Last night I was very busy trying to find the reservations I had made for our Christmas trip to Europe. I am normally pretty good about recording my reservations in my calendar as I make them, but for some reason I couldn’t find anything on our hotel reservations in Europe in my calendar. I knew the dates I was staying at each hotel, after the cruise, but I could not find how I had booked the hotels. I usually use Expedia because the trip is saved under one reservation code, which makes it easy to pull up online, but this trip I could not find. Frustrating!
I finally got a brain wave. I knew I had sent all of the confirmations via email to Richard so if I searched in my ‘sent email’ for June 2021, and the confirmations should show up. Richard was supposed to print all of our confirmations, but unfortunately he said he could not print anything I had booked from Expedia. “Not to worry I said at the time, because Expedia would have everything on file when I logged into Expedia”. WRONG!
I kept logging into Expedia last evening and Expedia said I had no trips on file. Very strange. I knew we were staying at the ‘Citizen M‘ hotel in Paris from December 27-30th, so I thought why not go online and use a chat bot from Citizen M to pull up the reservation? I went online and put in my information and the chat bot said they could not help me since I had used Expedia to book the hotel. Ok, so I’m not crazy! I do have a reservation, I have the correct dates and I did use Expedia to book the reservation.
My next thought was to use a chat bot on Expedia to try and figure this out. I tried with Expedia and the chat bot said I had no reservations. UGH! Ok, now it was time to speak to a live agent. I waited for an agent on Expedia and explained my predicament. I knew the hotels and dates I was staying in Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, but I didn’t have the hotel confirmations to cancel my stays. In hindsight, I probably took screen shots of the bookings as they came up and I should have looked at my photos for June when I was booking this trip. Anyway, I gave my phone number and personal email address and the Expedia agent came back with the fact that my Expedia profile still has my old work email address on file, and that is why when I was logging in with my personal email, Expedia wouldn’t recognize that I had any upcoming trips! Problem solved!!! The Expedia agent immediately cancelled our Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam reservations for me and told me in future to just use my personal email to log in, or create a new profile online so I would get the confirmations in my personal email. Well that was over an hour to figure out, but I felt good last night knowing that I had cancelled our VRBO in Amsterdam before the river cruise, which was fully refundable until sometime in December. I would receive a credit of $340 for that booking. The remaining hotels through Expedia had not been paid for, so now they were also cancelled. What a relief! The trip was unwound and we were not out a penny!
This morning we received our confirmation from our travel agent that our river cruise was cancelled and we did in fact have a full credit available for booking within the next 24 months on some future cruise. While we wanted to travel to Europe, we were also very prudent about making sure that everything we booked didn’t result in us losing any money. So now we have a cruise to book at some point, when the world is a bit more ‘normal’ for travel!
This morning I had a very early start to my day. I was seeing Abbie my Osteopath in Comox for the first time since arriving in Fanny Bay! I was very excited to finally get some osteopathic treatment, because I’ve had nothing but pain in my good knee, since before we left Ontario. Something was up and I needed it tending to!
Abbie asked me how our trip across Canada was and how my stay has been so far on the Island. I started telling Abbie about my adventures last week when the roof started leaking and how I climbed up on the roof in the pouring rain dragging the tarp and a bungee cord with me, only to have the tarp blow off at my feet as I was getting back into Newman! Abbie used the best line ever in response to my story as she and I were laughing so hard we were crying! She said “What a lot of fuss and a huge palaver!” Abbie is from England, and she recently had to return to the UK from June to September for family health reasons. My mom and grandmother were from England and they used that word ‘palaver’ too, but I had not heard the word in so many years, upon hearing it, it brought me right back to hearing my grandma and my mom use it. Palaver means ‘ an unnecessary fuss and bother about the way something is done’. It was such a properly British expression coming from Abbie that completely described the situation I was in with the leaking roof. We howled for a few minutes over that one. It sure is nice to have someone to laugh with, despite the situation! And it was great to have some excellent care today and understand why my left knee (good knee) had been hurting. I’ve got some exercises to work on now that should help me before I go and see Abbie again.
After I finished with Abbie, it was still quite early at 9:30am in Comox and the weather was a windy, chilly +6C and of course….you guessed it…. it was raining. I didn’t feel up for a hike so early in the morning, so I grabbed a few groceries at the ‘Your Independent Grocery’ store in Comox, stuffed them in my cooler bags in Kramer, the Kona and then searched for the local library.
I felt like I needed to do some research on the route we are going to be taking through the US in December. It is so much easier for me to sit with a pile of travel books in front of me doing some reading and making notes, than it is looking at countless websites and trying to piece the trip all together. The web is great for research, don’t get me wrong, but there is nothing like looking at a proper travel book to give you tips and tricks on wherever you are going.
After searching the stacks of travel books this is what I found:
My research books at the Comox Library this morning.
I quite looked this book:
Well that doesn’t look like old ‘Newman’, but I understand the concept of ‘broke’ after putting a new engine in Jerry! Sexy? I’m not sure if we’re in that demographic either at our ages!
I spent about an hour and a half reviewing the travel guide books and taking photos of the pages that were most relevant to our journey. Now at least after having spent the time this morning, I have a better understanding of some places of interest we have to see in 3 or 4 states and I will plan the journey in RV Trip Wizard accordingly. There wasn’t a guide for Arizona which I would have liked, but I can look at places of interest in Arizona online.
After doing my research in the cozy, warm library, I went outside to find the weather had actually gotten worse. The wind was howling off the Comox Harbour, and it was raining (of course). I was looking for somewhere to have lunch, and on Monday, many of the restaurants in Comox are not open for lunch. I didn’t want to have sushi today, and I felt like some comfort food. Hmm….where was I going to go for lunch?
I wonder if the Tidal Cafe is open? The Comox harbour is in the background.
The bar at the Tidal Cafe.
Luckily I was the last person to get a table at noon today. This downtown Comox spot is extremely popular with the locals.
Tidal Cafe menu. I was torn between grilled cheese and soup or….
Soup and Salad…..
Grilled cheese and roasted tomato basil soup. YUMMY COMFORT FOOD!
And a hot earl grey tea too! It was a tea kind of day to warm up my hands after walking around downtown Comox.
I thought this was a very neat sign they had up in the Tidal Cafe in Comox. It’s nice to support local and to understand how this restaurant supports other local businesses. I would definitely return for another lunch time meal at this nice cafe. And today’s lunch was $19.90.
Boats coming out of buildings downtown Comox!
And here’s another boat coming out of a condo building. Kind of unusual don’t you think?
Downtown Comox today.
After driving around Courtenay a bit after lunch, I headed for home in Fanny Bay. I’m reading a good book right now and I felt like getting cozy under a blanket to read on this rainy, cold, windy day, rather than try and go for a hike somewhere. Sometimes its good to just listen to your body and take it easy and relax!
Minus the cat this was me today. It’s funny but I went to high school with this artist - Debbie Ohi. Isn’t that a coincidence?
At 4:11pm I got the text from Richard to say that he had landed in YVR…that’s Vancouver‘s airport code). Richard now has to wait until his 9:30pm flight from YVR to YQQ (Comox), which gets in at 10:18pm. I’m going to pick him up when his flight arrives, so that will be a late night for both of us!
I’ve been chatting tonight with St. Stephen who headed over the border at 12:40am this morning in New Brunswick with his new Ram pickup and toy hauler trailer. He has made it to Danbury, Connecticut and will be taking about 4 leisurely days to get to Florida. St. Stephen is going to come to our rescue once again in Florida and has volunteered to help fix up Newman’s roof once we get down there. Richard can do a patch job with Di-cor here in Fanny Bay, but St. Stephen wants to do a thorough overhaul on the front of Newman to make sure he won’t leak, once and for all! The nice thing is St. Stephen and his lovely wife Karen are just up the road from our place in Plant City, so we won’t have far to travel to see them either and vice versa! It is definitely nice to have friends wherever we go and especially helpful ones too!
I’m glad Richard is coming home to deal with Newman’s leaking roof and this flapping tarp. I’m sure all of the fuss and palavar I’ve had in the past week, will be another good story on the road of life where we will say “Remember the time you went away to Mexico to work and left me in rainy, grey Fanny Bay with a leaking roof?” Its good to be able to laugh at our circumstances….because if we don’t, we would spend our whole life crying our eyes out!
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