Gratitude Monday: Love isn't lost

It’s Gratitude Monday and I’m halfway through cancelling a trip to Sorrento, Italy, which was scheduled for next week.

Months ago, I’d told my manager that my idea of a vacation involves trans-oceanic flights, so I’d be looking for two weeks at a whack. He was fine with that, and I started to consider where I’d like to go.

Well, revisiting Japan and Korea in the Spring got tossed because I found out Tokyo’s hosting the Olympics this summer, and I reckoned the place would be Looney Tunes in the run-up. I also figured I’d need more planning time for South Africa. Then I realized that I was about to be managing an external alpha test of my new product, and two weeks was going to be out of the question.

Hmm.

Late in January I thought about visiting Pompeii and Herculaneum, so I IMed friend of mine who’s a Napolitana. Could I do those two in a week’s time?

Friend: Yes! And you want to hike Vesuvio!

Me: I do?

Friend: Yes! And stay in Sorrento.

Well, alrighty then.

So I booked a hotel on the sea, and figured out the flights. (Amex was helpful with the former, but sadly is next to useless on the latter—they don’t show all available flights, so you end up having to go to Kayak or the like.) Also, sadly, Delta/KLM/Air France was not my friend—their schedules were crackbrained, and their fares likewise. But Lufthansa showed this incredible price drop bracketing Easter, which seems counterintuitive, but I took it. Also—the fare for DC to Napoli was exactly the same as DC to Roma, so I snapped it up and began checking travel guides out of the library.

I was going to spend Easter in Italy, and watch the Good Friday White and Black Parades through the city streets. I was going to eat seafood and imbibe two millennia of history. I was going to drink crisp Italian whites and breathe in the scent of lemon blossoms. I was not going to worry about engineers or customers. It was going to be heavenly.

Well—as we all know—about a month ago things started looking bad for Italy, and I watched as COVID19 started seeping southward from Lombardy and washed away my hopes of Sorrento in the Spring.

This weekend I cancelled the hotel via Amex. After waiting on hold with Lufthansa for a couple of hours, I listened to Amanda’s spiel about the benefits of holding the booking for future use ($50 in credit! No $300 rebooking fee!) and the downside of outright cancellation (normal refund time = 14 business days; current refund time = unknown); I decided to wait a couple of months before I request a refund.

I’m hoping Lufthansa is still around by then to give me my money back, and that I’ll be healthy enough and enough of the world is still around to make a trip somewhere worthwhile.

Anyway—as much as I was truly looking forward to this trip, if having to forego Sorrento is the worst thing that happens to me during this pandemic, I have absolutely nothing to bitch about, and a massive amount to be grateful for.

So I’m sharing this mashup of Italians singing CSN's “Helplessly Hoping” from their individual quarantine locations. This takes me so far back to my youth. And it gives me inspiration as well.