It Came from the Chat: You Lucky Travelers
On Monday's Travel Talk Web chat (held most Mondays at 2 p.m.), we honored St. Patrick's Day by asking travelers for their luck o' travel tales -- that is, what fortunate things happened to them on the road. It was refreshing to hear happy, instead of horror, stories.
Here are five of our favorties:
From Alexandria:
One person's nightmare might be another person's luck. We were caught in the British Airways wildcat strike a couple years ago. We were on our way home from Guernsey, and due to new security regulations, were not able to check our luggage straight through and had to take it from Gatwick to Heathrow airports. My husband overheard senior BA staff telling first-class passengers that all flights had been canceled. We were on the Heathrow Express, with our luggage, before the general announcement was made to the thousands of stranded passengers whose luggage had already gone through security. We received three extra days in London ALL at the expense of BA. In addition, because we are Executive Club members, we received 150,000 miles as an apology. We still remember our very lucky free weekend in London.
From Luck o' the... Portuguese?:
My first morning in the hotel dining room in the Azores I met a casually dressed middle-aged couple who spoke fairly good English. Turned out the husband was the equivalent of a cabinet secretary in the Azorean government, and he and his wife were on vacation. By the end of their stay we'd become friends. The husband gave me his business card, insisting I drop by his office as soon as I arrived on his island the following week. This I did, and he set up an appointment for me to meet with one of the Azores's leading poets. I've seen all three of these friends on subsequent visits to the Azores. On the same trip, I also met another government official who was grocery shopping in an open-air market during his lunch hour. I was struggling with my halting Portuguese, and being fluent in English, he volunteered to interpret between the merchant and me. I became friends with him and his family, and saw him when he came to the U.S. on business a couple years later.
From Austin:
This October, we were in Hawaii for our honeymoon, leaving Maui to fly to Kauai. My husband decided to not put my bathroom bag into the trunk and left it behind the car. We drove away without it. Luckily, we had stopped nearby for coffee and, while there, someone had found it in the parking lot and called me. This reminds you of the importance of using luggage tags with your current phone number.
From Luck in France:
Twenty years ago, I was a third-year university student studying in Avignon, France, and had to have an emergency appendectomy, which caused me to cut my trip short. I took the normal speed train from Avignon to Lyon, then barely made the TGV fast train to Paris in time for my flight. I didn't know I needed to buy a first-class ticket to ride the TGV, but the conductor just looked at me a moment, then handed me back the second-class ticket without comment. I reached Paris not knowing the airport was an hour away. By now I was exhausted, having gotten out of the hospital the day before. I walked up to a taxi and asked how much the fare was. I was 25 francs short. He saw my face fall and said, "Whatever you have will be enough. I remember when the Americans liberated Paris." Sounds like a fake story, but it is the honest-to-goodness truth!
From Luck O' the Irish:
We were in Ireland a couple of Junes ago and my daughter and I (she at the wheel) were exploring north of Galway toward Westport. The day started gray, and by the time we were in a really scenic, virtually unpopulated area, the skies opened up. The road was little more than a paved track, but no cars approached -- until a small truck came our way. Pulling over to let it pass, my daughter backed into a ditch, and there we stuck. The truck didn't notice and kept going. No more cars, only two houses in sight. We went to the one with smoke coming out of the chimney. The older man who opened the door barely spoke English, but he called his daughter, who went out to the road with us and waved down her husband, who was working in a field up the slope. He got his car, attached a rope and managed to drag us out, with no damage to our rental car. Off we went, to friendly waves all around, none the worse for our little adventure.
What fortunate things have happened to you on the road?
By Andrea Sachs |
March 20, 2008; 6:59 AM ET
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Andrea Sachs
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Tales from the Road
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Posted by: freq traveler | March 20, 2008 9:09 AM
When I was in grad school, I was driving to JFK to fly home. I stopped at a rest area and was pickpocketed. I knew almost immediately when the person bumped into me that something happened, but it was already too late. Worried I couldn't get on the plane without ID, and not having a way to pay for the tolls, parking or ANYTHING, I was sobbing on the payphone to my mother in Virginia. She called the credit card company for me (I only had one card) and got everything canceled, and forewarned the airlines I didn't have ID. (It was pre-9/11, so somehow I got on the plane).
As soon as I hung up, there was a big, rough looking trucker dude who handed me a $20. He told me he couldn't help but overhear, and he wanted to help. He asked where I was going, and I told him and he said I wouldn't have enough for parking, and handed me another $20. He wouldn't give me his name, and wouldn't hear of me making any arrangements to pay him back. I'll never forget his kindness.
The other good footnote of this is similar to the story above, a maintenance guy found my wallet in the bushes (minus cash) and mailed it back to me, saving me the inevitable DMV & new student ID procurement nightmare.
Posted by: RiverCityRoller | March 20, 2008 12:06 PM
My boyfriend & I were in Hanover, Germany, and couldn't figure out how to get the payphone to work so I could call my cousin to pick me up from the train station. It was late, the office was locked and no one was around except for a German teenager waiting for a ride from his mom.
He noticed we were standing around and offered to us a ride to my cousin's house. A mini-van with a German lady who spoke no English pulled up and we were off. The problem was, we weren't entirely sure where we were going.
I knew my cousin lived near a restaurant he had designed so that a tree grew in the middle. Between that information and some luck, we got "home" 15 minutes later to find a very concerned cousin who had awaiting our call.
Posted by: Kelly | March 20, 2008 2:14 PM
My daughter and I went on vacation a few years ago. Another family and I walked into the hotel at basically the same time and this obnoxious family strongly insisted they check in first. When it was our turn to check in, the hotel had overbooked regular rooms and my daughter and I were upgraded to a wonderful suite on the conceige level. It's catty, but I surely enjoyed the elevator ride up (with the other family - stopping on the 7th floor to let them off) and explaining to my daugher that we have a room way up top with free snacks and a whirlpool bathtub.
Posted by: K.C. | March 20, 2008 6:07 PM
I was visiting my sister in London five or six years ago. I took a cab to her flat in Chelsea to meet her for a weekend trip to Ireland. I quickly realized that I had left my overnight bag -- with my passport in it -- in the cab. As we agonized over our options, the doorman called upstairs to let us know that the cabbie had returned and dropped off my bag. I told him to keep the driver there so that I could give him a well-earned reward, but by the time I got downstairs he had left.
Posted by: Jake | March 25, 2008 3:19 PM
These acts of kindness are pretty typical almost anywhere in the world. A lot of people may hate our government or the president in particular, but I've never seen it harm relations between individuals.
Remember to leave a positive impression on visitors to the US!
Posted by: Greg Ohio | March 25, 2008 4:37 PM
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I was in NYC for NYE in 1999-2000. When I got home two days later I realized that I didn't have my wallet. I looked everywhere - the house, the car, called the people I stayed with. Then I called the Long Island Railroad which I took everyday into the city from Hempstead. They transferred me to lost and found who told me - "Nope. We don't have it. -- click." One day later it arrived in the mail with a note "You left this on the LIRR on 12/31/1999." All credit cards were intact, ID, bank card, phone cards, etc. I was in school and had no cash anyway :) I am still amazed.