How important is a passport, really?

The question of the day... my passport...

Does my passport need to be in pristine condition to travel?

You may be wondering, oh my, what happened to Nicole´s passport?

Well it just so happens that after being awake for 30 hours wearing the same clothes, eating weird food, I may not have been thinking properly.

Of course at home, I check every single pocket before putting my clothes in the washer. But you know, I was tired, I wasn´t doing the laundry... or was I? Anyways, the jist of the story is, that this morning after getting dressed, there was something funny in my pocket. And just as I felt the glob it dawned on me that I hadn´t seen my passport since last I wore these pants... sigh. There crumpled up in a ball in my pocket was my still wet passport. You´ll be happy to know that the cover shrinks, the blue writing on the inside front and back covers smudges, the picture page looks okay (I think), the edges wear, and the stamp pages which are partially cotton, just get wrinkled.

So I gently unrolled my passport, took out the iron and carefully flattened each page. The iron also helped dry the pages with the heat.

My passport is now sitting on my harry potter book in my room in front of the window drying some more. I will iron it again a little later. I was a little concerned about the picture page but it is laminated. I think my passport is okay, it looks like a very well read book, though it has many empty pages. Perhaps I was flipping tthrough it dreaming of the stamps I wanted. =) yes, that´s what I´ll tell them if they ask.