You remember those memes all of January? The ones that said “I’ve decided my 2020 will start on February 1st. January is a free trial month.” Well, I’ve actually decided that my 2020 will start in March. It’s my birth month, so when my new year officially starts anyway.
February was R-O-U-G-H. If February were a free trial, I’d unsubscribe. For a short month, it seemed to drag on forever and kept delivering the punches to the punching bag.
It was a totally un-glamorous month as French homeowners. The travel industry, including small businesses like us, has been hit hard thanks to the Coronavirus newscycle. And to top it all off, back-to-back European winter storms wreaked havoc and left us stranded in Frankfurt mid-journey home from Austria when the second leg of our flights was cancelled.
February was stressful. I’m glad it’s over and done. I need a vacation…and I’m taking the first major vacation with zero work responsibilities since this site became my full time job more than five years ago.
News
Coronavirus is an Asshole
Today CNN reported that the travel industry is suffering its worst shock since 9/11 because of Coronavirus.
“It’s {the tourism industry} vital. If you measure the entirety of the impact of travel, it is bigger than any other industry around the world. No other industry can say it supports 1 in 10 jobs.”
Tim and I are 2 of those 10 jobs in the travel industry. And yes, we’re feeling and seeing the impact with our traffic and affiliate bookings down. Since I was really only blogging for fun still in 2011, it’s hard to compare the impact felt from the 9/11 terrorism attacks. But in 2020, we’re definitely feeling it since this website supports BOTH of us.
As we said last week on Facebook when we started getting questions if we thought people should cancel their trips, we’re personally traveling and not cancelling our own upcoming travel. We’re off to Martinique next Monday on a personal vacation.
But even if you’re in the camp that you have been forced to cancel due to cancelled flights or travel restrictions, you can still support many small businesses in the travel industry.
Some Ways to Still Support Small Businesses in the Travel Industry:
- Discover places at home in your own backyard. With tourism down and people staying away, you’ll find you practically have many attractions to yourself.
- Take a tour in your home town. You might discover things you never knew!
- Try that restaurant you’ve been saying you want to go to, but never seem to make it to.
- Shop for travel gear and essentials.
- Be an armchair traveler. Click through and read the articles your favorite travel bloggers (yes, like us) and online magazines put out. A visit to our websites makes a HUGE difference, and doesn’t cost you anything but a few minutes of time!
Should You Cancel Your Upcoming Trip?
Here in Bordeaux we had the very first case of Coronavirus to hit Europe well over a month ago. He was a local wine negotiant who had traveled to China on business and reported in unwell within hours of arriving home in Bordeaux. He was isolated for 22 days, those he had contact with were immediately contacted and also monitored for symptoms. The case was limited to this one and only in Bordeaux. And so far despite new cases popping up in France recently, the number is still really small.
Have I had concerns traveling this past month? Of course. Airports are like petri dishes of germs. You touch counters, doors, escalators, tickets, tray tables and countless other things that who knows how many people have touched before you.
Am I any more concerned than usual of catching a cold or some other virus while flying? Not really. I always have concerns traveling this time of year. It’s cold and flu season, and you can easily contract that from fellow travelers, too. Hell, you can contract the flu or another virus from the grocery store for that matter.
We’ve been in Austria, Germany and the UK in February. We flew on six planes this past month. We live in the tourist epicenter of one of France’s most popular cities to visit. We take public transportation. We’ve attended large events recently.
What we are doing is washing our hands much more, which I already did a lot since I have a cleanliness OCD complex. I’m also trying to touch my face much less, which helps anyway when you’re about to turn 40 and still suffer from adults breakouts. And for the first year in about five years now, I’ve even managed to ward off the usual winter severe sinus infection I get.
The world is a big place and there’s a lot to see. We’re off to Martinique in a matter of days now. And we have very, very, very little concern over traveling – our biggest concern being that the Caribbean may decide to deny flights from countries with cases. We’ll be doing the same as we’ve done on our other trips to Austria and the UK this past month – being a little extra cautious with more hand washing and carrying hand sanitizer for when you can’t wash your hands immediately.
So do we think people should cancel trips? Generally no. Keep an eye out for what the CDC recommends and maybe avoid outbreak areas, more so out of responsibility to not further spread this.
Dealing With Cancelled Flights
It’s so rare that cancelled flights actually happen and leave you stranded that even as professional travelers, we’re just like you when it does happen. We get frustrated, exacerbated and exhausted by travel problems too. And it takes living through the good and bad experiences to make a real travel pro.
We were in route flying home from Salzburg to Bordeaux, with a connection in Frankfurt the day that Storm Ciara (known as Storm Sabine) hit Germany. Our first flight from Salzburg to Frankfurt was the earliest of the day, and aside from a little turbulence, was fine.
We were only due to have a 1 hour layover in Frankfurt. But as soon as we arrived, we noted that more than 80% of flights to pretty much anywhere we already cancelled. Bordeaux said it was on time.
It was soon announced that our flight was cancelled due to the storm and it was pandemonium as everyone from our flight and many other cancelled flights rushed toward the Lufthansa customer service desk. I was already on my phone pulling up the Lufthansa site to see if we could get rebooked online.
We ended up stuck in Frankfurt with no flights departing until the next day. Despite being able to rebook ourselves on the Lufthansa website, we still had to stand in another line to get food and hotel vouchers.
If a flight cancellation due to weather had happened in the US, we’d basically have been screwed. “Acts of God” like weather are US airlines get out of jail free card, and they typically don’t put you up or ensure you eat a meal. But in Europe, you have rights.
There’s Regulation 261/2004, which entitles passengers to reimbursement for the inconvenience caused by delays, cancellations and overbooked flights. The airline did put us up in a pretty decent hotel and give us a fair number of vouchers that covered a good lunch at one of the Frankfurt International Airport restaurants while we waited for luggage to be pulled.
But we were still greatly inconvenienced. We had nothing with us since we’d gotten an email requesting we check our carry-on bags for free due to a completely full flight. Then we had to wait a really long time for the bags to be pulled, and actually my bag was lost.
We landed in Salzburg just before 8am. Our flight was cancelled around 9:30am. It was 3:30pm before we actually left the airport for the off-site hotel, and that point we’d waited around so long that we just didn’t want to wait another 45 minutes for the next hotel shuttle. So we incurred the expense of an Uber.
We’re currently using SkyRefund to see if we can be compensated under Regulation 261/2004. We’ll see how it turns out, but it’s completely free to use so why not?
Of course, all of this inspired an update to one of our posts about How to Save Money on Your Next Flight. So check that out for our money-saving tips when booking airfare, plus what to do if you ever end up in a situation with a cancelled flight like we did recently.
We Got a Pet…We Didn’t Want One
Think living in and owning your own home in France is glamorous? Well, I’m here to tell you about the day that it 100% wasn’t and something totally un-glamorous tired to move in with us.
It was a lovely Saturday night. We’d spent the extra Leap Year evening out at one of my favorite Bordeaux wine bars sipping wine and devouring a charcuterie board. We went for a walk after through the pop-up carnival.
Back at home, we’d just settled in with some Netflix. It was warm outside and the balcony doors were open, letting in the fresh spring-like night air.
And out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small, dark animal dash along the wall. “OH. MY. GAWD! There’s a mouse in the house!”
I jumped up into a standing position on the couch and hit the light switch. Luckily I scared the bejesus out of the mouse with my shouts and panicked light turning out. He scurried right back out the door where he’d come from. Tim jumped up and closed those balcony doors.
We do NOT live on the ground floor. While mice running along the street and even rats are a fairly common sight on the streets of an urban French city like Bordeaux, I was shocked to see one running in our open balcony doors up off the street level.
I grew up in the countryside, so I’m no stranger to a mouse in the house. But I must admit I immediately googled if mice could climb walls. I don’t recommend googling it. I can’t unsee the YouTube videos of mice and rats running straight up walls like its their super power.
Unfortunately, we doubt this was this mouse’s very first visit. We found a spot where there was a little pile of wood shavings like he’d been chewing or trying to burrow. We’d just swept the day before, though, so it’s probably likely this mouse visited us while we were out sipping our wine without a care in the world.
Neither of us slept much Saturday night. First, Tim heard noises coming from our living room and went to keep watch. Then I woke to find him missing, when to investigate and found the mouse back in the house.
Whether or not we actually heard the mouse the rest of the night remains a mystery. But I certainly thought so and got up to investigate far too many times until finally falling asleep after 5am.
Tim set the alarm for earning Sunday morning. Thankfully, our big grocery market where you can get things like caulk and mouse traps started opening for 3 hours on Sunday mornings.
“Cheese or peanut butter for the bait?” Tim asked me.
“These are French mice. They don’t know what peanut butter is. Cheese, obviously!” I told him.
We either did a really good job of sealing the ever-so-teeny-tiny gap the mouse incredibly slipped back out of when I discovered him in the house again the second time. Or we need to switch our cheese to peanut butter for the bait, because we haven’t caught the little home invader yet. Hopefully it’s because we did seal up his entry point though.
Visit Our New Site: Bordeaux Travel Guide
Back in December, we launched a second destination site all about Bordeaux and the Nouvelle Aquitaine (the region of France where Bordeaux is located). If you haven’t checked it out, we’d appreciate if you head over to Bordeaux Travel Guide!
Nearly all of our Bordeaux content and Nouvelle Aquitaine content will live there from now on. Other France content from the rest of the regions will continue to be here on Luxe Adventure Traveler.
And there are definitely some exciting things coming up over 2020! As ambassadors for our region, we’re usually among the first to try out the latest tourism offerings to keep you in-the-know.
In case you missed them, here’s just a couple of our most popular posts over on Bordeaux Travel Guide:
Eat Your Way Through These 10 Bordeaux Specialties
Most Popular Instagram Photo
Finally, years after wanting to visit, we made it to Hallstatt. Like so many others, we became aware of Hallstatt thanks to photos being shared on social media.
But unlike many others who come only to snap a similar photo or a selfie on a day trip or a stopover to elsewhere, we stayed for several days discovering what the area around Hallstatt has to offer. Our 3-day guide to Hallstatt Lake in Winter will be coming soon with all the usual details of what to see and do, where to eat and where to stay.
We will say that we really enjoyed Hallstatt in winter, though. It’s definitely not completely dead in winter like we’d heard and there’s even two ski resorts within 10-15 minutes drive from the village. And Hallstatt is just as beautiful in person as the photos. In fact, it’s even better.
So stay tuned for our 3-day guide coming soon!
Coming Up in March 2020
I have a milestone birthday this month. And while I’m not the least bit excited to be turning 40, I’m excited about finally taking a real vacation to a destination I’m thrilled to explore.
Where I’d be when I turned the big 4-0 was a bit of debate. First, I was so down about turning forty that I just wanted to hide away under the covers and pretend the day didn’t exist. Then I thought I might like to celebrate eating soup dumplings and dim sum in Hong Kong. Coronavirus shot that idea down quickly.
Tim suggested Egypt, but I was leery to plan it for an occasion like a milestone birthday. I have not had good luck with planning trips to Egypt.
We actually had planned to spend my 30th birthday there and had the whole trip planned. If you’ve followed us basically since the beginning, you probably know that story. Tim got moved up a deployment list and was off in Las Vegas for pre-deployment training. We had to cancel the trip, and lost out on the airfare for the tickets we’ve bought. I spent my 30th birthday home in Italy alone.
We planned that same trip to Egypt again the next year over my 31st birthday. And the Arab Spring happened. While we personally felt perfectly safe to go, ultimately the Air Force made the call and said Tim wasn’t allowed a mere 48 hours before we were due to leave. We changed plans throwing together a trip to Jordan instead, which was totally awesome. But I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed to be missing out on Egypt yet again.
In the end, I’m glad we didn’t end up deciding to plan my 40th birthday in Egypt. We would have been flying through Rome, with an overnight layover there. And I wanted to do a Nile River cruise. Likely, with the Coronavirus outbreak in Italy and many flights being cancelled to/from Italy’s hubs, the trip wouldn’t have happened. Also, a cruise ship – even it is a small boutique cruise – isn’t where I want to be amid this pandemic.
So we’re going to Martinique and I’m super excited about it! I LOVE the Caribbean. We used to go to Sint Maarten every single year when we still lived in the US. And while we’ve been to the Bahamas a few times in recent years, we haven’t actually been to the Caribbean since our last trip there the month before we moved to Italy in 2009.
Martinique is a French overseas department and it basically isn’t on most Americans radar. Cruise ships do call in to a port there, and nearly all of the less than 10% of American tourists that visit Martinique visit on a cruise port of call.
It’s also my first real vacation in I can’t tell you how long. I have had little jaunts here and there for a weekend, and we often cover parts of trips ourselves like accommodation or meals. And while we do custom design the majority of our itineraries with the destinations and brands we collaborate with, nearly all of our travel is on assignment for our business.
I need a vacation. And Martinique will be a vacation.
Of course, since I actually don’t know how to shut off from sharing my life at this point, we’ll take you along. And since it was actually fairly difficult to dig up info on Martinique in English, I do plan to write about the trip. We have awesome things planned. Trust me. I know we’re going to love it there and I’m pretty certain you’re going to want to visit, too, once you see what we get up to there.
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