Happy Monday folk!
Hope you had a wonderful weekend.
I love vacations but hate the whole planning process.
The search for flights and hotels is the most frustrating and time consuming aspect of travel and I absolutely detest it. Am I the only one?
On Friday, I am heading off to France with my mom.
My own portion of the trip was planned months ago.
I bought a multi-city ticket for my journey home.
From Abu Dhabi to New York for a month. Then mom and I are off to Paris then a week later I am back to Abu Dhabi.
Planning my mom's part of the trip was the tough part. My mom is still a citizen of Jamaica which means in order to go to France or pretty much any European country, she needs a visa.
Instant headache.
I couldn't just buy her ticket when they were cheap, she had to wait until after she had gotten her visa. Literally a week to the day we were set to travel.
Getting all the documents together was a pain. The consulate required a faxed reservation confirmation from the hotel. Can you imagine, how many people actually have a fax machine? Not I. Luckily my mom's boss allowed her to have it faxed to his office.
The hotel messed up the spelling of her name which freaked me out because I thought it would be a problem at the consulate.
Actually they messed up the fax twice. I emailed them about the misspelling issue and never heard back from them. NEVER, even though I explicitly stated to them in all my emails how important it was to get the fax for the interview.
Needless to say as soon as the interview was over and my mom got her visa, I promptly cancelled with that hotel.
Then there was finding a ticket that didn't cost an arm and a leg. Difficult to do when you are traveling in a week.
Originally, my mom and I planned for her to leave the same day. I ended up making a mistake and bought the ticket for the following day.
The difference of a day was over five hundred dollars.
Unfortunately she will miss a day with me but on the positive side, she saved that money.
Now that we had her ticket, we needed a place to stay. I ended up booking an apartment on Airbnb.
The young lady seemed cool and the price was cheaper than a hotel with all the wonderful added amenities such as access to her washer and dryer, a full kitchen and a bigger space.
Thankfully, everything seems to have fallen into place.
Mom and I are super excited to have this opportunity.
It has been her dream and it is wonderful to see her so happy.
Fingers crossed that our apartment experience will be awesome.
We can breathe a sigh of relief now.
Yay!!