Being a professional in tourism industry does not mean that one can travel.

Let me tell you a little story about how essential it is to prepare for plan B, in any cases..

About a month back from now my mother decided to escape cold Lapland for her 50th birthday and fly to the country side of France to her childhood best friend, Finnish woman living in France. She found connecting flights through London, which was ideal as then she would hit two flies at once- meeting her best friend and being with her daughter, that would be me.

But as you might already have guessed, nothing went as it should have.

We took off from London at eight in the morning to be at Stansted airport at 10.30am, which we both knew, is the furthest one out side of the city. We were travelling by bus, underground and finally by train, only in time to see the check in closing right in front of our eyes. The shock hit when the check in clerk told us we were 3 minutes late from check in. Neither of us had ever missed a plane in our lives and could not believe they would not let us in for 3 minutes sake! As the shock wore off and my mother stopped crying we understood how cheap airlines work: This is the part where they rip you off. You need to buy new tickets to another flight and they get another 200 GBP off you! Luckily there were plenty of airports and flights to south of France on that Friday afternoon.

We landed in the middle of rainy and grey sun flower fields. Sure we had checked that the new destination is closest possible option to where we originally wanted to fly, but we had no idea how remote exactly Bergerac was. We walked from the plane to passport control, which was a tent put up besides the toilets. Our luggage was brought in trolleys pulled by a small, green tractor. In ten minutes the airport was empty. There were no rental cars left, no taxis in sight and we had absolutely no idea where we were. The maintenance of the airport started closing the gates as there were no other flights coming but he was kind enough to call us a taxi after we wrote taxi on a piece of paper. Luckily enough the taxi driver spoke decent English and promised to drive us to the next town, where we could find a train station. As we were closer to the other town after a rainy hour in the taxi, the driver called his friend to ask for prices for train tickets, which he said were very expensive around here, and told us he could drive us further with the same amount of money. So we kept on sitting in the taxi for another hour, watching the rainy countryside of France flashing by. As the first city grew bigger and closer and traffic became more intense, my mom contacted her friend who had bad news. Her car did not start the engine and she couldn’t tell what was wrong. She promised to pay half of the taxi if the driver would drive us all the way to her doorsteps. By the time we finally reached our destination, it was late afternoon, I had fallen asleep in the taxi dreaming of lunch, the sun shone from clear blue sky, and the taxi meter was blinking 300 euros.

How much easier (and cheaper!) would our day have turned into if we had caught the first flight we intended to, by simply leaving the house half an hour earlier.

Lotta Lonka
International Hospitality Management student from Lapland, Finland
Travel Guide
Working for Elegant English Hotels in London