Friday, August 29, 2008

Booked a Trip to Italy, Again

Kevin and I are going on vacation to Italy in less than 2 weeks and the adventures have already begun. The largest complication was the airline we're booked with went bankrupt yesterday. We're going to get our money back from the credit card company, and we managed to book a new flight and adjust our first hotel reservation accordingly, so hopefully that problem is resolved. You'd think this would be a pretty isolated incident but this is the 2nd time an airline has gone bankrupt on me after I booked a vacation. I shake my fist at you Canada 3000 and Zoom! Come on Air Transat, stay in business at least 4 more weeks. Oddly, Zoom sent us a reminder email confirming our flight the day before the bankruptcy, which included travel tips. For some reason, "book a flight with an airline that isn't bankrupt" didn't make their top 10.

The other complications have involved planning the details of the trip. Since neither of us have been to Italy before, we've been researching a lot of towns and sites on the Net. We've come across many helpful maps such as these:
Thanks Siena! I'm glad you clarified that location for us.

Many of the small bed & breakfast places do their best to create an English version of their website, but sometimes I'm suspicious of the really bad translation mistakes. For example, if a hotel claims to have "excellent mygiene", is this a simple error or are they really avoiding any promise of cleanliness? Kind of like selling someone "diamondelle" earrings. We don't have hygiene, but hey, we have mygiene, so close enough right? Trust us and send your credit card number now. Plus if you have to explicitly comment on hygiene, shouldn't that alone make me suspicious? If it's stated as a "feature", that in itself could be a bad sign.

If all goes according to the latest plan we'll be visiting Rome, Florence and some other places in Tuscany, Venice and Rimini, with hopefully a day trip to the Republic of San Marino.

1 comment:

Ginger said...

I was so surprised that Zoom went out of business! That is terrible for you. Hopefully, your next booking is more successful. I am halfway thinking of booking a "back up" ticket to Hawaii in case United goes under before I go!