, McDonald’s was a pretty easy decision.
Then we waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
I remember almost falling asleep sitting in a chair before we eventually started boarding at around 2 a.m.
By this point, I was exhausted and wasn’t feeling particularly great.
But I was also relieved to finally be getting on the plane.
At least a 10-hour flight to Germany meant I could just sit down, watch movies, and let someone else worry about getting me where I needed to go.
So that’s what I did.
I spent the flight watching movies with increasingly sleepy eyes and eventually made it to Germany in one piece.
Surely we were almost there now.
Right?
Wrong.
The Flight to Greece Was Cancelled
We got to Germany and found out that our flight to Greece had been straight-up cancelled.
At this point, I think the universe was just messing with us.
There were no other flights to Greece until the next day, so the airline put us in a hotel for the night.
Honestly, under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t have been such a bad deal.
A hotel meant a bed.
A bed meant sleep.
After the travel day we’d had, I was more than ready for that.
Except I started feeling really sick.
I skipped dinner and went straight to my room to lie down.
It didn’t take long to realize that this wasn’t just exhaustion.
I had food poisoning.
And instead of sleeping in the nice, comfortable hotel bed that the airline had given us, I spent basically the entire night in the bathroom throwing up.
So much for getting some rest.
The Final Flight
The next morning, I barely managed to get myself together enough to make it back to the airport.
I was sick.
I was exhausted.
And I was very, very ready to get to Greece.
We finally boarded our flight.
And then, before the plane had even left the gate, I threw up again.
Thankfully, the flight attendant noticed what was happening and was incredibly kind. She took my barf bag and brought me some ginger ale to try to settle my stomach before we’d even taken off.
It was such a small thing, but after everything that had happened, I really appreciated someone going out of their way to do something nice for me.
And finally, we were on our way to Greece.
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Finally, Greece
About an hour and a half later, we arrived in Greece.
I was absolutely exhausted and still wasn’t feeling great.
We took the bus from the airport terminal to the bus station, and then another bus into the city where my aunt lived.
By the time we finally got to my aunt’s apartment, I was done.
I was so happy to see a bed, I immediately went to sleep.
I slept for about 12 hours straight.
When I woke up the next day, I was expecting to still feel terrible.
Instead, I felt completely fine.
The stomach symptoms had disappeared.
I had been worried that I was going to spend part of the Greece trip sick, but I ended up feeling completely normal for the rest of the trip. Looking back, I suspect the combination of exhaustion, stress, lack of sleep, and everything else that had happened during that ridiculous journey had played a big part in how awful I felt.
Whatever the reason, I was just happy to wake up feeling like myself again.
I was finally in Greece.
And everything was great.
Sometimes Travel Just Goes Wrong
The journey from Portland to our family’s home in Greece would normally take around 32 hours.
This trip took at least 48 hours, probably more.
And somehow, despite missing a flight we were completely on time for, being sent to the wrong gate, getting rebooked, worrying about a middle-of-the-night arrival during a transit strike, sitting through a massive delay at LAX, boarding a flight at 2 in the morning, having our connection cancelled in Germany, spending the night throwing up in a hotel bathroom, and getting sick again before our final flight even took off…
We made it.
Safe and sound.
I’ve had plenty of travel days go wrong since then, but I still think about this one whenever a flight gets delayed or a connection starts getting a little too close for comfort.
It’s easy to feel like the world is ending when you’re stuck in the middle of a travel disaster. When you’re exhausted in an airport at 2 a.m., or you’re watching your connection disappear on the departures board, or you’re wondering how you’re possibly going to get from the airport to your family’s house in the middle of the night, it feels like everything has gone completely off the rails.
But eventually, you get where you’re going.
You find a solution.
You sleep for 12 hours.
You wake up.
And life goes on.
The worst travel day of my life didn’t ruin my trip to Greece. If anything, it became one of those stories that I still remember all these years later.
And honestly, I’m glad I have the story. It makes me thankful for whenever my travel day goes better than this one, which so far, is all of them!
Do you have a bad travel day story? Let me know in the comments below 🥰
