Trips To Remember

Pink skinny jean disasters, foreign alphabet menus and a wedding gatecrash – travel hitches can make for great dinner-party hilarity.

- Jo Seagar

Confession time… I’m a travel addict on the road to recovery. Nah, just kidding – I’m actually on my way to the airport. Travel is my therapy and, as usual at this time of year, I’m about to head off to the other side of the world, escorting foodie tours to Europe.

Travel is such an investment in yourself. It’s often been said that it is the only thing you buy that actually makes you richer. I’m a firm believer in the theory that the only trip you will regret will be the one you didn’t take.

However, along with all the joys, excitement and liberation of travel, there are, at times, the slightly scary situations and accidental mishaps. Turning these incidents into hilarious dinner-party travel stories is my way of coping with them, and I can recall many from my years of travelling and escorting tour groups. Besides the usual nightmare scenarios of missed flights, weather delays, lost tickets and bursting-zip luggage malfunctions, I’ve had times when things have gone a bit crazily – and funnily – wrong.

When my children were quite young – about five and six years old – we went to Singapore for a holiday. There was much excitement for these country kids to be staying on the 29th storey of a huge high-rise hotel in the heart of the city, but even greater excitement when the fire alarm went off and sprinklers started spraying water everywhere in the middle of the night (something we were not responsible for, thank goodness). I’d seen enough