Dateline Discovery

Not everything will go smoothly away from home, but precautions can make sure things don’t go terribly wrong.

The small red numbers ticked steadily toward 400 and then beyond it, and as the first rays of early morning sun snuck over the horizon, I was hoping the weight of three days of exhaustion was contributing to blurred vision.

Surely, there had a to be a decimal point in there somewhere.

Seated in the back of a taxi on my way to the airport in Bergen, Norway, I realized I had made a grave mistake. The night before, I debated whether to hail a cab or take the Bybanen light rail to catch my early flight to Oslo. Fueled mostly by the desire for a few extra minutes of quality sleep and a more leisurely breakfast, I decided I would simply call a taxi.

When traveling, there’s an understanding that something is going to go awry — usually for the worse, but a pleasant surprise or two can emerge. The trick, as always, is to be as prepared as possible and to expect the unexpected, but sometimes, decisions that appear to be among the most logical are inherently flawed.

I had researched how to get to the airport and noticed that a trip on the Bybanen, from central Bergen to the airport in nearby Flesland, would take at least 45 minutes, but a drive would last only half that time. Having been in countless cabs around Europe, I figured the fare would be around $20, which would be just about $10 more than the cost of the tickets on the light rail.

The meter told me otherwise. As we curved around hillsides and bored through tunnels, the cost rapidly escalated. I was hoping the next exit would be the one we needed — except every subsequent bright yellow road sign had an airplane silhouette next to the onward arrow. I grew nervous, knowing I only had so much cash in my wallet. I checked my watch repeatedly.

By the time we finally arrived at the airport, the meter spoke its unforgiving truth. The total came to 465 kroner, which was nearly $55. The one-way flight to Oslo, one hour in duration, didn’t even cost half that. Devastated and defeated, I thanked the driver and paid him for his time, handing him every last paper bill in my wallet. I grabbed my bag and finally escaped the taxi.

Overall, the blunder was mine alone, and although it was a lot of money, it was a minor inconvenience. Since then, I’ve learned to get an estimate on how much a cab ride might cost, either by looking it up in advance or by asking the driver before taking the trip.

Here are a few other ways that the mistakes I’ve made while traveling have influenced my decisions moving forward:

Remember the passport: This sounds embarrassingly fundamental, but it can easily happen to the best of us — as it did to me when I planned to travel to Venice a few years back. I was on the train to the airport when it somehow hit me that I had left my passport at home. Although I always leave it in a special pouch in my backpack even when I’m not traveling, I made the absent-minded decision to switch bags at the last moment and left the one I always bring in favor of one I never do. I hopped off the train at the next stop, caught one back home, sprinted back to my apartment, grabbed the passport … and made it to the airport just in time.

Hide your valuables: Again, another truly obvious thing to consider, but there were a number of mitigating factors that led to the theft of a wallet, camera and cash at the train station in Cannes, in France, a few years back. Already dazed from oversleeping our alarm, we bolted out of the hotel and rushed to the train station, where hundreds of people had begun congregating to find their way onto what was the only train bound for Paris that day because of railway strikes. In our haste to verify we had the right tickets and to scrounge up some change for breakfast at a cafe, we moved things in and out of our bags in the only bit of available space in the station: on a bench right in the middle of the hall. That put a target on our backs, and when everyone rushed the train as it arrived, someone rushed right to us and grabbed the valuables out of our bags. From that point on, we made sure we never made such a stupid, easy mistake.

Plan landmarks in advance: On that same trip to France, this time in Paris, we knew there were a few things we definitely wanted to see — the Eiffel Tower, a show at Moulin Rouge and the Catacombs among the highlights. Yet, because we failed to recognize how popular some things would be in the middle of summer, we ended up waiting … and waiting … and waiting. We waited nearly two hours to climb the Eiffel Tower before giving up, then, two days later, waited even longer to descend into the Catacombs. From that point on, we’ve done our best to either arrange advance tickets at a specific time or gotten to an attraction early in the morning as it opens (or both). It’s a strategy that saves a significant amount of time, and you can laugh at all those waiting to get in as you’re on your way out.

Stick with the plan: When visiting Madrid two years ago, we had arranged to have dinner at a historic restaurant not long after the end of the Real Madrid game we would be attending. We left the game at a reasonable time and rushed to the Metro station, but, as one would expect outside a stadium that seats more than 80,000 people, it got jammed really quickly. Rather than remain in the mass of humanity, I thought there was no chance we’d make our reservation and thought it was best to hop in a taxi — as did many other people. We spent nearly 20 minutes trying to find a cab somewhere in the area, but fortunately, when we did, we found the right guy. He floored it, got us to the restaurant in time for our reservation, and we vowed from that point on we’d never abandon a plan when we were already so far through it.

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