Madrid or Bust!

Bags are packed and we are ready to go to Madrid! This weekend is a four-day weekend honoring the late great junior MLK and conveniently enough for us it is also our anniversary weekend. 4 days off coinciding with our anniversary is a recipe for travel.

What is missing from this picture? Gabe and Eli's backpacks are loaded with 3 changes of clothes and an extra change of unders, my bag is mostly packed, we have reading material, chargers, converters, camera case, toiletries in a nice quart sized bag, print out of directions and telephone contacts for our apartment rental, maps, subway info, passports.....oh yeah airline tickets. Where are the tickets? BUST!

Yep. I packed us up, with the exception of Matt he has to do that on his own, and when I came downstairs to print out some boarding passes I realized (this is really a nicer, calmer word for what transpired) that I made a huge mistake when I booked our airline tickets to Madrid. I received a confirmation code from the booking but there was a little line that said "not confirmed until email received". Minor detail - Major problem. 12 hours later.....I find out that the very nice protective credit card company declined the transaction because they feared it was a fraudulent purchase. When the credit card was declined, the reservation was cancelled and I had no tickets. If I would have waited, watched and wondered about that confirmation email, I could have easily rebooked the tickets when that email didn't arrive, but I didn't. I filed away the confirmation code and print-out of our flights and didn't think about it again until I booked our apartment. Even when I booked the apartment I didn't notice the fine print about the booking not being confirmed yet. So, it wasn't until I was planning to print out the tickets that I figured all this out, just 2 days before we were supposed to be on a plane bound for warmth and sunshine.

What now? Well the bags are still packed, for what? I don't know. The reservation for the apartment is cancelled and in order to avoid $250 in charges we are rebooking the Madrid trip for April. We'll still go to Madrid. It will just cost us a few more bucks and we have to wait a few more months.

I must applaud Matt on being gracious and kind throughout the whole thing. He remained calm and is truly more disappointed for me that I don't get to go than he is about the trip being cancelled.

What is the moral of the story? Read the fine print. And if you do forget to read the fine print, be cool with the outcome. I wasn't cool. I was whiny and bratty and rude. We have had about 15 very successful weekend adventures, and a few week long trips as well and this is the first time we have encountered any snafoos with bookings. That is a good track record. When one thing doesn't go my way, it is easy for me to forget about the 100 other things that went just perfectly. I need to be grateful for all we have done, and let this one roll off.

So, we are doing what we do...learn from it and move on. We are going to "stay-cation" this weekend instead. Lucky for the kids, all their clothes are already set out for the next 3 days. Lucky for me, I have a few more months to practice my Espanol.