Day 3: An adventure/challenge you had while traveling or living abroad?
When I travel internationally I keep my passport in the safest, nearest place that is not physically on me and take copies of my passport with me instead. I haven’t personally had any problems however, my traveling buddy in England and France was not so lucky.
After being in London for a few days we had plans to travel through the Chunnel to Paris. (why not right?) After packing smaller bags for the overnight in Paris, putting our suitcases in the hostel storage we headed down the street and excitedly talking about what we wanted to do first in Paris. In a moment of inspiration I checked to see if I had my passport and then asked my friend to make sure he had his as well… he did not.
So we turned around and went back to the hostel in hopes that it would be there in his luggage. no such luck. So what do you do when you’re in a foreign country without a passport and supposed to be leaving in less than 2 hours? now I know. You go to your countries embassy (finding it was a task in itself!). When we finally got there we saw a very long line and sighed that we were definitely going to miss our ride to Paris and that we would be standing in line all day while in London. not our idea of fun but hey, that’s traveling, you roll with the punches and make the best with what you’ve got. While trekking to the back of the line, a guard asked what nationality we were and after responding that we were America the guard informed us we didn’t have to wait in line. We get to walk right in. silver lining.
Once inside I worked on changing our tickets, or hostel reservations trying to figure out our next move while my friend reported his missing, filled out a new passport application, took a new photo, and was about to pay a lot of money for a new passport when the embassy was told the passport had been found on the metro.
Yep, my friend had his passport in his back pocket of his jeans and it had fallen out the night before on the metro. We quickly left the embassy and headed to the metro and rode it to the outskirts of the city, which ended up being a really nice ride and we got to see less touristy sights and instead got a feel of what it was like to have to commute in and out of the city like a local. Picked up his passport and then headed to the train station.
But… we got quite the consolation prize! this story has a happy ending!
I loved the stairs… luckily there was an elevator so I only admired them from the top and bottom.
We only had a reservation for one night but since we wanted to stay another day since we’d lost one to the passport fiasco and transportation so we needed to find somewhere to stay the second night. So after a night and a full day of exploring we were running out of time to find somewhere to stay, I’ll admit I got a little nervous as It started to get dark and we still hadn’t booked a room. We wanted to find a cheap place and finally found a room for ~$160 and this happened to be the view!
this was the veiw after a night of much needed rest... pretty close to perfect don'tcha think?
Of the thousands of lessons traveling has taught me one of them is that everything is an experience and if you can make the best out of unexpected situatons the universe often has something better for you in store!
Day 01 – Favorite place(s) you’ve been to?
Day 02 – Where you’d like to travel next?
Day 03 – An adventure/challenge you had while traveling or living abroad.
Day 04 – A picture of you in another country.
Day 05 – What do you bring with you when you travel?
Day 06 – What does “home” mean to you?
Day 07 – Besides people, what did/do you miss from home?
Day 08 – A favorite food from another country/culture.
Day 09 – A favorite foreign movie
