Late Sunday afternoon, I was dreading a marathon turn-around the following day from my office south of Boston to Global Traveler world headquarters in Yardley, Pa.

I’ve done the same trip dozens of times, and I was looking forward to spending time with my colleagues; but due to changed circumstances — the recent demise of Streamline Air’s scheduled charter service connecting Hanscom Field in Bedford, Mass., to Trenton-Mercer Airport and an anticipated holiday-related upswing in air traffic on the Monday before Thanksgiving — I was hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.

Here’s the kicker: I got the best. Every single leg of the trip — including planes, trains and automobiles — went off without a hitch. I left home at 4:30 a.m. and was walking in my front door at 10 p.m. that evening — an hour ahead of schedule!

That’s incredible by itself, but the most pleasantly surprising part of my journey involved the people I encountered during the marathon. Granted, traffic hadn’t yet reached peak holiday levels, but I expected to bump into one or two stress-related hiccups.

Didn’t happen.

Instead, about 18 hours after I arrived home, I’m still a bit in awe of the people I met along the way.

Here’s a shout-out to the JetBlue gate agents who proactively, and pleasantly, managed a long check-in line (through some system glitch, I couldn’t print my boarding pass at home) at 5 o’clock in the morning.

Thank you to the college-aged guy who, after telling me the boarding platform for the train (to Trenton) at Newark Liberty International Airport was not heated (leading to my decision to wait for my train upstairs), returned from the platform to find me and relay the information that there was, in fact, a heated waiting room.

Kudos to the TSA agent at Newark Airport who made me laugh out loud about my Twilight Zone-esque predicament trying to find a JetBlue board to confirm my departure gate: There was none. JetBlue had just moved into new space, and signage wasn’t yet in place.

The world is stressful, and holiday travel magnifies that stress. Glitches are bound to happen, but during this holiday season, try to be kind to one another.

— Lisa Matte, editor in chief