When the Dog Bites and the Bee Stings

Our family trip around the world has had its bumps in the road. We have always worked on how we can have a good time every time, but that has been put to the test on multiple occasions. The phrase, “I don’t know, I’ve never been here” has been repeated much too often. We have all four worked on balancing complaining and attitudes with gratefulness. We hope to learn from the days of struggle, be teachable as parents, and for our kids to learn to have soft hearts.

Here are our top moments of frustration, ridiculousness, and mistakes. We can laugh about most of these by now and have figured out ridiculous situations often make for fun memories. However, that doesn’t make it fun in the present.  Don’t read about the negative without checking out our post that goes along with this one: “Our Favorite Things”. Those are our highlights; these are a few lowlights.  Here’s the list, along with each lesson we learned. Save yourself some troubles and take notes:

Hardest plane landing ever: RyanAir (otherwise a really great experience for a budget airline). This was hard enough for most of the plane to gasp or scream.  Lesson: DO NOT ignore the fasten seatbelt sign, DO put your tray table up, and hold on!  

Worst check-in process ever: WizzAir – after trying to check in a few minutes “too early”, we were sent away to come back. WizzAir had scheduled 3 flights all leaving at the same time, so check-in got swarmed, and we almost missed our flight to Dubai. Lesson: do not leave the line, just wait upfront at the agent’s desk until they let you check in.

Missing dinner: Both nights we arrived in African countries (Uganda and Kenya), we went to bed without dinner after only snacking during our travel day. In Uganda, the COVID curfew was still in effect, and the one restaurant that was supposed to deliver to our hotel said no. Thankfully we had a bag of popcorn. For Kenya, we planned to order pizza upon arriving at our Airbnb. However, the traffic had other plans, and it was too late by the time we arrived. Thankfully we had a few ginger snap cookies. Lesson: always plan ahead and have food for dinner with you before leaving an African airport.

Worst accommodation platform: We had a terrible experience in Rome after booking a fraudulent listing that was approved by VRBO. Be forewarned, the VRBO “Book with Confidence Guarantee” sounds great but was a disaster. Lesson: We no longer use VRBO, and more importantly only book listings with verified reviews. Our best sites are Airbnb, Booking.com, and Agoda. Did we mention to only book listings with verified reviews?

Worst traffic (2-way tie!): Dubai to Sharjah in the evening. There are no public transportation routes, and the traffic is unbelievable. There’s more to the story (see Wizz Air above) but we were rushed to book accommodations in Dubai. Lesson: Sharjah is actually one emirate over from Dubai. As in, it is not Dubai. But we stayed there.

Getting from the Mombasa Airport to Diani Beach requires ferrying the car across a channel: there is no bridge. The evening we arrived, one of the ferries had broken down, and it took our insane (in a really good, really aggressive way) taxi driver 90 minutes just to maneuver the last 300 yards to the ferry loading. Lesson: Arrive on a Sunday for less traffic, fly into the Ukunda Airstrip instead, or just embrace a 3 hour taxi ride.

Worst pizza ever: Ashley brought home a “meat lovers” pizza tonno from the grocery store in Malaga. Spoiler alert for the non-Spanish speaking crowd: it was tuna pizza. Absolutely inedible. Lesson: use Google Translate tool before buying food you aren’t 100% sure about.

Worst place to drive a rental car: Paris. Jon has rented cars 5 times through 7 countries and learned several lessons. Like, enough to have its own article. It is important to respect the country you are driving in and to be safe, read about the lessons learned here (coming soon).

Worst interaction: We’ve only had one, which is amazing for 4 months across 15 countries. While in Pisa, a trinket seller on the street gave Abigail and Brandon a bracelet for “free” after we were nice to him. He then proceeded to follow us around asking for money until he grabbed Brandon’s arm to take “his” bracelets back. Lesson: This one we should have known, but it’s a shame that it must be a lesson: never accept anything for free. We had our radar on low after having such wonderful experiences until Pisa. The silver lining was that it was a very safe situation, albeit tense, where our kids got to learn about responding quickly to Jon’s direction.

Worst bathrooms: the public parks in Abu Dhabi. Lesson: don’t use the bathrooms in the public parks in Abu Dhabi.

Silliest money mistake: Jon found a great deal on tickets to Disneyland Paris. So he thought. Turns out that the British pound symbol and the Euro symbol look close enough when it’s late and you are exhausted. Turns out, the British pound is a bit more expensive than a euro: who knew? Lesson: double-check that you are using local currency when buying online tickets.

Combined money mistakes: Jon had the travel finances all planned out very well. A Charles Schwab debit card with fee-free international ATMs, 2 international credit cards, and some freshly minted USA bills. However, the great orator Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.” Turns out, Jon packed an old HSA card instead of the Charles Schwab card (they look similar), and our one VISA card with ATM capabilities had to be cut off due to a fraud issue. We were in Italy at the time, which has probably the worst cash USD to euro fees Jon has ever seen. Lesson: set up cash-advance PINs on all your international cards. This is generally terrible advice; however, the 3% fee is well worth it when it’s the only way to access local currency. If you do that, immediately pay off the entire card balance, as interest accumulates daily. The better lesson is to pack your correct ATM card, but oh well. Thankfully, Ashley’s parents were able to bring the replacement cards to us in Slovenia, crisis averted.

All in all, we have learned these lessons and grown because of the experiences. Jon was not laughing during any of these, but most are funny enough at this point. Except the guy in Pisa, VRBO, and WizzAir. The huge blessing is that with these minor hiccups along the way, we have had a great trip. 4 months abroad and we have had no sickness or injuries, haven’t missed a single booked transportation segment, and we’ve had a place to sleep every night.

We plan to continue adding to our travels and memories!  To see the pictures that accompany this list of our world travel adventures, head over to our Instagram page. 

Comment below with any questions you have or share a family “learning experience”!