5 Times Things Didn’t Go As Planned On Our Travels

Traveling is the spice of life – and when you lead super busy lives like we do – sometimes it keeps you sane.

But just like life, travel doesn’t always go as planned. In the words of iconic rapper Andre 3000,

You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can’t predict the weather.

So being the seasoned travelers we are, we thought we’d share a few times where we encountered some slight hiccups on our travels.

1. When We Didn’t Dress for the Weather – Despite our best efforts to pack appropriately, at certain times of year, you just make assumptions. Yeah, so don’t do that. Example 1 – we visited Boston in late October. Fall vibes all over. And we were expecting wind and cool temps. So we threw on sweaters, boots, sweatshirts and Timbs for our outside tour. Wouldn’t ya know it was unseasonably warm and quite frankly, with all of the walking (up steep hills at times), we were sweating by time it was over. Example 2 – on the opposite extreme, when we visited Washington, DC in January (yeah in retrospect we knew better), it was freezing! We had no business in our lightweight dusters. Kim was better prepared than Val, but at the end of the day — we were both cold! DC actually had a blizzard exactly a day after we left!
2. Crazy Weather in Santorini – When we spent a week in Greece last year, it was nothing short of amazing. We visited Athens, Mykonos and Santorini. While we had planned on a catamaran cruise in Santorini, the sudden cold, windy weather made for rough waters, so they had to cancel it. We were disappointed, but booked a private tour of the island by car instead which was awesome!
3. Uncharged Phones and Road Trips Don’t Mix – Sometimes we get these ideas in our head and we just have to execute on them. These aren’t always thought out. This particular instance involved our trip to Detroit. Our trip fell around Labor Day, so rather than sit around the hotel, we opted to rent a car and drive to Canada since it was so close. And not just Canada – Toronto! Annnnd we wanted to take the scenic route, so instead of main highways, we took the route through the countryside. It was all good until we realized all three of our phones (yes, we had three devices back then) were out of juice or losing juice rapidly. And of course we had no idea where we were. We had to make a choice mid trip to turn around or keep going. We kept going and hopped on the first highway we encountered with an ONRoute and charged our phones and got food. Look at God 🙂
4. Philly Fail – On our flight to Greece, we had a layover in Philadelphia for a few hours. Just enough time to get some Philly cheesesteaks because you know we are foodies at heart. We’d heard of the great Philly cheesesteak rivalry between Pat’s and Geno’s, so we decided to try both and give the 2 Girls Who Travel official vote. And the results? Both were nasty. Bummer! In retrospect, we should have just asked a local and not fallen for the “tourist trap.”
5. Adventure to Make Mexico City Return Flight – After a lovely few days visiting Mexico City, we almost didn’t make our flight back home! In our Uber back to the airport to collect our bags, we began to notice the GPS kept diverting our route and roads were closed everywhere. To this day, we’re not quite sure what was going on, but our hotel was in the center of the city and people were everywhere. We had to hop out of the Uber and fast walk a few miles to our hotel. Once there, the hotel concierge grabbed our luggage like a hero and ushered us to the back of the hotel, down a side street and to a taxi to the airport. Talk about adventure!

All these hiccups just make for interesting travel stories to share later. Have you ever encountered hiccups in your travel plans? Share them below in the comments.