My Worst Travel Moments of 2025

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You need to take the bad with the good! Every year, I share my worst travel moments of the year because I think it’s important to be realistic when you travel the world for a living.

Things can and do go wrong on every trip. And that’s not a sign of failure on your part as a traveler! That’s just how it goes. And the bad moments really help you appreciate the good ones.

It’s also worth noting that not every destination is going to be a home run for you. Sometimes destinations look great on paper, but you can’t know how it will be until you get there. Unfortunately Austin and Dominica fell into this category for me this year.

As always, keep in mind that these negative experiences are not that bad in the grand scheme of things. My actual worst experiences of the year were much more serious. Deaths. Serious injuries. Friends struggling in various ways.

And those tough times don’t belong on this lighthearted list, so just keep that in mind.

(And don’t forget to check out my best travel moments of 2025 and my favorite new travel destinations of 2025! These two are must-reads!)

Here are my worst travel moments of 2025!

Me and Helen in our hotel-issued tear gas masks.

Unrest, Tear Gas, and Delays in Madagascar

I knew Madagascar would be a destination of extremes, but I had no idea that we would end up in the middle of protests leading to a military coup!

I’ve traveled to areas during protests before — Thailand in 2013, Greece in 2015, France in 2023. Each time, the protests were easily avoidable, and I stayed away from them.

But in Antananarivo, our hotel happened to be in the heart of the protest area. As we arrived, people were swarming the streets and the hotel staff grabbed us and escorted us in quickly, just as a group was pushing a dumpster down the street in our direction.

We took videos of people running down the street from the windows upstairs, and changed our dinner plans to eat in the hotel restaurant that night.

And then came the tear gas. The police were blanketing the neighborhood with tear gas, and as we were in the courtyard, it wafted over the walls and hurt our eyes and throat. The hotel staff passed out masks and urged us to head inside.

We were supposed to leave for Nosy Be the next morning, but domestic flights in Madagascar were cancelled. We moved to a family-run guesthouse close to the airport where they treated us with such kindness, and since the city was under curfew and stores were closed, we made clandestine getaways to tiny little bars and convenience stores that let us in the back entrance.

The president of Madagascar fled the country in secret, flights were canceled another day, and sadly, three of our travel companions decided to head home, rather than just go to Nosy Be for two nights and come back, or risk getting stuck again.

Another worry in the back of my mind was the US government shutdown. If the protests became severely violent or got to a point where we needed to be extracted, there would only be a skeleton crew working in the US Embassy.

Finally, thanks to our leader Helen’s tireless work at the airport, she got us prioritized on the flight list and we made it to Nosy Be! What a relief it was to be out of Antananarivo and on a beautiful island.

But that wasn’t all! I booked a flight back to Réunion after two days in Nosy Be, but that flight was cancelled as well, and I was given a new flight two days later. Let’s just say I wanted to kiss the ground when I landed back on EU soil in Réunion.

Overall, I’m grateful that this wasn’t worse. The worst part was the uncertainty as things were up in the air, worrying and worrying and having no idea how long we’d be stuck.

But these protests, and the coup, were for good reasons. They began with Gen Z members protesting the power cuts and lack of water access — very basic freedoms that we all take for granted. These are what the Malagasy people deserve. And my Malagasy friends are very happy that the president is gone.

Inside the train station? Fine. Outside the train station? NOT fine.

Frankfurt’s Train Station at Night

After many years of traveling solo and living in big cities, I’m pretty comfortable when it comes to visiting new places for the first time. Especially in Europe. How bad could a place be?

Then I discovered the area around Frankfurt’s train station. I’ve traveled more extensively in Europe than almost anyone I know, and this is hands down the worst neighborhood I’ve ever encountered on the continent.

I was only in Frankfurt for 24 hours and would be going through the train station four times, so I thought it would be best to stay at a hotel close by. WELL. I am absolutely appalled by what I saw.

A long line of men smoking crack across the street from my hotel. (Interesting smell, that crack.) People on all kinds of drugs sitting on the streets, syringes out.

Coming back from the concert at night, four different men kept following me, coming up to me, and trying to intimidate me. It really freaked me out, but I found a mom with adult kids and pretended I was part of their group.

I want to emphasize that this is one specific neighborhood, and not all of Frankfurt is like this. I explored more of the city on my short visit, including the New Old Town, and enjoyed it. But I am not staying near the train station EVER again.

The scene of the crime.

Drunk Australians in Kraków

I did not sleep one wink my first night in Kraków. It was a bad combination of an adrenaline-infused late arrival at midnight, followed by anxiety because I had a 6:00 AM wakeup for our Auschwitz tour. Either of those on their own can keep me up for hours; both of them at once was a disaster.

But the worst part was what happened at 3:00 AM. All of a sudden I heard yelling outside our room.

Four extremely drunk Australians in their sixties were climbing up the stairs, laughing and shouting and just being incredibly inconsiderate. I heard them get to the top of the stairs, then they just stayed there, still talking at the top of their lungs.

I burst out of my door, in my pajamas, eye mask on my head, probably looking like a crazy person. “You need to shut the fuck up,” I hissed.

Welp. Turns out that was the wrong thing to say.

“DON’T SWEAR AT ME!” one of the women shrieked. “SHE SWORE AT ME! DON’T YOU SWEAR AT ME!”

“It is 3:00 AM and you are waking everyone up,” I snapped. “You need to get yourselves to bed.”

And slowly, SO SLOWLY, they got themselves into their rooms, still chatting at the top of their lungs.

I went downstairs to talk to the receptionist about their behavior and talked to the manager the next day. Two days later, I ran into the two men of the group, and they actually apologized to me.

One of the remaining bars on Rainey Street in Austin, high-rise condos built all around it.

The Tragedy that is Texas

I have wanted to visit Austin for years and years, and it finally happened this year. Charlie and I attended the SXSW conference and spent more than a week in Austin.

But if you’ve read my list of favorite new destinations for 2025, you’ve probably noticed something: Austin didn’t make the cut.

It’s not that I hated Austin. I just found it tremendously disappointing. It felt like I arrived a decade too late — like the city’s famous weirdness now only flickers occasionally between shiny new chain restaurants and condo buildings. You can feel the weight of Big Tech’s expansion everywhere you look.

I spent time with four friends in Austin, two of whom are longtime Austinites who were so involved in the city’s alternative scene. Listening to them talk about their Austin of yore, I could not believe they were taking about the same place it is today.

Rainey Street broke my heart. This street is home to historic little bungalow bars, but they’re being bulldozed, one by one, and replaced with high-rise condos. How can that happen? Well, they don’t have historic protection. And we all know Texas hates government overreach. So there you go. They can’t compete with wealthy property developers.

And something else we noticed was how much waste there was. At the bars, both SXSW-oriented and otherwise, there was SO much plastic and no recycling. Everyone was chucking thick plastic cups that could be reused into the trash.

It made me realize that the states I’ve lived in — Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut — are on a completely different wavelength when it comes to waste and recycling. Who knew reusable glasses were radical?

And what else didn’t I like? The fact that you need to drive everywhere. The fact that buses barely run. The fact that the first five floors of buildings are parking garages. The fact that the botanical gardens were literally next to the highway, and full of highway noise and smells? I found it depressing.

Again, I had fun at the conference, loved spending time with my friends, and ate a lot of good food — but I really wish I could have experienced Austin in its weird heyday.

The Electric Vehicle Follies

For our long weekend trip to Piemonte this fall, Charlie and I decided to rent an electric vehicle. We had rented one once before — for a brief trip to the UK that didn’t involve a ton of driving and required no charging — and thought we’d have a similar experience.

Oh HO HO HO.

This was a disaster in so many ways.

Our first issue was when we drove from Milan Malpensa to Alessandria — about a 75-minute drive — and the battery was nearly drained upon arrival. HOW?!

We were able to charge briefly there, but then charging in other places turned out to be much harder than we anticipated. It’s not easy to find chargers on Google Maps — when they appear on the map, they’re often restricted or hidden — and you can’t just show up and charge, you need to sign up with an account for the particular app.

And once we signed up for Plenitude, the main charging app in Italy, we found out that they were having a glitch and couldn’t create an account for anyone who didn’t have an Italian phone number. CLASSIC ITALIAN DYSFUNCTION!

We also learned that lots of rental companies will give you the worst electric vehicle they have. I mentioned this to my readers and lots said they had been baited and switched — a few times even given an EV when they ordered a gas vehicle.

Our vehicle was not able to charge at any fast-charging stations — only the slowest. And there was no way we could know about that ahead of time. Additionally, our car, like many EVs, was the kind that drains very quickly with highway driving and is better suited for back roads.

Overall, I am a firm believer in electric vehicles and look forward to the EV infrastructure being improved around the world in the next decade. But at this point, not every region is well-outfitted for exploring by EV. Rural Piemonte is not.

In fact, I doubt I’ll go electric anywhere in Italy anytime soon — unless I’m staying at accommodation with a dedicated charging station.

What a regal cat my little Lewis bear is.

Cat Health Problems While Traveling

Being away from the cats is the hardest part of traveling — full stop. When we go away on longer trips, we always have a live-in cat sitter staying in our apartment with them, usually our friend John.

By now, John and the cats have a routine, and things go smoothly — but this winter when we were in Mexico and the US, Lewis was dealing with an eye injury.

Lewis whacked his eye or got something in it, and our local vet gave us a prescription that didn’t really work, so we took him to the fancy vet across town (the one that treated his FIP). Lewis would need more treatment, and eye drops.

The good thing is that Lewis is MUCH more agreeable than Murray when it comes to being held. And for the days that we gave him his drops, followed by John’s first days giving him drops, he was fine, accepting his fate.

Then he started FREAKING THE FUCK OUT. Jerking, snarling, and running away anytime it was time for more drops.

At one point, Lewis needed a follow-up vet appointment while we were away, but we didn’t want to make John go through the hassle of getting him into his carrier and transporting him across town, especially since Lewis was already in spicy mode.

Amazingly, our vet AGREED TO A HOUSE CALL. I am still floored that this was a possibility (albeit for a high price, though still significantly cheaper than what a regular vet appointment in the US would cost).

Then the vet came over…and Lewis, once again, freaked out. She and John chased Lewis all over the apartment before they were finally able to extract him and get him examined.

I’m so glad that it ultimately worked out — the second medication worked well and Lewis fully recovered. But it was a LOT of worry while we were away, and I feel so guilty that we had to put our friend into this tough situation.

“We suggest you make this into a taco.”

Dinner at Pujol in Mexico City

Back in March 2020, I had an audacious plan to eat at four of the best restaurants in Latin America within a week: Quintonil and Pujol in Mexico City, and Central and Maido in Lima.

Needless to say, Covid hit and none of those dinners ended up happening. I did make it to Quintonil in 2022, and enjoyed it, but Pujol was still high on my list, so Charlie, our friend Nick, and I made a reservation during our time in CDMX.

Pujol has two Michelin stars, so our expectations were high. We expected innovative and complex dishes.

We were served their tasting menu, and it was…fine. The smoking carrots served in a clay pot that started off the meal were nice, and interesting. And everything else on the menu was unremarkable. Decent tasting, yes. But not exciting.

With each dish, we shrugged. Good? Sure. For about $200 USD each? HELL NO.

And then came the final dish: a piece of wagyu steak and mole sauce and a few accoutrements. “We suggest you make this into a taco,” our server told us.

Charlie and Nick were offended. “We’re supposed to make the taco? I don’t know how thick to cut the meat, how much sauce to include, what the ratios should be. You’re leaving this much up to me?”

While the meal wasn’t bad by any stretch, we were disappointed that of all the world-class restaurants in Mexico City, we chose Pujol for our expensive meal.

Later that week, we went to Contramar for lunch and it was DELIGHTFUL. Absolutely delicious, full of surprises, and 1/6 of the price of our Pujol meal.

At least there were pretty cherry blossoms near my physiotherapy office.

A Hip Injury that Dominated My Year

When I was in Oaxaca this February, I started feeling some occasional twinges and soreness in the back of my right hip. As we moved on to Louisiana and Texas, the pain got worse. Then one night in Austin, I leaped off the bed, landed a bit weird on my right foot, and I shrieked in pain for about 30 seconds nonstop.

I headed straight to an orthopedist upon returning to Prague, and was deeply relieved to learn it wasn’t arthritis or a bone issue — it was a muscle deterioration issue related to something I was born with, but didn’t show up until I turned 40. That’s your forties for you! Random issues show up!

So it was okay — but it led to a LOT of physical therapy and physiotherapy (two different things, it turns out!) that went on for months, as well as home exercises and getting my body back into decent shape with more intense weight training.

I’m glad to be in a much better position than I was a few months ago, but this issue is something I’ll have to keep an eye on long-term.

One helpful thing I did learn is that if I’m going to be on my feet for a long time — like a concert — I will feel MUCH better if I do some yin yoga before the event and the morning after. That made a huge difference with how I felt after Kendrick in Frankfurt vs. Kendrick in Warsaw.

It was just past this bridge that the bleeding started…

Nosebleed on the Streets of Austin

When was the last time you got a nosebleed? For me, I was probably a kid at the time. So I had no idea what to do when my nose suddenly started gushing on the streets of Austin.

And Charlie and I were in an area of office buildings. Not like we could run into a restaurant to grab some napkins. The blood was getting everywhere and I didn’t even have any tissues in my purse.

But then a man called out from a car from across the street. He gave Charlie a thick stack of napkins.

Then a mom came by with a stroller, and she gave me some wet wipes.

As awful as it was to sit stiffly while covered in blood for awhile, those two kind people really lifted my spirits and made me feel better. Especially after my time in Austin was a little bit meh overall, it’s nice to know that people here will jump in to help you when you need it.

Hiking in Dominica meant scrambling over slippery tree roots in the rain.

Dominica Roads and Drama

I thought I knew what to expect on the Caribbean island of Dominica — that it was “the nature island,” that there were no decent beaches, that it was less developed and would require a bit of patience. It would be different from every other Caribbean island.

Dominica turned out to be the most stressful destination I visited this year, and my time there was a continuous slog.

If I had to pick the single worst issue, it would be the roads. The roads were in terrible condition, absolutely covered in deep potholes. The roads were often extremely narrow and winding, especially from the airport to Portsmouth, and they had deep trenches on each side that could easily flip your car if you drove too far to one side.

Charlie drove (they drive on the left in Dominica) and I navigated — and each drive was so stressful, my heart rate was through the roof.

It rained constantly, even though it was the dry season. One day I counted sixteen rainstorms before giving up. And we had to abandon our hike to Middleham Falls just five minutes from the viewpoint because it was raining so hard and the trail turned into a scramble over rocks that we didn’t think we could do safely while wet.

Our flight out was rescheduled to 7:00 AM, which led to us booking a hotel near the airport for our final night — only there is no airport hotel, nor any hotels anywhere near the airport, just simple guesthouses.

We ended up in a $100 per night guesthouse that reeked of dried shrimp, where a kid showed us a room where someone had clearly just slept in the bed and it hadn’t been changed.

Oh, and food? There is no restaurant or grocery store anywhere near the airport. Locals would shrug and say they didn’t know when we asked where we could buy food. Eventually we made it to the airport snack bar just before they closed for the night — at 5:50 PM.

Google Maps? Not fun to use in Dominica. It frequently sent us down blocked and dangerous roads, and was full of “currently open” restaurants that hadn’t existed for years.

Many of these issues are because Dominica is a poor country that is still fairly new to tourism, and I don’t want to lose sight of that. (The Chinese are certainly aware of this, and they are investing like crazy in infrastructure projects on the island, because nobody plays the long game like the Chinese.)

It would not be fair to compare Dominica to, say, Barbados, which has far better infrastructure and a more robust tourism industry. And I’m not doing that.

Bare minimum, I would have had a better experience in Dominica if I had 1) hired a local driver 2) come in by ferry in the southwest, not airplane in the northeast 3) visited between February and April, the least rainy part of dry season 4) brought extensive waterproof gear for hiking 5) stayed in a nicer hotel 6) stayed for fewer days overall.

If you’re considering Dominica, I hope you take the points above into mind as you plan your trip. It’s not a destination for me, but I know a lot of people who have and who would enjoy it there.

What were your worst travel moments of 2025?