Last week I wrote a post about my ill-timed visit to the tallest building on the London skyline.  How my excitement of visiting the Shard during its inaugural month was dampened when I arrived on the viewing deck to see nothing but mist and clouds. Even though I didn’t get the view the price of admission promised, my friend and I still made the best of it and laughed to ourselves the whole elevator ride back down through 69 floors.

While the lack of a view certainly did not ruin my day, I did start to think of all the other times I’ve found myself in similar situations.  As if I’m mildly cursed when it comes to overseas experiences.  My visit to the Shard was sadly reminiscent of my first trip to Brasil. I took my mother on a birthday trip to Rio de Janeiro, a city that she’d dreamed of visiting for years, and we planned on visiting all of the iconic sites.   The one day we decided to visit the grand Christ the Redeemer statue, the visibility was so poor that we could barely see Christ right in front of us, let alone what I’m sure should have been a gorgeous view of the city and water below us.  Luckily, I’ve had the opportunity to go back to stand at the foot of the Christ statue when the weather was much better and I could see for miles,  but I still wish my mother could have experienced the view for herself during that trip back in 1999.

But my bad luck/bad timing doesn’t end with bouts of poor visibility.  I’ve also managed to have major celebrations cancelled just by showing up in a city.  My friends and I decided to travel to Edinburgh, Scotland a few years ago to party with the locals for Hogmanay, the Scottish New Year’s celebration. We bundled up in our warmest clothes and wandered out into what should have been festive streets only to find out that inclement weather meant the celebrations were canceled. No midnight fireworks extravaganza to ring in the new year.  But we were in SCOTLAND…in the dead of WINTER. Of COURSE the weather was bad.  Wouldn’t you have thought that they would have been prepared for this?? Well, I guess threats of lightening were a little outside of their normal freezing, windy cold weather.

Well, at least someone was still celebrating in Edinburgh

I also managed to visit Dublin the one year they canceled St. Patrick’s Day. Yes! They actually canceled their public celebrations.  This time it wasn’t weather, but rather disease that brought the city’s celebrations to a halt. That was the year that there was a large outbreak of Hoof and Mouth disease and to prevent a lot of people coming in from the farming areas to celebrate (and inadvertently spreading the disease by tracking infected soil into the city), they cancelled the annual parade and all other official events. Of course they couldn’t keep a city full of locals and visitors from swilling back pints of beer in a bar all day, so there was still a festive atmosphere in Dublin, but it still wasn’t quite what it was supposed to be that day.

On my second trip to Rio, I picked the wrong day to try parasailing.  The whole parasailing school was shut down the day I called to make an appointment because there had been a fatal accident the day before. Well, technically I suppose I could have picked an even worse day, and if I had I wouldn’t be here to type this post.

I have to believe it all started with my first trip to Disney World as a little girl. Like most kids, I loved amusement parks and couldn’t wait to try all of the rides. My father had been filling my head with stories about Space Mountain, a roller coaster beyond any other I had ever ridden on because on this ride you were in pitch darkness the whole time. I was so excited/terrified for my chance to experience Space Mountain for myself…all the way up to the point where I stood outside the ride reading the sign saying it was closed for maintenance.  I should have known at that point that I was doomed.

Yeah…I know the feeling, Clark.

But the truth is, whether I’m dealing with a crappy view or a canceled National Holiday, I stil manage to have a great time laughing and joking about my traveler’s curse.  And since one of the main reasons I love to travel is to have unique experiences,  I guess I win because I can’t get more unique than being in Dublin for the one year they cancel St. Patrick’s Day.  The truth is those disappointing days are balanced out with plenty of good days too. Having an amazing, cloudless day when I went skydiving over Cape Town, taking part in three Oktoberfests in Munich and three Mardi Gras in New Orleans, striking up a conversation with a stranger that lead to a free stay at his luxury Bed and Breakfast in Kenya.  All in all not so bad.  When you travel often, you begin to realize that the minor inconveniences are not truly so bad.  They are actually just funny stories starting to form.