Pack Your Patience

(John) Travel can be very stressful. Upon checkout this morning, the hotel tried to charge me for a deluxe room. They had placed us in a larger room after the first night because, "we can't keep you in the same room for all four nights." Turns out they placed us in a deluxe room, and tried to charge me the higher rate. I protested and they changed the rate. There was no argument. I'm glad I checked the bill closely.

Then we went to the breakfast room and it was packed with the same French teens I spoke of in an earlier post. Of course, that meant we had to wait for another 15 minutes. Finally, we got to the train station and we wanted to lock up our bags while attending the Eucharist at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. That cost us a whopping 11 GBP (20 dollars)! Thankfully, everything went smoothly after, including the express train to the airport. I am currently sitting in the departure lounge at Gatwick waiting for our Ryan Air flight to Dublin.

All the problems I mentioned are small, but when traveling internationally for the first time, I'm learning that I'm more sensitive to stress because everything is new. I'm glad I did as much planning ahead as possible. Plus, I've been doing some breathing / relaxation exercises. That has helped too. The service at St. Martin's was calming as well - it reminded me of how good my life is, and a small dispute about a hotel bill is really meaningless in the larger scheme of things. Dublin, here we come!