When Fall Break Tried to Break Me...
Have you ever done something stupid enough to throw your entire travel itinerary into complete disarray?
If you have, you know the struggle.
If you haven't, come on a journey with me to relive what, at the time, felt like the most brutal 15 hours of my entire existence, and you can laugh with me.
Or at me.
"Flight 1396, scheduled to depart at 9.05 am has been delayed. Please wait for further instructions shortly, thank you" the intercom at the airport in Pisa blared a little too loudly. The sun, now shining in all its glory heated up my skin through the glass of the windows in the waiting area and it told me that it was approximately three hours past our scheduled departure. Angry passengers huffed and puffed at the ground staff of the airline, but there was little they could do about a strike that had ensued everywhere in Italy.
We were fresh out of the stress of midterms and only just beginning to feel the excitement of Fall Break, when we found out the night before that our flight to London from Pisa was cancelled.
The reason? There was a national strike all over Italy and it was to begin at 10 am, the day Fall break began.
The thing about strikes in Europe is that the citizens of these countries really take pride in their strikes and their protests. It was a quality to be both marveled and cursed at, simultaneously.
Finally, after our airline put us on a flight to Bristol as compensation, phone calls to my cousin in London who we were going to stay with, and trips back and forth to Santa Maria Novella, Harry and I had finally figured out a game plan. We were going to take the 6am train from Florence to Pisa, our flight was going to leave at 9.05 am, which meant that we would be well in the air by the time the strike officially began.
Boy, we really thought we had one up'd the government.
As we sat, waiting for 'more information', we were constantly plagued by the worry of another flight cancellation, but the information board only blinked out a very yellow 'delayed.' The intercom jarred every ten minutes with updates about each flight while the room buzzed with a vibrant yet negative energy.
We were too far gone at this point, I thought. We had already missed our connecting bus from Bristol to London due to the flight delay.
The intercom blared one more time, this time the announcement being for our flight.
Hope! There was still hope! It was going to work out!
Relieved at the prospect of finally getting to London, we trudged on to the gate. Being young, healthy twenty-one year olds, with nothing but a carry-on bag, we managed to make it there first...
...only to be stopped at boarding because I did not have a UK visa stamped into my Indian passport. And since the UK is not part of the Schengen area, it was not accessible with a Schengen visa.
Go ahead reader, laugh at me. I've laughed at me a million times since that horrid day. I've also asked myself a million times what possessed me to think my permanent residency status alone was enough to get me into England? The answer, unfortunately, has never come to me.
While I admit to being a scatter-brain, this was a whole new level of smack-your-forehead stupidity.
The good news though, is that now I never skip the research phase of making travel plans. One time was enough.
For those of you still wondering, Fall break worked out for us, albeit after a lot of crying and self-blaming- no, the crying did not get me into England.
But that's a story for another time.
In the meantime, here's a website that's helpful if you ever want to plan a trip! I probably don't have to tell you this - even though I have to tell myself all the time - don't pull a 'Renelle', do your research!
https://travel-made-simple.com/how-to-research-and-plan-a-trip/
If you have, you know the struggle.
If you haven't, come on a journey with me to relive what, at the time, felt like the most brutal 15 hours of my entire existence, and you can laugh with me.
Or at me.
"Flight 1396, scheduled to depart at 9.05 am has been delayed. Please wait for further instructions shortly, thank you" the intercom at the airport in Pisa blared a little too loudly. The sun, now shining in all its glory heated up my skin through the glass of the windows in the waiting area and it told me that it was approximately three hours past our scheduled departure. Angry passengers huffed and puffed at the ground staff of the airline, but there was little they could do about a strike that had ensued everywhere in Italy.
We were fresh out of the stress of midterms and only just beginning to feel the excitement of Fall Break, when we found out the night before that our flight to London from Pisa was cancelled.
The reason? There was a national strike all over Italy and it was to begin at 10 am, the day Fall break began.
The thing about strikes in Europe is that the citizens of these countries really take pride in their strikes and their protests. It was a quality to be both marveled and cursed at, simultaneously.
Finally, after our airline put us on a flight to Bristol as compensation, phone calls to my cousin in London who we were going to stay with, and trips back and forth to Santa Maria Novella, Harry and I had finally figured out a game plan. We were going to take the 6am train from Florence to Pisa, our flight was going to leave at 9.05 am, which meant that we would be well in the air by the time the strike officially began.
Boy, we really thought we had one up'd the government.
As we sat, waiting for 'more information', we were constantly plagued by the worry of another flight cancellation, but the information board only blinked out a very yellow 'delayed.' The intercom jarred every ten minutes with updates about each flight while the room buzzed with a vibrant yet negative energy.
We were too far gone at this point, I thought. We had already missed our connecting bus from Bristol to London due to the flight delay.
The intercom blared one more time, this time the announcement being for our flight.
Hope! There was still hope! It was going to work out!
Relieved at the prospect of finally getting to London, we trudged on to the gate. Being young, healthy twenty-one year olds, with nothing but a carry-on bag, we managed to make it there first...
...only to be stopped at boarding because I did not have a UK visa stamped into my Indian passport. And since the UK is not part of the Schengen area, it was not accessible with a Schengen visa.
Go ahead reader, laugh at me. I've laughed at me a million times since that horrid day. I've also asked myself a million times what possessed me to think my permanent residency status alone was enough to get me into England? The answer, unfortunately, has never come to me.
While I admit to being a scatter-brain, this was a whole new level of smack-your-forehead stupidity.
The good news though, is that now I never skip the research phase of making travel plans. One time was enough.
For those of you still wondering, Fall break worked out for us, albeit after a lot of crying and self-blaming- no, the crying did not get me into England.
But that's a story for another time.
In the meantime, here's a website that's helpful if you ever want to plan a trip! I probably don't have to tell you this - even though I have to tell myself all the time - don't pull a 'Renelle', do your research!
https://travel-made-simple.com/how-to-research-and-plan-a-trip/
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