Travel Isn't Always Glamorous

Our 30-Hour London Airport Experience

Since this newsletter is about to be somewhat negative, I want to start it out in a positive way. So, let me begin by saying this.

Full-time travel is the most amazing lifestyle I have ever had the pleasure of living, and there are still moments when I have to pinch myself to make sure that I’m not about to wake up from a long dream!

It has been, without a shadow of a doubt, the best chapter of my life so far.

However, there are those occasional moments when everything seems to go wrong all at once.

With that said, we have actually been extremely fortunate to avoid any major complications in the past 8 months.

Sure, we’ve had a delayed flight here, an uncomfortably crowded train there, but never a moment where our plans completely fell through at the last minute.

Unfortunately, our luck ran out last week.

Our plan was to leave London and head east to the Serbian capital of Belgrade. We were excited to bring our country total up to 13, and immerse ourselves in a brand new culture!

We were also excited to return to the Eastern European cost of living, which is very easy on the wallet.

We made our way to London’s Heathrow Airport on the underground train, and arrived with plenty of time to spare!

As we arrived to the bag drop, the first ominous sign met our eyes as we got in the line for Air Serbia.

The Wales under-17 girl’s soccer team was checking in for the flight to Belgrade, and they had a mountain of luggage to accompany their group of 30+.

They were pushing several carts with mountains of boxes, bins, and duffle bags stacked on top. They must have been bringing their entire locker room from Wales!

It took them almost an hour to check all of their equipment and get all of their boarding passes. Even though we had arrived fairly early, we were starting to feel a little nervous, and we were definitely hoping for a quick run through security.

However, we needn’t have worried about the security line. It turned out that we had a much bigger issue on our hands.

When we provided our passports and our booking confirmation at the desk, we were informed that the order for our tickets had not been completed.

In other words, we did not have tickets for the flight.

Since we received a confirmation email and a booking reference from Air Serbia, we were extremely confused.

We had booked the flight over a month ago, and had never received an email telling us that the order had been cancelled. In fact, we had not received a single email since the confirmation and booking reference was sent.

Right away, I went back to my July statement on my credit card to check if there had been a charge. Sure enough, I saw a charge from Air Serbia on the date we bought the tickets.

I promptly showed the desk attendant, as panic began to set in for both of us.

How could we have been charged for the flight, but not have tickets?

The desk attendant was more than willing to help us resolve the situation, but the process was made difficult by the fact that she did not actually work for Air Serbia. She worked for Etihad Airways, which is their affiliate.

She got on the phone with Air Serbia right away and explained our situation.

Eventually, after some confusion, we got to the bottom of it.

The charge on my card was actually for our flight from Belgrade to Croatia in a few day’s time. We had never been charged for the flight out of London, and the reservation had never been made.

The confirmation email we received in July was apparently a technical error from the Air Serbia website.

We did not have tickets, and bag drop was closing in 20 minutes.

Sidney and I had to make a quick decision on the spot. Did we want to buy tickets immediately, which were now more than double the price of when we tried to book originally, or did we want to cancel our trip to Serbia altogether, and see if we could get our money back for the accommodations and the flight out of Belgrade.

As much as we wanted to go, we decided on the second option. The decision was made easier when we were offered a full refund for our flight out of Serbia, and a decent chunk of our accommodations in Belgrade refunded as well.

All in all, it wasn’t the worst thing to ever happen to someone in an airport. We barely lost any money, and a next-day flight from London to Dubrovnik, Croatia was easy enough to find.

The one thing we did lose was a chance to explore Belgrade. But, at the end of the day, we still have so many adventures to look forward to, and we made the best decision that was available to us.

We also learned a valuable lesson. Don’t book from Air Serbia! Or at least, be sure to double check that you actually have tickets even if you receive a confirmation email!

If we ever end up journeying to Belgrade, we will probably lean towards EasyJet or WizzAir over Air Serbia.

We started looking into it more, and they have horrible reviews on almost all travel websites. We are definitely not the first people this has ever happened to, and I think it is safe to say they are in desperate need of maintenance on their website!

Since the day was essentially lost, we decided to book a cheap hotel by the airport and get some work done.

Our flight to Croatia the following day was actually out of London’s Gatwick Airport instead of Heathrow. Luckily, there was a convenient and extremely cheap airport shuttle that took us where we needed to go.

We also got to use the largest automated bag drop in the world! EasyJet has a completely automated bag drop system that is as smooth as can be.

We are huge fans of EasyJet. They know exactly who they are, and they do it well.

Affordable, efficient, no-nonsense flights. No first class, no boarding groups, no last-minute fare hikes.

We were able to book the flight to Dubrovnik the day before departure, for about the same fare as it would’ve been from Belgrade on Air Serbia, which is a much shorter flight than London!

Sometimes, things don’t go as planned. However, we couldn’t have asked for a smoother in-game adjustment.

As much as we love London, we were definitely ready to get the hell out of there.

We are so excited to spend the next few weeks in the Balkans and enjoy the stunning Croatian coast.

Stay tuned for a full recap of our experience!

As always, feel free to share the newsletter far and wide, or send a financial contribution of any amount to our Venmo address if you enjoyed the read!

I hope to see you again on Friday 👍