Traveling isn’t necessarily all fun and games. There are so many amazing parts of travel, and in 2019 I’ve had some pretty fantastic experiences! But there’s always a downside. It’s not all pretty Instagam pictures and highlights reels. There will always be some bad travel moments thrown in with the good ones.

In 2017, some of my worst moments were getting sick in Moldova and insane mosquitoes. In 2018, it was getting sick in Istanbul a 2-day flight delay, and midges in Scotland I’m thankful that this year I was never seriously injured abroad, got robbed, or had anything catastrophic happen while I was on a trip. This is always one of my most popular posts of the year, so here you go! My worst travel moments of 2019!

Adam’s Car Crash/Cancelling Trips

While technically it wasn’t a travel moment, it impacted every part of my travel plans for months this year (not to mention every second of my entire life). Adam was in a nasty car crash at the beginning of January and broke his leg and his ankle. He was in a boot and on crutches for about two months after surgery. I’m of course so grateful that he is alive, and that there wasn’t any permanent, life-altering damage. But it was pretty horrible. Things were pretty dark.

Besides the obvious stress of him being able to walk again, of course we had trips planned that we then had to cancel. This is just one of many reasons why you need to have travel insurance! We had to cancel our trip to Greece, which had been my absolute dream trip—I was crushed. Adam also had to cancel his trip to hike Kilimanjaro. Not only that, but it took 8 months (8 MONTHS!!!!) to get a cancellation invoice and refund from the online travel agent he booked the flights through. (For the record, never ever book with Travel Trolley.) It was so stressful having to get invoices and receipts and doing insurance phone calls and submitting documents. Again, this is why I’m so grateful that we had travel insurance. But it was still pretty horrible.

My First Experience With Bedbugs

The more I look back on it, the more surprised I am that it actually took me 8 years of on/off travel to have my first encounter with bedbugs! Unfortunately, this year I experienced bed bugs and I gotta say, I’m not a fan. I’m paranoid and I check every place I stay at for bed bugs, so I was really confused when I woke up one morning with some weird bites on my legs. Then I noticed that the bites on my ankle were three bites, all in a row. Immediately my mind went to bed bugs, and despite tearing the bed apart I couldn’t find any. Adam tried to convince me they were just regular bug bites, (I didn’t have them anywhere else besides my legs/ankles), but I wasn’t convinced. He had no bites at all (and was sleeping on the bunk on top of me), while I had multiple bites on my legs and they itched like crazy.

Finally, as we were packing up to leave I accepted that they must just be regular bites. And that’s when I found it. There was one single, solitary bed bug—and I found a dead body of another one underneath the bed frame. (The second photo is really blurry as my camera wouldn’t focus since it was still moving.) It then set me off in a panic about what we would do with our clothes and our backpacks, and just in general what to do. When I told an employee, she knew exactly what it was, and told us she’d need to call the owner and they would need to block the room to fumigate it.

Thankfully (THANK GOD), I think it was an isolated incident, the place wasn’t infested but there were just literally one or two bed bugs that had been brought in by another traveler, and neither Adam nor I were carrying them. We washed all of our clothes at the next hostel, and then put everything we owned through the dryer when we got back home just in case there were any that were with us. It all happened at the end of our trip, which meant we were able to sort the majority of it at home. But it was so unpleasant, and the fear of being “dirty” and “contaminated” was so stressful. In case anyone is wondering, Bed Bugs Insider is a fantastic resource to answer all the questions you may be googling at 2am!

Our Flat Tire Debacle On The Way To Scotland

We set off for our week-long camping road trip to Scotland in high spirits, and got about 2 hours away from home when we got a flat tire. The tire was completely burst, and our car didn’t have a spare tire, only foam to use to pump back into a flat tire (which obviously didn’t help us). Our breakdown company took hours to get to us, and then insisted on towing us several hours to our hotel in Scotland where we had booked the first night of our trip.

Things did not go to plan, and we were extremely confused as to why they couldn’t just send out someone to get us a new tire and get us on our way. But we weren’t going to say no to a free tow, which promptly ended with our breakdown company abandoning us at Gretna Green service station with a car we couldn’t drive, refusing to book a hotel for us, and still an hour away from our hotel for the night. Adam even got into the local paper about it!

Finally, after midnight and many phone calls to very unhelpful managers, our breakdown company booked us a hotel room at the service station. They promised a tow to a tire shop the next morning, which thankfully showed. We were able to get a new tire for our car in Carlisle, and in huge part thanks to the press surrounding it, our breakdown company offered to cover the cost of the hotel we missed, and the cost of the tire. The most disappointing part was that it severely delayed us on our trip. Since we spent so much time waiting for a new tire, we didn’t get to do any of the hikes we wanted to in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, and drove essentially from Carlisle to Drumnadrochit (near Inverness) in one day. It was such an inconvenience and definitely set our trip off on the wrong foot!

An Insane Bus Ride To Albania

I thought that by booking a private transfer from Ohrid to Tirana I would have a quick, painless, and uneventful journey from North Macedonia to Albania. Boy, was I wrong!! Our bus driver first had the people up front make up all the names he’d give to border control, then we got a crack in the windshield. As our driver tried to pass another car who refused to let him pass, and we swerved wildly and nearly crashed into the car in front of us, he shouted, “I’ll break your fucking fingers!” to the other car. He cut the lines at the border and to top it all off, as we were entering Tirana there was an accident blocking part of a roundabout—instead of waiting, he just drove the wrong way around the roundabout into incoming traffic. All of us forged a sense of camraderie on the journey, and I think I speak for everyone when I saw that we were all very relieved to get off the bus! It was a completely crazy bus ride and there were several times that I wondered if we were legitmately ever going to make it.

Walking Up Berat Fortress In 100˚F+ Heat

During our trip to Albania, we decided to take a daytrip from Tirana to Berat. The main attraction in Berat is Berat Fortress, located on the top of the hill overlooking the city. It was extremely hot, over 100˚F, and yet we still hiked up to the top of the fortress. WHY?!? We went through an insane amount of water and had to stop so frequently. My favorite part of the fortress was a small church-turned-restaurant-turned-church-again, as there were chairs inside and it was cool and out of the sun. I definitely would not recommend this!

Torrential Rain In Malta

For most of our trip to Malta, we had amazing weather. Beautiful sunshine and warm temperatures in April—what could be better?! Well, our first full day we had planned to go out to Popeye Village, which was about an hour away by bus. We didn’t think much of it as it started raining while we were on our first bus. But as we stood in torrential rain that was literally blowing sideways into us, waiting for the next bus, things deteriorated. After waiting for 20 minutes for our bus that didn’t turn up, we decided we couldn’t wait any longer. So we got on the next bus to Sliema and spent the next few hours drying off in our hostel. (The above photo is from a few days later when we went back in beautiful weather!)

Hurting My Ankle In The Lake District

I absolutely loved my birthday weekend trip to the Lake District this September. And I especially loved staying at the Kirkstone Pass Inn, the third-highest pub in the country! But on the walk up Crinkle Crags, I had somehow managed to hurt my ankle. And when we woke up on Sunday morning wanting to hike up Red Screes, I could barely walk up and down the stairs. Thankfully it healed itself after a day or two, and we ended up doing different things in the Lakes that day instead! But it was still a huge disappointment not to be able to do the hikes we had planned due to a minor injury.

A Flight Delay From Tirana To Ljubljana

Normally, flight delays wouldn’t make it onto a list of my worst travel moments of the year. But we had specifically booked an overnight layover in Ljubljana, so we could have an evening exploring Kranj. We were due to get in at 4pm, and we had to be leaving our hostel the next day by 5am to get our early morning flight back to the UK. Unfortunately, our flight from Tirana to Ljubljana was delayed by 2 hours—again, normally this wouldn’t be a huge deal. But it meant that by the time we landed and got into Kranj, it was after 6pm, and we had lost two of our precious hours to explore. I was really disappointed, and I’d love to get back to Kranj (and Slovenia!) and explore it properly!

Fighting The Flu On The Way To Rome

The week before I went to Rome this December, basically everyone in my office was sick. Everyone seemed to be catching the cold/flu that was traveling around—people were dropping like flies, and more and more people were calling in sick every day. I felt completely fine, until the day we were set to leave: Friday, my last day at work. Two of my co-workers who had both been sick came in late-morning, and I almost felt myself getting sick just breathing the same air as them. Normally I don’t mind getting sick, but I was going to Rome and I was NOT going to be sick. I felt nauseous and wasn’t sure if I’d make it through the rest of my shift without puking or shitting my guts out. I barely ate all evening, and was worrying by the time we got to our airport hotel if I, too, was going to succumb to the plague. Thankfully, I made it just in the nick of time, and despite a minor cough, felt totally fine through my whole trip in Rome! Here’s to popping cold and flu medicine!

This year was tough in a lot of ways—Adam’s car crash really put both of us through the ringer. Thankfully, that was the worst of this year: cancelled trips and a flat tire were the worst things to happen. I’m always grateful that nothing more serious happened. But sometimes, the only way to move forward is to look back and laugh on it! I hope you enjoyed reading about my worst travel moments of 2019!

So there you are, my worst travel moments of the year. Travel isn’t just a highlight reel, and it’s not always easy!

Over to you! Did you have any bad travel moments this year? What were your worst from 2019?

Like this post? Pin it for later!