It can’t all go smoothly for too long when it comes to
travel and there is bound to be some drama along the way. While there are many
great experiences and those at home are envious of the carefree life that you
are living there is almost always a downside and that will eventually catch up
with you.
The first thing to go wrong was Sade and I missing our
flight from Marrakech to Prague for the simple fact that we got our dates
wrong. So a night was spent sleeping on the floor and in chairs in the airport
waiting for it to come alive again so we could rebook our flights out of there.
Of course we were having problems with the internet and our attempts to rebook
flights this way were unsuccessful so we had to wait many long hours and do it
in person when the first workers arrived. And naturally at this stage I had
come down with the traveller’s bug, my stomach hadn’t agreed with something that
I’d put into it so I was feeling pretty lousy and the concrete floor and lack
of sleep weren’t helping.
$700 later and we were able to leave Marrakech, the next day
spent entirely in airports our new flight plan consisting of flying from
Marrakech to Munich, Munich to Warsaw, Warsaw to Prague. Once in Prague our
time was extremely limited, we originally only had 1 and a half days to
sightsee, two nights to rest. We now only had one night to grab some dinner and
sleep in a bed and a few hours in the morning to quickly sightsee before making
our way back to the airport. Yes maybe it would have been easier just to go
straight to Istanbul but we had already paid for a flight from Prague to
Istanbul and we wanted to say that at least we had seen it.
After a rushed morning of sightseeing the beautiful old town
of Prague and viewing the castle we decided to head back to the hostel to get
our bags and go to the airport. We had been told what trams to catch and we
gave ourselves plenty of time so we jumped on the tram and headed back. All was
going well and we were heading in the right direction until we crossed a bridge
we hadn’t encountered the night before and we started entering unfamiliar territory.
At this point we decided to just get off before we went too much further in the
wrong direction. Unfortunately for us no-one we approached with our map, and we
approached many, spoke English so no-one was able to direct us back to our
hostel and our plan to just jump in a taxi wasn’t going well as there wasn’t a
single one in sight. So there we were two foreigners completely lost, running
around a strange neighbourhood searching for a taxi or someone to help us, and
time was running out. Just when things were looking dire I spotted a taxi
coming down the other side of the road so I made a dash across 4 lanes of
traffic madly waving for it to stop.
We picked up our bags and made our way to the airport, our
panic slowly subsiding as we realised we were on the way but our concern not
over as we still needed to get to the airport before check in closed. Once at
the airport we found ourselves in terminal 1 and realised we needed to be in
terminal 2 so panic kicked in again as we made a mad dash through the airport.
Let me paint a picture of myself; trying to run with my smaller backpack on my
back, oversized handbag over one shoulder, large backpack/suitcase being
wheeled behind me, sweat dripping down my face, hair dishevelled, dropping
things left right and centre, out of breath and calling out Sade’s name as I had
lost her up ahead. Yep pretty safe to say I wasn’t looking my best. We made it
to check in with 8 minutes to spare and were told to relax by the check in
staff, who found us quite amusing, as our flight was delayed by 20 minutes
anyway.
So it’s not always a barrel of laughs however these are the
memories that make up part of your experiences and that you can look back on
later and laugh despite at the time thinking the world is ending!
