Travel Travails of the First World

 

Preface: I fully realize I am about to describe problems that only come with privilege. All of this pales in comparison to those who don’t have such privilege as well as the seriousness of what is happening in Israel where we are about to get to. Still..advice for my future self if not others. 

Strikes and Shutdowns. The biggest problem was that, at almost every turn, strikes threatened our trains or planes. The most anxious one was today, when, for a time, it looked like the Tel Aviv Airport would shut down completely in protest of the judicial overturn. But there was a pause, so, onto more usual travel travails.  

I Thought I Was Good at This.  I pride myself on being really good at arranging travel plans, getting the best deal, etc. But on this trip, with the International differences, I made a number of costly rookie mistakes. 

Round Trip vs One Way. In the U.S. there is no longer an advantage to booking round trips. Two one way flights, in most cases, are the same price and much more flexible and convenient. Since I was flying into London and out of Tel Aviv 5 months later I didn’t think I could even do a round trip. So I booked a one way from San Francisco to London on a Canadian airline called Westjet early on, figuring I would find the one way from Tel Aviv to San Francisco back later. When I went to do this, it turned out that into London and out of Tel Aviv RT was the same price as a one way back from Tel Aviv. So I double booked, and as it turns out, Westjet lets you keep a credit for a year from cancellation (not booking) and hold times are less than 2 minutes. So we will now be taking a trip to Canada some time next year. This was the last positive experience we had with an airline, as you shall see. 

Bordeaux Has an Airport. Mistake number two was assuming the only way to get to Barcelona was from Paris. So I booked an early morning train from Bordeaux to Paris, then flew from there to Barcelona. Turns out there are multiple direct flights from Bordeaux, and we would have saved a lot of time and money. Huge rookie mistake. 

Weight Issues and Mickey Mouse Airlines. The worst part was the flight from Barcelona to Tel Aviv. We started with a flight on Wizz Air. Bad enough that the website doesn’t let you get everything done on it and you need the app. But they changed the flight time several times. The last time they also changed the date. And I didn’t notice. They rebooked us on a flight several days earlier, and, confusing the date (the 23rd) with the year (23), I accepted the changes and lost my chance at a refund. Noticed it eventually so I only lost money. So we needed new flights on the correct date. Found only one that didn’t arrive in the middle of the night, but on another Mickey Mouse airline called Bluebird. Like many of these airlines, they nickel and dime you, but this one weighs your carryons and only allows 5 kg, which is 11lbs. That’s very hard to do if you have any toiletries and a laptop. Mostly we are stuffing our pockets in our jackets as a slight workaround. Their website also doesn’t have a flight tracker, and general websites show it leaving at a much different time than it says at the airport or on our ticket email. But when we arrived the original tone was correct, but…

They seemed to not understand why we only had U.S. passports. Apparently only Israelis take this flight. So they made us move aside and wait while they sent our passport info elsewhere, ostensibly for some extra security. We also had to show proof of health insurance as well as tell them our return flight plans. I told them 2, months, because we actually will be overstaying the 3 month visa rule, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Still, 15 minutes later they let us through.

Luggage. We always seem to break a suitcase. We’ve broken zippers, torn the fabric, and broken the wheels. This time one of the ones we brought with us had the wheels stop rolling. So we bought a new one in Paris. One of its wheels broke too. It’s mostly because we abuse them, making them too heavy and rolling them all over the place. We hope we can still make it last the rest of the trip. Otherwise it’s yet another suitcase purchase. 

Uber and Bolt. While you can’t get rideshare in Israel, you can in London, Paris, and Barca. We occasionally had to wait a few extra minutes for our Uber or Bolt (another rideshare app which we like even better over here), but it was great and we didn’t have to have cash. The one time we had to take a taxi, he did indeed cheat us. Highly recommend their usage  

First world problems, but I thought they were worth sharing.