Every trip we take we learn something new about travel. On our recent trip to the Mediterranean we found that having airport connections is something you want to avoid as much as possible. Unfortunately we had to learn this the hard way after missing our connecting flight to Venice from New York. Sprinting what seemed like at least a mile through the airport, we made it to the gate only to see closed doors and our plane preparing to taxi away. Unfortunately, once they close the gate doors they refuse to open them again! Trust me, I begged. Fortunately, after doing some haggling with ticket agents we were able to jump on a plane leaving for Paris. Why would we want to go to Paris? Well, since we had a cruise ship to catch in the morning we couldn’t wait for the next flight to Venice which didn’t arrive until after the ship left. So we took the faster way… through Paris… Of course upon arriving in Venice with only hours to spare before the shipped set sail, our bags were nowhere to be found! And they would not arrive for another 3 days! The moral of the story here is to avoid connections at all costs and if you must book a connection, make sure you give yourself at least 3 hours in between! You may think you don’t want to sit in an airport waiting for a connections for hours, but after you miss your flight and lose your luggage and nearly ruin your vacation, you won’t have a problem spending a few more hours in the airport to play it safe!