_060602.jpg)
Getting there is half the fun, right? Sometimes it's none. Or staying there. Or leaving there. Or the whole trip.
But bad trips make the best stories. We've been asking readers to share their tales of travel gone wrong. Here are some of the responses.
Weighty issue
Me and my wife were having a great time on our 22nd anniversary and had a beautiful helicopter ride over over Maui's waterfalls planned. We arrived at Air Maui two hours early and checked and weighed in, as is customary on chopper flights. We were told we were a go and to come back in an hour. We took off to have some coffee and returned to the heliport about an hour later.
Escaping Turkey
While living in the Netherlands, our family took advantage of traveling to places that I thought wouldn't be easily accessible once we moved back to the States. As you can imagine, I have numerous travel stories but the one that sticks out most in my mind is our chartered vacation to Turkey.
Trusting the pilot
I once flew from Pittsburg to New Orleans in the dead of winter. I expected a delay because it had started to snow when I got to the airport, but what I got was the worst flight of my life. We boarded an hour late to start.
The crying child trip, and its many sequels
Back in 1979, I was flying home from Tel Aviv to New York in coach. There was a mother with a young child sitting next to me. The baby started crying something like 10 minutes after we got off the ground. I politely asked the woman if she could please get her child to quiet down so I could get some sleep.
Kill the gnome
My wife and I arrived in the Dominican Republic in early March and were told that there was no room at the prepaid and guaranteed Puerto Plata Occidental Allegro hotel which I had upgraded to a superior oceanfront room They said they couldn't explain what had happened but would take care of us. With no other explanation, we were taken via golf cart to another hotel, the Flamenco.
The longest flight
For several years, I was plagued with bad flight karma. There were co-workers who absolutely refused to fly with me because if one flight all day was going to get cancelled, it would be mine! Three weeks after I got married, my new husband I started our honeymoon trip to Hawaii with a stop-over in Sacramento California for a second wedding reception.
Two hurricanes in one vacation
A few days after my divorce was finally over I decided that I really really needed to get away. I told my travel agent I didn't care where as long as there was a beach. And I wanted to go as soon as possible. She got me on a trip to Cancun. I arrived during hurricane Opal.