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- I should’ve known better than to travel during the holidays, and I paid the cost for doing it anyway.
- I let my travel partner plan the trip, and a delayed flight meant that all his plans went awry.
- The trip cost me thousands of dollars and put me off international travel.
I’m a seasoned traveler and should have known better than to travel during the holidays, but I ignored that instinct — and paid the cost. My ill-fated trip to Morocco in 2019 put the final nail in the coffin of my romantic relationship and a nasty dent in my finances.
I was left with an angry ex, travel vouchers in lieu of reimbursements that I couldn’t use for years because of a global pandemic, and so much time and money lost that I refuse to do the math. Here’s where it all went wrong and why I have no big travel plans on the horizon.
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Our outbound flight was delayed, delayed, and finally canceled
I spent the first day of my very limited vacation at the airport in Montreal; merveilleux. When the airline finally canceled the flight at 1 a.m. and sent us to collect our checked luggage, I knew I had to make lemonade from the lemons life had given me by heading into the city.
I flagged down an airline representative and asked if I could book my own hotel and taxi, instead of staying near the airport using the airline vouchers. The rep assured me I’d get reimbursed for the expenses. I booked a nice hotel in the Old Port, hailed a taxi, and off we went.
I even made plans to go to my favorite spa the next day since we had a full 24 hours until our rebooked flight to Morocco; more lemonade, please. In the end, though, only a percentage of the hotel and taxi expenses were reimbursed by the airline.
I let my man friend do most of the planning
I’m an experienced traveler and an expert planner, but on this occasion, I let go of the reins and let my seasoned travel partner take the lead. To my horror, he planned a jam-packed trip that had us moving from place to place each day and spending most of the trip en route in a black Mercedes van with tinted windows, criss-crossing the Sahara Desert.
The impossibly brisk pace of the trip and the time difference meant that our cancelled flight resulted in thousands of dollars lost on cancelled hotels, tours, and transportation. We had split those expenses equally, and that was money we’d never get back.
When it comes to travel, I don’t like being told when and where to go and what to look at. Guided group tours are a no-go for me. I deeply value my freedom and, on this trip, I felt like a kidnapped woman. I was even repeatedly called by my travel partner’s last name. As a widow who still carries her late husband’s name, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Oh, and I rode a camel in the desert. I hated it. My camel got separated from the others and went rogue, riding (slowly) into the sunrise. I felt like a silly, privileged white woman, buying and collecting experiences in a foreign land.
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We got caught in tourist traps everywhere we went
I typically stay in an Airbnb or apartment when I travel so that I can cook, go to the market or grocery store, save a little money, eat healthy, and do as the locals do. I walk, bike, or take public transit. I plan a few things, but leave lots of space to change my mind, spend hours reading in a park, people watching at a café, and see where the day takes me. Because my man friend had hired a driver and we were on the go all the time, we were repeatedly delivered to one tourist trap after another.
Our driver brought us to gift shops where he knew the owner and pushed us to buy things. Again, not how I travel. My man friend, however, had brought two large suitcases on our trip: one for his belongings, and the other for the things he was going to buy. And buy he did — rugs, spices, knick-knacks, ornaments, and more. He filled that suitcase with souvenirs he delighted at haggling for. I paid full price for a leather purse, which irritated my travel partner, but after seeing a 7-year-old boy seated on the floor of the outdoor market sewing other purses just like it, I didn’t feel like haggling.
On the turbulent flight home (literally and metaphorically) I vowed to hit pause on all international travel. As this was December 2019, I got my wish. I landed safely in Toronto just days before 2020 began. I left Morocco poorer, newly single, and relieved to be home. The silver lining? My floundering relationship and decades-long wanderlust came to a screeching halt just in time for quarantine.
