Goin' Nowhere

DW and I have cancelled vacation plans only twice in the 34 years that we've been together.

Actually, scratch that: we've only cancelled vacation plans one time. The other time, our plans were cancelled for us.

In 2020, we had plans to see Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. We had our flights booked and all of our accommodation arranged. We booked early to ensure that we'd get to stay exactly where we wanted and when we wanted, and early booking got us a fantastic rate on our flights.

And then COVID happened.

We held onto our reservations because we didn't know how long the pandemic would last. Our trip was in September and we naively figured that life could be back to normal by then.

It was the airline that cancelled our flight and provided a refund. Luckily, we were then able to cancel our hotel reservations without penalty. As soon as the pandemic was over, we told ourselves, we would reschedule this trip.

It's still on our radar but it's been pushed back. Maybe next year.

We have travelled since restrictions have been lifted. We've gone to Cuba and we've visited Mexico twice since 2021, and of course we had our big trip to Portugal last autumn.

This fall, we had made plans to take my parents to Italy. My mother has wanted to see Tuscany for years and said that she was tempted to tag along in 2009, when DW and I took our kids.

San Gimignano, 2009.

DW and I love to plan for travel, so right away we scouted out towns to visit. Because we had already been to Tuscany a couple of times, we didn't want to repeat our vacation but we did place a few must-see places that appealed to my mom. Florence is a city that I'd never get tired of seeing and it was a non-negotiable destination for my folks. They had also fallen in love with my photos and our description of San Gimignano, so we planned to return to this small hill town.

But DW and I wanted to see Milan, Verona, and some of the other small towns in northern Italy, so we booked a place in Bologna, from where we could branch out to all of these places. We also wanted to see the Amalfi Coast, so we booked a nice villa south of Naples.

We held off on booking flights because we wanted to see if rates dropped, but our itinerary was getting fleshed out.

It seemed, though, that the closer we got to solidifying our plans, the more anxious my parents got. My father has a concerning problem with one of his knees and my mom has trouble when she walks a fair distance or climbs stairs.

I wish she had tagged along in 2009, when it would have been easier for her to get around.

I'm in no way blaming my folks for bowing out. If I had mobility issues (and trust me, I know what it's like to deal with pain in the feet), I'd be leery of wanting to be somewhere that requires walking any distance or involved climbing and descending.

We accepted my parents' decision to cancel their trip to Italy but DW and I kept our accommodation reservations open. Just because my folks couldn't go, it didn't meant that we couldn't.

This week, we cancelled our reservations. Italy is officially off for this year.

In March, our furnace died and we were forced to replace it. I mean, we live in one of the coldest capital cities in the world: we can't go without heat. It was an expense that we hadn't anticipated but we were fortunate enough that we could pay for it and still have cash available for vacations.

But at the end of May, when our air conditioning unit of more than 23 years packed it in, we started to feel the squeeze. We went for more than a month without cool air while we evaluated our expenses and did research on whether to replace our old AC with a new one or to upgrade to a heat pump, which costs about twice the price as a conventional air conditioner.

We finally decided to go the route of the heat pump because government rebates brought it down to within a thousand dollars of a conventional AC, and we figured that after a few years the savings in energy efficiency would make up for that price difference, after rebate.

The problem is that as soon as you qualify for the rebate, it can take about six months to see the money. So, we're now cash-strapped for the rest of the year.

Any kind of air travel is out of the question for 2023. It's not my folks who need to bow out of going to Italy, it's us.

Thankfully, we went to Mexico in January, and thankfully, our upcoming trip to Costa Rica, next January, is already mostly paid for.

The thing is, I have three weeks of vacation to use up this year. I now have to figure out how I'm going to spend the time without spending bucks.

I need to get away from Ottawa, so we'll likely visit friends who live far away and who we haven't seen since before the pandemic. Apart from that, we're going nowhere.

Happy Thursday!