Travel blogs and influencers tend to douse themselves in the glory of travel like it's skipping through meadows filled with buttercups and unicorns. The reality of it is very different.
Searching for a deal - you end up trawling all the websites for the best price. But it's not just about money, it's about flight times, stopovers and if the cost includes luggage. Then, if you're anything like me, you check everything about million times to make sure you've booked the hotel at the right date/time and your flight is actually from Heathrow.
Holiday shopping - I don't just mean suntan lotion and flip flops, you have fork out for visas, currency and jabs. Sometimes, you need to take time off work to do this and that's before you've even gone anywhere.
Getting to the airport - figuring out how to get there is a chore in itself, from checking trains, buses and airport parking. Then figuring out how you get from these terminals to your flight's terminal. Then it's the actual action of lugging your luggage on and off the tube or those impossibly high Hackney Carriages.
The airport - no one likes airports, they're boring, uncomfortable and full of stupid people. No wonder so many of us choose to get shitfaced. It's all you can do get through airport security, which despite all the signage, you always get a moron in front you didn't realise you couldn't have any liquids larger than 100ml in your hand luggage or leave their laptop in their case. To add insult to this Boots conspiracy injury, these are always manned by total jobsworths, who put a uniform and have an inflated sense of self-importance. Then there's the shopping, why do we need a Hugo Boss or Mulberry at an airport - it's a myth that it's cheaper and you can get tax-free shopping from anywhere. Why wait until you're in South Terminal?!
The flight - there's always a screaming baby or an excitable child who spends the duration kicking your chair. The food is horrendous and, what is it again with the shopping?! It always takes people forever to find their seats, despite it being alphanumeric and then, jeez, just put your bag in the overhead and sit down, why are making such a meal over it. And there's always the business man who can't switch off.
Delays - as with any form of transport, there will always be delays. You'll be stranded because of adverse weather conditions or employee strikes or technical issues. Or, when you're away, you have to wait for the taxi to fill or there's only one bus every hour or there's no timetable. Wonder how many hours have been wasted just on waiting for something to take you from A to B.
Stopovers - while I see as an opportunity to read, catch up on social media or do some writing, they seem too long and are uncomfortable. You just hang out aimlessly until your gate opens. And I always have that panic that they've put my luggage on the wrong flight.
Destination airport - this is experience is never that bad. Sure, they're not a slick as our homegrown airports, but because it's so bewildering, you don't notice its annoyances or failures. Plus, you're excited about being there and drinking everything in. Your holiday starts here.
The hotel - although it feels like all the annoyance should stop, they don't. There are occassions where you just want to sleep, but you can't because of the constant knocking on the door, no I don't need the flowers replaced, no I don't need housekeeping right now and ok, I do need the minibar restocked. Or you want to chill out by the pool/sea, but other people want to chat or hawkers are giving you the old Del Boy sales patter or kids are screaming and encroaching on your space.
Beaches - I am a complete beach babe, but it's not long before I get pissed off at the sand finding its way into every crevice or at that crunch as you bite into grains of sand that have ended up in your food or drink. Then there's the wind blowing the pages of your book and the wolf-whistlers (not that I get this, but I imagine a lot of women do).
Tours - I avoid these due to being made up almost exclusively of bored teenagers or over-friendly old people. If you're lucky, your guide gives you way more than a Lonely Planet does by pointing out nuances in the architecture and local history that brings it to life, more often than not, they're just hurriedly sheparding you through crowds, giving you no time to absorb or discover it for yourself.
Food - I pity people who have "unusual" dietry requirements, like being a vegetarian or worse, a vegan. I have a nut allergy and I take a lot of gambles purely because it's so difficult to explain what a nut actually is. We've all been to that restaurant where the food was horrendous, but you can't complain and wouldn't achieve very much if you did. Then there's the dreaded Delhi Belly or Montezuma's Revenge, rendering you out of action for days, maybe weeks.
Wildlife - from mosquitos to cockroaches, these little buggers are bane to a traveller's existence. You're afraid to leave your shoes out in case a poisonous spider takes up residence or go into the bathroom while a lizzard chills out on the wall. And no one can sleep easy once you hear that high-pitched buzz in your ear.
Itinerary - sometimes you pack this so much (why wouldn't you, you're only there once) that you need a holiday to get over it. From climbing pyramids one day to trekking through the rainforest another, not to mention that cookery school you booked into and the salsa class. And we must go to the robot restaurant and watch the sunset over the Serengeti, then go to The Shrine. Ok, this was a worldwide itinerary, but you get my drift.
Other tourists - how many times have you cringed at the sight of Brits abroad with their En-gerr-lund shirts and lobster pink skin getting pissed on Fosters in a bar called Linekers, picking fights and trying to fuck girls normally out of their league. I often find myself huffing at tourists telling the locals how to do things properly or communicating by... SPEE-KING... VE-RRY... SLOOOWLY... AND... LA-OWD-LY... They still don't understand you, sunshine, so breaking the sound barrier won't help. Then there's the stereotypical, holier than thou, gap-yarr backpacker who thinks they're oh-so virtuous by spending a week with a tribe in Chiang-Mai, wears hemp trousers, has braided hair, invests in a panoply of shell, shark tooth and beaded jewellery, gets tramp stamps and sits on a beach playing bongos while telling you they're totally rad and know this place like they were born here but can only point you to the backpacker bars and their resident drug dealers. Gimme a break.
