It wouldn’t be true world traveling without missing one connection at least! We missed our train to Rome from Assisi by one minute today and had to wait another two hours. However, we cheerfully (!) made the best of our time by reading the material we had packed for the journey. I was reminded of another missed connection years ago.
My sister and I took a boat tour on the Bosporus Strait years ago while visiting Istanbul and Athens. My sister had a deaf ear, and why I let her tell me what the boat wrangler said is beyond me, but I did!
“Be back in 50 minutes,” she claimed he said as we were dropped off on the Asian side of the Strait. We wandered the quaint town, happy to have stepped on Asian soil, and returned to find we had truly “missed the boat.” It was 15 minutes, not 50! Perhaps that is exactly the tiny dock where the term originated? Our problem? No dock attendant or captain or anyone around to help us, except two young college students who spoke a minuscule amount of our language. They were able to find the ticket agent who told us to wait for the next public transport back to the city, pointing to the exact spot where we should plop. All of this communication was done via hand gestures, pointing, and cash.
We did the only plausible thing we could do after that. We went across the street and bought a beer to drink on the dock while we waited for our water carriage.
If everything had gone as planned, I probably wouldn’t even remember that day so fondly.