Getting to your vacation destination

  You have spent a lot of time planning your vacation and have been looking forward to that day when your vacation officially begins.  It would be great if vacation mode could start as soon as you leave home but you first need to make it to your destination.  Many times you will be flying to your vacation destination which adds a bit of possible problems.   Your flight will most likely go as scheduled without any hiccups but it is good to be prepared for what to do when it doesn't.   Having a great travel agent can be key.   For my cruise clients I always recommend they fly in at least a day prior just in case.   I do heed my own advice for my own travels as well.   Yesterday I was booked to fly out of Orlando to get to my cruise that will depart out of Rotterdam.   My flight was supposed to depart Orlando with a connection in Newark before arriving in Amsterdam.   Due to bad weather we were delayed in Orlando and unfortunately we were already on the plane and out on the tarmac  so there wasn't a lot we could do.   I did have the app for the airline I was flying and was able to see they were offering me the option to change my connection flight since it was pretty sure we would not be making it to Newark in time.    When looking at alternate flight options I could see there was nothing else to Amsterdam that same day so that would mean having to stay overnight somewhere in Newark and then cutting it a bit close for getting to our ship.  I did know that Brussels was about the same distance and an easy train ride to Rotterdam as it was from Amsterdam so I checked for a possible flight into Brussels and we were in luck.   There was a flight to Brussels that left about an hour later than our original flight to Amsterdam.   At that point it seemed like we would make it for that time so I changed our flight.   It did take a little longer to land and get to a gate than expected so we had a few moments where we thought we were not going to make our new flight.    It would be nice if when the flight attendants made the announcement that asked people who are not trying to make a connection  to please stay seated and allow those who do need to run to a gate to get off first but that didn't happen on our flight.   We ran to our gate which thankfully was only 5 gates away and they were just about to shut the door!   I was just so glad to be on that plane that I didn't worry to much about anything else at that time.    However, when we got to bag claim and our bags never arrived I realized that while it was great that I found an option literally on the fly maybe it would have been better to not have picked a flight that didn't leave much time for us to get to the plane.  Now of course the complicated part of explaining what happened and where we need our bags to be begins.  
The moral of my story is that it is key to leave yourself enough time to allow for possible delays and have a plan.    I tell all my clients that they can call or text me anytime so I would hope that if any of them were in the situation I was in they would know they can contact me for help.    I also always pack a carry on that has at least a few key things like a change of underwear so that if my checked bags get lost or delayed I have something else I can wear.  It is also important to stay calm and try to solve the issues but remember you are on your way to a vacation so eventually you will be relaxing and enjoying your travels.
**Update** We took the train back to the airport and were so happy to see that our bags did actually get on the next flight and were at bag claim waiting for us!**