Travel Horror Story: Our Journey to the Niagara Falls This Summer

It was a long awaited journey. From the day I came to USA I was hoping to see the Niagara Falls. We had 5 days vacation. So we planned to take the American Airlines flight to Buffalo, stay there for two days, travel on Amtrak to New York the next day and stay at New York for another day and fly home from there. There was no direct connection from Evansville to Buffalo. So we had to travel through Chicago. Our journey from Evansville to Chicago’ O Hara airport was uneventful. While waiting at the terminal in Chicago, we first learnt that the flight was going to be late. They announced if one of the passengers would like to board the next flight, he/she could come forward. Then the flight time was changed again. After a long wait, we were however, able to board the flight. We were very tired by then. I and my child actually fell asleep. Then suddenly I woke up and found everyone taking their hand luggage out of the storage and going out of the plane. I looked out. We were still at Chicago. We followed the others. The flight was cancelled. They asked us to try and re book at another flight. As you can expect there was a chaos at the counters. We tried to call the number they gave us and ran from one terminal to another. And finally the lady at the counter blatantly told us that we can rebook on a flight after three days as nothing before that was available. I told them that would completely spoil our vacation and asked them how they would like to compensate us. They said that they don’t compensate!! They could just offer some discounts in some Chicago hotels. So we went through the long process of cancelling our flight and tried to get back our luggage. We waited for another hour but couldn’t get our luggage back.

We were in utter despair. Our vacation seemed entirely spoiled. I felt desperate. I declared that we were going to go to Niagara Falls whether or not we got our luggage. They told us that we may collect our luggage at Buffalo airport the next day. We came out of the airport. It was raining. We tried to call some car renting companies and finally after another hour we could rent a car. It was already 9PM and we started for Niagara in our car. By some strange instinct or God’s advice I have packed our GPS inside my hand luggage. So we started. We called the hotel at Niagara and informed them that we hope to arrive next day.

On the road we rented a hotel room and slept a few hours. It rained the whole night. And the next the day we faced a dangerous hail storm. If we could reach Buffalo airport within 6PM, we could get our luggage. As we had a child with us, we needed the luggage badly. My husband started driving as fast as he could to reach Buffalo by time and got a ticket for speeding. Then we got struck in the hail storm. And we were driving almost blindly. And at that time I felt perhaps we should have taken the hint and returned home from Chicago. I will never forget the terror and despair I felt and also the relief when finally we could sleep in the hotel at Niagara at night. Perhaps because of this experience, Niagara seemed more beautiful to our eyes the next day.

Sources: My Experience


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