Unexpected Travel Problems

I have only really run into travel problems once before on this trip and that were not my fault at all, however, this time it was all me.

The first time was when I was making my way from Brussels to Barcelona and got stuck in Paris for two days. Not the most fun I've had all trip.

This time I had booked a ferry and three trains to get me from Dublin to Oxford (at both places I'm staying with someone I know, which helps). I need to preface this with saying that I am not the best with time management and the fact that this is the first (and last) incident like this is awesome for me. Prior to going to the port to catch the ferry I was watching a movie and doing laundry. I was not quite thinking about the amount of time needed to do those, get to the ferry and board it. First problem was my clothes would not dry. SO instead of taking 30minutes they took an hour and a half. Which means I didn't leave the apt until about 1350 to attempt to catch a cab in the snow for a 1430 ferry. The first 5 empty cabs I saw weren't picking up. I finally got a cab with about 15 minutes to get to the port. At that point I should have given up. But, no. I spent about 20euros to go all the way to the port to find out that I was right, there was no way I was going to make it there on time. Once at the port I realized that not only was the next ferry wasn't until 2040 and that once I got to the UK I wouldn't be able to Oxford because my trains would not be running. Changing the ferry ticket to the next day was no problem. The friend I was staying with had no problem with me staying for the extra day.

The train tickets however, were not as easy to change. First I had to refund them, which is not an easy process, considering I still have to print the tickets at the station and staple them to a form and send them to some company so they can approve it and then refund me. So then I went to book the new tickets and for some reason forgot to change the date and ended up buying the same tickets again. But I didn't notice in time to cancel it before they went through so I have to do that refund process times two. I finally found the right tickets and bought them for about half the price.

I decided since I was already online I would go ahead and book my plane tickets from London to Germany. First I was attempting to go to Munich for the day, but it proved to be too expensive, time consuming and annoying. So I found myself a ticket for Frankfurt for the day before I get on the plane home. I was being careful to pay attention to which airport in London the flight flew out of. And found myself an amazing deal. Even after adding baggage it was less than half the price to fly to Munich and really cheap compared to some flights the same day. I booked the flight. Sounds good right? Well it wasn't until after I was done paying that I realized that I had made the second booking mistake of the day. This time, I had booked a flight to the wrong airport, instead of Frankfurt I am flying to some smaller airport about an hour and a half away. I didn't book on Ryanair but the flight is Ryanair, which I guess means that I am not allowed to cancel with calling 4 different numbers and emailing 2 different people. Luckily I gave myself enough time to take a bus from the wrong airport to the right one.

There are a couple more things that I need to straighten out and book before I am done with this trip but I decided that I will do no more traveling arrangements today.