We were going to travel in Europe for 2 months: itinerary finalized, some plane and train tickets bought, a few hotels booked, and rendezvous with friends planned. As the days counted down towards our March 22 departure we ate down the fridge and pantry, pre-packed our bags in order to replace, repair, and refill as needed, and dutifully completed items on the now very familiar Long Trip Todo List. However...
Beginning March 1st, with the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the likelihood of us actually traveling diminished day by day, while the number of friends and family asking "Is your trip still on?" grew. By March 10 our response to said question was that we were prepared for any outcome. And we truly were. So when our flight from Raleigh to London was cancelled on March 12 we were not disappointed or sad, nor relieved. The 50/50 had simply become inevitable.
The trip is off. Our travel gear has been neatly stowed away; the fridge and pantry finally restocked this morning. Therefore we'll be home and can spend more time with friends, neighbors and family, jam with my music buddies, travel in the US to... Oh wait. Self-Isolation.
I write this post just after applying online for a refund for our cancelled flights. We bought the tix from Finnair which included codeshares from American Airlines and British Airways. The Finnair website says it may take months to process the refund. I'll report back.
Yesterday, I went to the SNCF (French Railways) website and in 10 minutes processed full refunds for one pair of normally nonrefundable tickets, and another pair of normally mostly refundable tickets. SNCF said the refunds will appear on my credit card in 3 days or less, and in fact just showed up as "pending" on my account. Wow!
I've come to the final paragraph of this post where I should "connect back to the introduction and provide a sense of closure". Hmmmm. I'll try. Although the trip is off we're not bummed. We'll continue to improve our French language comprehension by watching French movies and practicing yoga to French yoga videos. Also, it's a perfect time to plan and complete some around-the-house projects. And we're headed to Asia and Australia next fall and winter. Time to start planning?
Sun-Ling and John have been traveling the earth since 2008 while blogging, eating vegetarian and vegan, and riding public transportation. We love uphill day hikes, 20th-century architecture, Roman ruins, all bodies of water, local markets, shopping for groceries, aqueducts, miradors, trip planning, blablacar, and more.
Monday, March 16, 2020
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Most Recent Post
Uzbekistan: Khiva
Khiva is really the first stop on our upstream tour of the Silk Road. An important post on the Silk Road, Khiva was razed and rebuilt many t...
Most Popular Posts of Last 30 Days
-
Last week we hauled our canoe and tent over to Merchants Millpond State Park and enjoyed some very fine camping and paddling. One day we p...
-
Dubai, the most populated city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is an enigma for us. Dubai is now among the top 5 most visited cities in t...
-
Tashkent, Uzbekistan is our entry into Central Asia. The Silk Road had been a destination for us for decades. Besides the usual concerns for...
-
The day before Easter we took the regional FSE train from Martina Franca to Bari, the 2nd largest city in southern Italy (after Naples) with...
-
Everything happened smoothly with our Galapagos trip. We had really good weather, two full days of sun and a couple of partly cloudy day in...
-
From TashKent, we took a flight west to Nukus, located in Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan. Nukus itself is a city establi...
-
Abus Dhabi seems more familiar than Dubai. There is a recognizable downtown. There are city parks connecting downtown to the sea. There are ...