All Packed Up and No Where to Go

September 2, 2015September 25, 2015 / lifeafter9to5 / 4 Comments

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If you’ve been following our blog for awhile, you may have noticed a trend. There is a running joke amongst our friends that we are a travel jinx. Basically, whereever we go, things tend to go sideways. For our flight to Rio, we were all packed and ready to go; we got to the airport, checked in our bags, and were ready to hit the beaches of Brazil. While we were in the lounge having a drink, Fausto’s phone started buzzing wildly. It was from American Airlines… which is never a good thing. Turns out our flight was cancelled and rescheduled for the next day. Even though there are other empty flights going to Brazil tonight, we are stuck here because they can not pull our luggage once it’s checked in. Apparently that’s the new policy. Continue reading →

Stuck in Africa…Almost

July 16, 2015July 16, 2015 / lifeafter9to5 / Leave a comment

[photo credit: www.skyscanner.com]

When you travel there is always the possibility of delays and flight cancellations. That’s part of the “experience”. Somehow, it seems to happen to us quite a bit. On our last night in Stone Town as we were weaving our way through the markets, Fausto got an alert that our 5:45 am flight on Kenya Airways was cancelled. We had 2 tight connections to get home, so a cancelled flight would mean that we’d miss all of our other flights; and that was no good since we both had to be back at work Tuesday morning. What was a great vacation turned into a bit of a nightmare as we scrambled to find a way home. Continue reading →

Travel Tip: Australian Visitor Visa

November 14, 2014November 13, 2014 / lifeafter9to5 / 22 Comments

As you may know, we’re traveling to Australia in a few weeks. Three weeks out, it finally dawned on us that we still haven’t gotten our travel visa yet and we need to get on it ASAP. Since we have passports from one of the few countries that are allowed to apply for an electronic visitor visa to Australia, we thought it would be quite simple: fill out the form online, pay the $20AUD fee, and and be on our way. The whole electronic visa process is supposed to be hassle free with a high acceptance rate of 99.8%. But nothing is ever easy or hassle free when I travel, and it turns out that I am in that special 0.2% that got rejected – with no explanation and also no refund for the $20AUD fee. So this post is not so much about travel tips as it is things you should not do from my personal experience.