From July 2002, a trip to Mount Hood and the historic Timberline Lodge. #ThrowbackThursday
travel
Sigh… if it weren’t for this pesky virus, we’d be headed to NZ today. With NZ requiring 14-days self-isolation on arrival, I bet the plane will be mostly empty, just Kiwis returning home.
As many people have pointed out, and I just want to note on my blog, New Zealand will be instituting very strict restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including requiring 14 days of self-isolation for all arrivals. So we are very glad that we made the decision to postpone our trip.
I just canceled my hotel reservation for San Jose for WWDC week. Another sad cancelation, not getting to do the usual meetups and podcast live shows of that week. But at least Apple has announced an online-only WWDC this year.
As previously mentioned, we were scheduled to visit New Zealand next week. After much agonizing, we decided to postpone our trip. It was a tough decision, but we feel we don’t have much choice given the current and developing situation, and the health risks to all involved, especially my mother.
After being on hold for about three hours, Jenn was able to reach Air New Zealand to get a 12-month deferment of our flights. Meanwhile, she canceled the hotels etc. We’ll lose about a grand in the process from more stingy hotels, but such is life.
We will reschedule the flights, and rebook hotels, probably for next year. Though the flight info is a bit ambiguous; we might have to do the flights later this year. We’ll clarify that later.
We’ve been planning and looking forward to this trip for years, so we’re sorry we had to postpone it. But we’ll still do it, once the world has settled down a bit. Better safe than sorry.
Help me out, folks. This time next week, my wife and I are scheduled to be in New Zealand, to visit my family and tour the South Island, celebrating our 25th anniversary. A trip (from the US) that we booked six months ago.
But with the COVID-19 pandemic going on now, we’re having major misgivings of the wisdom of taking an international trip at present. NZ only has five cases, but there’s risk of exposure in airports and planes, and other unknowns. But on the other hand, the risk probably is fairly low, and if we cancelled, we’d probably lose a lot of money, since many things couldn’t be cancelled.
What do you think we should do?
The word for day 23 of the Micro.blog photo challenge is “station”. Here’s Portland’s downtown train station from 2005. I bet this view would be quite different nowadays, since the area in the background has gone through a lot of development. #mbfeb
A few more photos from our weekend trip; we stopped at a lookout above the Columbia River where Celilo Falls used to be, before it was flooded for a dam, plus some pics around the Stonehenge memorial.
We just had a little weekend getaway, staying in Hood River, Oregon at the historic Columbia Gorge Hotel & Spa. Here are some pictures of the hotel and our room.
The word for day 7 of the Micro.blog photo challenge is “above”. Here’s a photo from WWDC week in San Jose, of a plane flying above the city on the way to the airport. #mbfeb
