The Trials, Tribulations, And Triumphs Of Holiday Travel
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What's the flight situation? Simple.

There's no way on earth we're going to get out of here tonight. We'd have more luck playing pick-up sticks with our butt cheeks than we will getting a flight out of here before daybreak. I guess we'll find out soon enough. Yeah, but by the time the airline cancels this flight, which they will sooner or later, you'd have more of a chance to find a three-legged ballerina than you would a hotel room.

That iconic scene from the 1987 film Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, which I think belongs in any holiday movie canon, can sum up the well-held that holiday travel can be. So let's run down the list of what stresses you out.

Is it airport crowds? How about packing and then remembering you forgot something and then unpacking? Or maybe, unlike me, the holidays are your favorite time of year to travel. AAA estimates more than 119 million Americans will travel somewhere more than 50 miles between this Saturday and Wednesday, January 1st.

That makes 2024 a record-breaking year for holiday travel in the U.S. With so many people moving at once, it's easy to get overwhelmed. Later, we'll discuss how to be more mindful about travel. But first, we unpack the reality of what we're up against this holiday season. I'm Nailah Boodoo. You're listening to the 1A Podcast, where we get to the heart of the story. Back with more in just a moment.

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Joining me in studio is Hannah Sampson. She's a staff writer at The Washington Post for By the Way, the Post's travel news team. Hannah, great to have you with us. Thank you so much, Nyla. Great to be here. So, Hannah, according to AAA, we've got nearly 90 percent of holiday travel this year mostly in a vehicle on the road. Can we start there? Where are most people headed this time of year?

A lot of people are just heading wherever the family is. So all over the country, you're going to have people crisscrossing in their cars. There's a lot of people going to Denver, a lot of people going to Las Vegas, a lot of people going to parts of Florida, which is...

a good choice. Where we're both from. Where we're both from. A lot of them are going to be leaving on December 22nd, which is Sunday and also the day I'm leaving for my trip. But that is supposed to be the worst day to travel by car. And so, you know, if you're planning to drive, maybe don't do it that day. So if you are driving that day, what else do people need to keep in mind for road trips in particular this year? Yeah. So definitely don't leave it for like a

leisurely midday drive because that's not going to work. If you have to leave on that day, leave early before, I believe before noon or before 11 is the advice from AAA. Oh, I thought you were going to say like 6 in the morning.

I mean, more power to you if you can. The worst times will be the afternoon. So if you can make it out anytime in the morning, it's better. But there's not going to be a morning rush hour on the Sunday. So I say go for it as early as you can. Also, you know, prepare with a plan. Like know your stops. Know where you can get snacks.

Gas up before you go. Right now is a perfect time to do all that last-minute checking of your car. Make sure you have wiper fluid. Make sure your brakes are good. Make sure you're not heading out for a six-hour drive with a disaster waiting to happen. And...

Since it'll be cold, usually, depending on where you are, pack a cold weather emergency kit just in case the car breaks down and you're going to end up, you know, on the side of the road with cold children or something. Well, and we've seen nightmares in past years of people stranded on roads and snowstorms for hours. Do you feel like everyone should be prepared for that? I feel like you and I are a good natural disaster preparers being in South Florida, but winter weather preparation is a whole other thing, right? Yeah.

Yes. And honestly, I still don't know that I have appropriate shoes for winter after many years in the North, but I don't anticipate the kind of weather that's going to strand people in a blizzard this year. As far as I've been able to tell, I don't think we're going to have that worst case scenario. But still, yes, if a tractor trailer overturns and you're stuck on the highway for eight hours, you're going to want to have a lot of granola bars and some blankets and you're

you know, roadside flares in case anything bad happens. So yes, I mean, be like a Boy Scout, be super prepared.

Depending on how far you go, you were saying have a plan in place. Sometimes that might mean requiring lodging. If you're looking now, are you basically out of luck if you haven't booked a hotel? I mean, it's not going to be great, but there are sites that are like hotel tonight, like last minute inventory websites. So you can check around and you probably can still find something. I've stayed, I've kind of booked,

in the game for Christmas hotels, and you'll probably pay a little extra right now, but I think, you know, if you search around and you're not too choosy, you can probably still find something. And what about Airbnb? Are we still seeing kind of a backlash against Airbnb fees? I know there's always the jokes online about how many rules some Airbnb owners have. As much as they try to address it, and they have tried to address it, I think that backlash is going to stick around because some owners still

slash hosts still put out kind of what seem like ridiculous lists, like take the trash out, start the dishwasher, start the laundry, and then pay $150 for housekeeping. Like they know that that really sticks in people's craws, but people still do it because they say they need to pay their housekeepers. Yeah, it's still a thing. And the one thing that is good is that

It's supposed to be more clear when you're booking what the fees are and what the charges, like what the chores or lists of tasks are. So if you're kind of savvy when you're searching for an Airbnb, you should be able to weed out the places that seem extremely unreasonable and pick from, you know, the easier ones.

Okay, so we've talked about cars. Let's talk about trains. Many people base their mode of travel on whether or not kids are part of the equation. You yourself have two kids. One of my favorite ways to travel back to Florida from Washington, D.C., is by the Amtrak auto train, which goes overnight. I know you've traveled by train with your kids. How much have you factored in, like, kids into, like, a train plan, making it that easier maybe than a flight? I...

I have looked at the auto train and I am so excited to do it when they're a little bit older and when we don't have old dogs to think about as well. But what we have done is take the train from D.C. to New York and it was so fun. It was cheap. You can get really cheap tickets. We got reasonably priced tickets because kids are half price and babies are free if they sit on your lap.

There was help, so we were able to get on the train before anybody else, which was incredible. Just to be there and see the open train before anybody else got on was super fun. And it was like starting the vacation as soon as we got on the train instead of fighting traffic into New York for four hours or more, pulling over for bathroom stops, hearing the kids scream because they were tired of the car seat. Just like...

A-plus experience. I know there can be delays on Amtrak, but it's all part of the experience. And I highly recommend if you're in a place where you can easily take the train, take it with your kids. Right. And the Northeast Corridor, the auto train is specifically for snowboards, right? It leaves from suburban Washington, D.C. every day and then goes overnight and gets you, drops you in the middle of

Orlando. One thing I've noticed is that when I've taken the auto train is how many families who have members with disabilities are traveling together. What are some of the considerations when you're traveling with someone with special needs? And it seems like train travel makes a lot of accommodations that make that easier. Yeah. I mean, they do have assistance if you need special assistance from the REDCap service is what they're called on Amtrak.

It's easier to accommodate a power wheelchair or other kind of wheelchair on a train. For planes, it can be just an incredible nightmare to fly, especially if you use a chair, especially if you use a customized, specialized chair. So I think that the train is probably a really good option for folks who...

Who can spend that amount of time traveling? You know, it does take longer than a flight. So as long as it's okay and you're comfortable on the train for that amount of time, I think it's a great option. And I know that there are a lot of efforts underway to improve the flying experience for travelers with disabilities. But...

A lot of the rules and a lot of the efforts are kind of taking a long time and will continue to take a while. What about people who are traveling with pets? What are your top tips for doing so over the holidays? You can no longer say that your pet is an emotional support whatever, like parrot. That's changed. The emotional support animal kind of exception, I guess, went away a couple of years ago.

They really have to be a service pet and perform a task for the person. So this is a guide dog or a seizure detection dog or something like that. You can't just have a doctor write a note and say you need this pet to sit with you. You need to know that if you expect to fly with a pet. And a lot of airlines aren't transporting pets in cargo, so it's another thing to check.

They have to be a certain size to fly in the cabin with you, and they have to be in a carrier under your seat or under the seat in front of you. So it's not that easy to fly with your pet, but if they're a certain size and if there's room in the cabin, you usually can. Let's pause here. After the break, how not to lose your mind before you head out the door this season. We'll be right back.

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Let's jump back into our conversation about holiday travel with this message from one of you. I used to live somewhere where I would have to drive about eight hours to family for the holidays, and that was always very stressful for me. So now I'm in a place where it is better and faster to use a plane. I find this way much more enjoyable because that means I don't have to shoulder the responsibility of traffic and or getting in a

potential fender bender or just worrying about the stress of driving. For me, I love to get to the airport after having bought my ticket and just not think about anything other than whatever I'm going to watch or listen to on the plane.

We know that when we're talking about air travel, AAA is predicting that it's expected to break last year's record. 7.85 million passengers flying during the 12-day holiday timeframe. We know in the past year there's been lots of things going on from troubles at Boeing, stories of disruptive passengers, and so many delays.

In 2024, we saw flight delays unusually high with on-time arrival percentages dropping from February to June for nine out of the 10 major U.S. airlines. Hanna, so the rules regarding refunds have changed this year in terms of compensation, right, from that the U.S. DOT has put into place. What do people need to know about what kind of air refund they can get in case of a delay?

Yeah. So you have always been entitled to get your money back if your flight is canceled and you don't travel. Your trip is ruined. Your flight is canceled. They owe you your money, but they haven't always made it easy just to get your money back. So what the new rule says is that if your flight is canceled or significantly delayed and you say, I'm not going to take this alternate flight, like the whole thing is ruined. I'm going to just stay home. It's on them to automatically issue you a refund immediately.

However you paid for it. So you don't have to jump through... But it's not a travel credit. Exactly. It's not a credit. It's not a voucher. It's your money back. And they would love to give you a travel credit because that just puts the money aside and guarantees you'll fly with them later. But the DOT said, no, that's not the way to go. And that's because they had...

so many complaints during COVID that people obviously were not flying for so long and they were having such a hard time getting their money back. So this rule went into effect actually late this year. So that it should be the case that

that people can expect to get their money back if their flight is significantly delayed, which is three hours or more, or canceled. And is it has to be delayed because of the airline's fault, not because of weather? Or can it be because of, like, weather? Any reason. If it's significantly delayed and you can't, and you end up not traveling as a result. Then you can get your money back. Okay. We know that oftentimes delays lead to not great behavior on the part of fellow passengers. Yeah.

Are we past the pandemic years of very angry folks on planes? We are past the worst pandemic years of very angry passengers on planes. But by no means are we back to like a pre-pandemic baseline. I watched these, what they call unruly passenger reports. And there was just this incredible mountain of wild activity in 2021. And it's been dropping since then. But

It's still higher than it was in 2019 and 2018 and before that. So there are definitely behavior issues that people are experiencing on planes. And it's probably not going to happen to you on your Christmas flights, but it could. So it's definitely something to, A, try not to do. Like, don't get super drunk and get on a plane and also be on the lookout for if somebody around you is...

really acting up, alert the flight attendant, or do whatever you can to stay out of their way. Okay. As we're talking about all of these things, can I ask, how do you stay calm when you're traveling? And with your two small children and your elderly dogs? I definitely try to take deep breaths and model the behavior that we're teaching to our kids, which is take a deep breath and make good choices. And then I privately kind of lose it in the background. But no, I...

I just try to think that the journey is the experience. We're going to remember this later. We're going to roll with the punches, and it's all going to be worth it when we get there. I try to be very zen and not lose it and turn to snacks when all else fails. Snacks and screen time. That's Hannah Sampson. She's a staff writer for The Washington Post, by the way. That's the Post travel news team. Thank you for stopping by, Hannah. Thank you so much. Happy holidays.

Let's bring another voice into the conversation. Phil Cousineau is the author of numerous books, The Art of Pilgrimage, The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred. That iconic book just had its 25th anniversary. He's been guiding travelers on how to travel mindfully for years. Phil, welcome to 1A. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for the invitation. Phil, in your new book, Who Stole the Arms of Venus de Milo, you talk about the story that inspired it, an encounter you had at the Louvre Art Museum in Paris. First, can you just tell us why you went there to see this? Yes. When I was growing up, my father had a subscription to Life magazine. And then I think it was 1963, a beautiful issue came with the Venus de Milo in a sepia print.

on the cover and he showed it to me and then took me downstairs and framed the magazine cover and nailed it to the wall.

So I had a reminder of beauty, of Greek myth, of sculpture, of art, but also that there was a world beyond Detroit, Michigan, if you can imagine. And I think that that magazine cover and the art that was there was one of the births of what I like to think of as transport.

Transport, of course, is a way that we describe traveling ourselves, transporting goods and mail and so on. But it's also the key, I think, to a deep sense of travel, art, and sometimes even sports. That's where our word sport comes from. It's about being carried away. So ordinary travel often just reinforces stereotypes.

It reminds you of something that you saw in a movie, maybe in a book. But the kind of travel that I teach when I'm leading travels for Sacred Earth Journeys out of Vancouver, Canada, is to practice a number of things that allows you to go beyond the obvious. And two, and here's the key, to make memories.

Much of travel since the age of tourism began is about forming memories. So that's what I'm interested in. How can we remember to remember? And so how do you take those principles, how you can remember to remember and apply them to this travel season? What's your first advice on that? Focus. It's one of my favorite words. You know, I write books on word origins as well. And I was astonished to find out that focus comes from the old Latin for fireplace.

What is a fireplace? It's a place that gives us heat, light, warmth, and engenders conversation. So even if you are going back home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, I like to think in the way of Thoreau, our wonderful Henry David Thoreau. Simplify, simplify, simplify. So focus on one aspect of your family, one aspect of what it was like to grow up, where you are returning to.

Maybe focus on grandparent, focus on seeing an old friend, focus on the thing that you love the most. You coming from Florida, me coming from Detroit, Michigan, and find a way to record it. Again, I love words so much and record is one of those astonishing words. It means to move back through the heart.

It doesn't necessarily mean just lift your smartphone and click, click, click, click, take a number of things. What would it mean for you to remember a conversation you have over Christmas with your grandmother?

This is something that can last you for an entire lifetime. So you might want to videotape it. You might want to record it, maybe on your smartphone. Take photos with the family dog I just heard about in the previous interview with the kids. This is a way to make memory.

Take a breath and then take your photo and then record because these family trips over the holidays are some of the hallmarks of our life. So let's treat them accordingly. We're going to head to a quick break. When we return, America's interest in trains is growing. We talked to one journalist about why she says it's the best way to travel. Stay with us.

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Let's get back to the conversation. We got this message from Jodi in New Mexico who wrote, travel confirms for me the kindness of strangers. I travel alone so the people I meet are the adventure. When I drive and stop at gas stations or state parks or restaurants or anywhere, each of those people, even though they're sacrificing their day for the job, are friendly, helpful, interesting, just a greeting or a smile or at best a stupid joke make the journey into the goal.

Phil, Jodi was basically talking about the concept of hospitality. Earlier this year, you and I have talked about this. I had a chance to walk part of the Camino de Santiago that's a pilgrimage route in Spain, and I felt like it completely changed my idea of what hospitality could be like, people stopping to help total strangers who got hurt while they were walking. And I feel like in many ways, maybe we've lost some of that meaning, and I wanted to ask you what hospitality means to you. It sounds like you're talking about that a little bit, especially when it comes to holiday travel.

Yeah, I've just completed a couple of books on ancient Greece. It's one of my fascinations. I'm leading another tour to Greece next year.

One element that has stuck with us since this ancient code is our word xenophobia, which means the fear of, the suspicious of strangers. It's a curiosity of history to me that we forgot the other side of that word, which was one of the most important codes in ancient times, xenophilia. It's the love or the respect for the stranger. So much so for most of human history, if someone knocked on your door,

Someone stopped you on the street and said, I'm lost. Can you give me directions? I'm hungry. Do you know where I can have a meal or stay someplace safe tonight? You were bound by custom and tradition and really a love for the rest of humanity to welcome this person in. Xenophilia is the beginning of and the perpetuating of hospitality. Here's one way that I practice this every day.

I live at the top of Telegraph Hill here in San Francisco in California. When I leave one of the most beautiful places in the world, it's a reminder to me, yes, yes, yes, there are problems today, but I live in a beautiful place. That helps. And then as I walk downhill to one of my favorite cafes here in North Beach, I look for a lost tourist.

And they're very easy to find. They're holding a guidebook or their phone and their head is craned around. They're looking for Fisherman's Wharf or they're looking for City Lights Bookstore. And I will kindly walk up. It helps if I have my young son or a dog. That makes me less imposing. But the point is that I approach someone.

And I say, I'm a local. I've lived here for a while. Can I help you? I won't say, are you lost? Because that often puts people on the defensive. So I'll simply say, can I help? It's my way of giving thanks back to all the people who have helped me when I have been lost in the far thrown corners of the world. And it's also a way of being an ambassador to your own neighborhood, right?

For us as Americans to go and say to someone from Italy or Africa or Asia to say, I'm here. I love this place. Can I help you? Can I recommend a good restaurant or a cafe? That's a way to ritualize your day and also the day of someone who is visiting your place maybe for the first time. That's ritual behavior.

Let's bring in someone else to this conversation who's also talking about how to travel differently. That's journalist Celeste Headley. In 2019, she spent two weeks riding Amtrak trains all across America on a project she called Riding the Rails. Celeste, welcome back to 1A. Thanks. Good to be here. Celeste, how did your frequent air travel in this sort of A to B mindset of just getting someplace that we've been talking about pushing back against, how did it get reset by your Riding the Rails experience? Yeah.

A few ways. The first is that when you're on a train, you actually feel as though you're journeying. I mean, you're still going faster than you will in a car, but you see the miles passing by. When you step off the plane in an airport, you could be in any city. But when you ride on a train, you...

You feel as though you've gone somewhere different. Also, inevitably, for me at least, when I was traveling all the way around the United States, there are going to be areas like the middle of Glacier National Park where you won't have a cell signal. And at first, that makes you feel panic. But eventually you realize how relaxing it is to let go of that for a few hours at a time. So there was a lot of different sort of aha moments for me.

Right. What other aha moments did you have? How did it change how you view other modes of transportation? You know, a train forces you to slow down just a little bit. And when you do that, you realize you don't need to go as fast as you thought. Like, I always assume that the faster the better, right? How fast can I get there? But in fact, a lot of times we don't have to go places fast enough.

And there's a beauty in going slowly, in taking your time and being present in that moment. You know, a lot of people talk about mindfulness, and train travel is a very mindful type of travel. You're not driving, so you get to just sit and relax.

Do what you like. Read a book. Sit in the little view car where that's all windows where you can just watch America going by. You start to realize how big this country is, how different it is in terms of topography. And also you see the architecture change when you go from state to state. Like it's just a way to truly be present and mindful.

I think that's such a challenge to do, Celeste, to slow down in the holiday season. Can I ask how you get yourself into that mindset? What advice you have for other people? When we do have a short period of time, some people have limited vacation time and they do want to just rush to see their family. Yeah, and I get it. If you're traveling a long distance and you don't have days to get there, sometimes I will take a plane first.

for one portion of the journey and then just hop on the local train to get to my destination or some combination of the two. I just hate driving. I'm with you on that. Yeah, I hate driving for a variety of reasons. And if I can find a way to add the train into it, that's what I will do. And totally understandable. You know, the other thing is, is that

It's okay to not have your ideal mode of transportation every time, right? Like if you're listening to me and you're like, yeah, I should ride the train more. If that's not going to work for your holiday plans, that's okay. If it doesn't work for you to get to your destination, but it could work for you to get home, there's lots of different ways to start adding the train in that aren't all or nothing. Celeste, before we let you go, what are your travel plans for the holiday?

I actually have been traveling a lot over the past three months, so I'm not going anywhere. I am staying home and trying to not move at all. But come next year, I'm actually taking the train up to Providence, Rhode Island, because I've never stayed there before. That was journalist Celeste Headley discussing the Writing the Rails America project. Thanks for joining us, Celeste. Good to be here.

So I just wanted to give you a chance to reflect on what Celeste said there. I'd love to talk about the reverie of train travel. Reverie is the waking dream. And I think that all great travel writing, great travel experiences only happen if you drop into reverie. And the train is the best mode for that. That's looking at stillness.

a pond, a river, a cloud through the window of a train. These are all ways to drop into reverie. And it gets you out of everyday consciousness, which takes us into boredom, which is the killer of travel. Phil, can I ask you, what about people who are listening to this who maybe wish they were traveling this holiday season but are not? What would you say to them? Read a great travel book, a classic.

Read, watch a movie set in a place that you have been longing to go. These are ways in which you can begin to formulate your future travel or maybe ruminate on a past one if you're in a period of life where you're looking over your shoulder.

This notion of reverie in travel is so important to me. There's an old tradition that you haven't completely experienced something until you've dropped into reverie. If you are just moving through an art gallery, and the Louvre recently did a study that says that the average tourist or a viewer only looks at a painting for three or four seconds, only spends two minutes in a room. The reverie project says, take a breath,

Slow down. Try to take this image in of the painting or maybe the landscape out of a train window. It's the dropping into reverie that allows an image or music or smell, any of the five senses, to permeate into you. And this is what ends up being memorable. We are traveling, especially over the holidays, to make memories. Let's be true to that.

As we sort of step back for a moment, as we think about and all the stress of hosting or traveling, the making memories, I think, is easy to lose sight of. Is that kind of the mantra that you think people can have or use to help us get through this season on the move? Making memories, but also looking through the surface of things. Remember, organized travel is only, it's not even 200 years old. It only began in the 1840s in England. And for these roughly 200 years,

The way that we have advertised and sold travel is to exploit the surface of the thing. Only the first impression, which doesn't last very long. The Eiffel Tower is the only thing you're going to see in Paris or the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. It's not really going to penetrate you. It's not going to move or transport you.

So my goal, if I'm a filmmaker, if I'm making a film somewhere, if I'm doing a travel story, or if I'm leading a group of people around, is to move through the superficiality of every place. And that begins with asking questions. So I ask anybody taking my trip, or even if I'm

Considering going back to, let's say, see family over the holidays, take a question. If you ask a question like I just did in Macedonia in the north of Greece, how is it that this tiny corner of this small country, Macedonia in Greece, how did it end up creating such an empire? That gets me into the whole notion of studying Philip II and Alexander the Great. Every place has a secret room. Every place has

is hoarding a secret. And it's a challenge for a good traveler to open that door, to see what's behind. What's the secret there? I think there's a wonderful notion recently by the singer Tom Waits, one of my favorite musicians, who once says, we're living through a deficit of wonder. We don't know something, we immediately pull out our cell phone, and there is the answer. Boom, boom, boom, lickety split. But I love his belief that says, let's stick together.

with the wonder and the awe for a moment. Just take in the beauty. Allow that to move you rather than going for just the journalistic fact over and over again.

For me, and these family trips during the holidays, it's a mystery of family. Where did my father go to school? Where did my parents meet? Where did my love of baseball begin in Detroit? Take a question with you that that place where you are venturing might be able to answer. That will help you focus.

Thanks so much to Phil Cousineau, author of The Art of Pilgrimage, The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred. Today's producer was Barb Anguiano with help from Arfi Getty and Alexandra Boti. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Naila Boodoo. Happy travels. Let's talk more soon. This is 1A.

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