Losing Your Luggage without Losing Your Patience

The title of this post is a bit of a misnomer. I have had my luggage lost twice in the past year, and both times I lost more of my patience than I needed to. The sinking feeling in the gut when the crowd starts disbursing from the luggage carousel is one with which I am familiar. My luggage has often been last on the belt (maybe I get to the airport too early?), but until my trip to Montreal in the fall, I’d always left the airport with everything I came with.

Flying Fancy for Free

I am not a “luxury traveler” by any means. While I treat myself to cake pops and chai lattes whenever possible, spending extra money to fly first class had never crossed my mind. So I was super excited when my sister, Katie, won first-class Delta tickets to *anywhere in the United States* and invited *me* of all people with her. In order to make the most of her winnings, we decided to travel as far as we possibly could on them, which meant Hawaii. I’ve already written about how wonderful our trip to Hawaii was, and knowing we were getting there for free made it even more fun to plan our helicopter ride, boat tour, hike, trek the see the sunrise on top of a volcano, and our meals.