Vacation plans - cancel?

[Slothead56]

We were heading to Portugal with three other couples in late August. This had been planned and totally booked since last year. Love traveling with these folks and we’ve been to a lot of places with them. My wife was then going from Portugal to Greece for a 60th birthday banger with her high school girl friends.

Little by little Portugal slipped away as one couple cancelled in March and others followed suit over the next month or so.

Just last week, Greece fell through for my wife as well as the EU has pretty much shut down to tourists (at least as I understand it).

We’re still hanging onto hopes on a golf getaway to Hilton Head with three different couples in November. The guy planning it had been all in in January but has ceased his seemingly daily e-mails and not booked a house or tee times yet. Hopeful as it is always a hoot.

All money refunded.

What is killing me is that I’m not allowed by my Company to travel. Granted customers are holed up-as is everyone-but I’m a “traveling salesman” and I’m going stir crazy at home. Business in my sector is good but I need some people contact to get new business moving. Zoom only takes you so far...

[hairpuller]

We are down in HB enjoying the beach until Newsom closes them again Friday evening.

Wife and I are flying to Idaho later this month to look at real estate.

And finally, going camping on the Oregon coast for a week with my youngest son.

So, pretty status quo here!

Scott

[Tico]

Originally Posted by MikeBmusic

... What say you>

I'm going to do what the CDC and WHO recommends - social distancing and staying home except for essential errands.
I'll go back to "normal" after a vaccine is widely distributed and new cases have plummeted.

If this lasts the rest of my life, so be it.
I'm old and have some of the medical conditions that increase my odds of dying from C19, so I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Also besides looking out for myself ...
Since we are contagious days before developing C19 symptoms (if we ever do get symptoms) socially isolating, masks, and hand washing protects others from me giving them the virus if I get it.

[rllink]

Three weeks in France and England. It got rebooked for next year. No big deal, they will still be there next year. Anyway, we would have been there and back by now. Instead the highlight of the last three weeks has been my grand kids and me sitting in lawn chairs watching the tree service cut down my big maple in the front yard. I also had a weekend in Minneapolis planned that we won't be doing later this month, and a road trip to LA in August that is still holding on for now, but not likely to happen.

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by Slothead56

We were heading to Portugal with three other couples in late August. This had been planned and totally booked since last year. Love traveling with these folks and we’ve been to a lot of places with them. My wife was then going from Portugal to Greece for a 60th birthday banger with her high school girl friends.

Little by little Portugal slipped away as one couple cancelled in March and others followed suit over the next month or so.

Just last week, Greece fell through for my wife as well as the EU has pretty much shut down to tourists (at least as I understand it).

We’re still hanging onto hopes on a golf getaway to Hilton Head with three different couples in November. The guy planning it had been all in in January but has ceased his seemingly daily e-mails and not booked a house or tee times yet. Hopeful as it is always a hoot.

All money refunded.

What is killing me is that I’m not allowed by my Company to travel. Granted customers are holed up-as is everyone-but I’m a “traveling salesman” and I’m going stir crazy at home. Business in my sector is good but I need some people contact to get new business moving. Zoom only takes you so far...

Have you checked thar Portugal and Greece will accept you without two weeks quarantine when you arrive?

Will you not need to quarantine when you return home?
As an American, do you have insurance should you develop Covid in the EU?

[Slothead56]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

Have you checked thar Portugal and Greece will accept you without two weeks quarantine when you arrive?

Will you not need to quarantine when you return home?
As an American, do you have insurance should you develop Covid in the EU?

All good questions Andy. The first couple that cancelled just got squirrelly about going even though the trip was 5 months out.

At the end of the day, while we may have been able to make the trip, we didn’t want to gamble about going to a new destination and having “the sites” shut down. That would have been a lot of money to sit by the hotel pool and drink good Portuguese red wine.

[Birdbrain]

The good thing about your Southwest plans is that you know the scenery won't be canceled. Even if the National Parks closed down, you'd see plenty of gorgeous scenery just driving between them. Plus thousands of acres of deserts and canyons on BLM land. If you've never seen and sampled this eye candy, you should proceed.

I would feel much safer car camping, though. No stuffy rooms or stale sheets when there's no rooms at all! You could outfit yourself for relative comfort for a couple hundred bucks (or, just buy everything at REI Vegas and when you're done, "Return Every Item." The fall climate is usually stable there, but expect cold nights- long, too, at that time of year. The payoff is the desert silence, and the rash of stars that will fill the dark skies above.

[Shepsdad]

We had a November trip to Key West planned, but cancelled it. I’m equally/more concerned about civil unrest breaking out, especially in November. Ain’t goin’ anywhere until some kind of normalcy returns.

[buddyhu]

If you could get there without getting on a plane, I would probably encourage you to go, to do some camping, and to work around any closures or restrictions. As others have mentioned, lots of very pretty country in the Southwest, and while Zion and Grand Canyon and Sedona are very fine, there are other places nearby that are just as fine...just a bit less awesome, or on a smaller scale, or just less well known..


HOWEVER, I would not want to be committed to being on a plane for several hours during the time you have planned to go.

We have canceled a lot of trips, some of them pretty special for us. We may do a road trip or two in the Fall...but we are in no hurry to be leaving the predictability of home when so many folks seem to be....looney.

[M Hayden]

We’re holed up for the duration, until there’s a treatment or vaccine.

My wife’s vulnerable and we’re avoiding risk as much as reasonably possible.

A friend who went camping on the Central CA coast is now sick as can be, and so is his wife. They were car camping; the only exposure they had was gas stations, just about, as they’d packed for almost every eventuality. They camped on a secluded beach, and said they didn’t talk to anyone. Def scary.

[Brucebubs]

2 days ago ...

BRUSSELS—Americans will remain barred from entering the European Union for nonessential travel even as the bloc starts to open up to as many as 15 countries from Wednesday, the EU said.

[Neil K Walk]

Originally Posted by Brucebubs

2 days ago ...

BRUSSELS—Americans will remain barred from entering the European Union for nonessential travel even as the bloc starts to open up to as many as 15 countries from Wednesday, the EU said.

Where there's a will there's a way.

FWIW my "staycation" includes doing my own landscaping. It's very therapeutic.

[Tahitijack]

I'm in the same boat with Haasome.

We were totally booked: air, hotels, ground transport for about three weeks in Tuscany. My wife took an on line course about the Etruscans and an webinar as well. Florence and Siena were going to be our home bases as we ventured out each day, sometimes with a private driver/guide. When it became apparent this was not going to happen in March we cancelled and got almost all our money back. But, we figure all is not lost, we will still to the exact trip in 2021.

In August we had a couple of weeks booked on Kauai, returning to where we spent our honeymoon 30 years ago. That too got shutdown. Thankfully nothing lost there with deposits returned and airfare refunded.

So, at the end of the day we are not planning to go anywhere until the vaccine is in our bodies. But when we do we are just going to follow our plans for this year...just being a year older when we do...

[BrunoBlack]

Originally Posted by Brucebubs

2 days ago ...

BRUSSELS—Americans will remain barred from entering the European Union for nonessential travel even as the bloc starts to open up to as many as 15 countries from Wednesday, the EU said.

I just read that people from US can’t travel into the UK without having a 14 quarantine once they arrive.

England Drops Its Quarantine for Most Visitors, but Not Those From the U.S.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/w...ronavirus.html

[MikeBmusic]

Originally Posted by buddyhu

If you could get there without getting on a plane, I would probably encourage you to go, to do some camping, and to work around any closures or restrictions.

Yeah, the plane flights are a real risk, I think. 45 hour drive each way, so that would only work if I wasn't working. As it is my company has made everyone use their earned vacation time for first 6 months of the year, so I only have a few extra days to 'play' with besides the 7 already planned.