Madeline
This tale starts in 2019, years before the trip actually occurred and prior to realizing that there would be the long wait before, when a friend of mine, knowing I have done quite a bit of traveling on my own, asked me to take her on a trip. From my enjoyment of reading, I tend to read about amazing places and seeing them in person is a great interest of mine.
We had narrowed it down to Spain and Italy, I booked the flight and we were to set off in July of 2020. I do not need to explain to most what happened a few months before the trip was suppose to happen. Before the trip, the world had shut down and borders of most countries closed temporarily.
Repeatedly Booking the Trip
Luckily, previous to the trip and in the beginning of the long wait, both airlines (yes, both) and the hotels gave me vouchers. When I first booked the trip and everything was hunky dory, I usually book the bookends of the trip (AKA the flights there and back) and tack together the middle based on these dates, but now that I had set times where I could spend in each location, I now had some math to do.
If the airline that took us there and back only flew there on a Monday and Thursday and flew back on a Wednesday and Saturday, how many of my hotel voucher dollars converted each night and where do I spend them? And in which order?
This took a lot of plotting and planning and once I was happy, I booked my book end flights just to get them cancelled again. After lots of frustration, hours on the phone with both the airlines and hotels, I finally had the trip booked and the trip was fast approaching where it could not be cancelled no more. The before the trip was about to be no more.
The Trip Finally Happening
With excitement in our blood we took our time off of work, came up with our packing plans in anticipation of the long wait being over. As it was my friend’s first time to Europe and she is normally not a light packer, the packing conversation was a hot topic between the two of us. We get to the airport only to find, in my booking and rebooking and figuring out dates, I was off by three whole days!
“!@#$ it!” We decide we are going anyways and I handed the agent at the desk my credit card. With a new flight booked for the correct day and the unknowing if we will get our money back for the flight we would not be taking in a few days, we finally boarded the plane, the long wait was over, and off to Spain we went.
