I Think I Have Screwed up.......Big Time

Did you book through AirBnB? Even if you didn’t, surely you received some form of email communication from them. Even if it had been deleted, you should be able to find it. Type in the name of the place on your email search and any communication with that in it should pop up.

How did you reserve the apartment to begin with? Via telephone call, which is why you don't have any digital confirmation? Or some other way? If you reserved it via phone call surely it's in your call history somewhere.
If you used a booking portal (Air BnB, etc.), even if you deleted all your emails, it would still show up in the booking portal you used when you log into your account.

If you have found the place on Airbnb, then you can message the host without
making a new booking.

How did you make the booking in the first place? If thru a local agency, you
can reach out to them.

I tried to search the messages on my computer, but found nothing. To be very honest, my 81-year-old memory isn't as good as it once was, and I have no idea whether I booked the rental through a booking site or not. The rental fee has not been charged to my credit card yet, so I'm not sure whether I gave them the credit card information.
I googled the name of the place, but found no way to contact the owner without going through a booking site, which I am hesitant to do.

Okay, here is what I would do. Go to AirBnb, VRBO and Booking.com, all of which list this property. Then try to see if you have an account with them. If you don't know, you should be able to check by clicking "forgot password" and if you do have an account, you will receive an email to reset your password. If you receive that email, click on the link to reset your password and look to see if you have a booking in your account.

If you get a message saying you don't have an account, then you would not have booked through them. Hopefully there will be one that you have an account with, and if so, you can go in and find your bookings there.

Another thing you could do is search in your email for terms like "booking" or "confirmation" or "La Perle". I don't know how tech savvy your are, but if you have a close friend or family member who is, you might try enlisting their help.

Given your situation and the level of concern you have about it, the hesitation to
contact the owner through a booking site seems secondary to me to the potential
of not having accommodations when you get there. Like I said, you can message
them on Airbnb.

On top of that, given what you've said about your memory and lack of credit card
charge (and I am old, also, so not making fun of it, just trying to be pragmatic),
there would appear to be some chance you never actually made the booking.

UPDATE - based on the info on vrbo, the apartment is leased by an agency:

enter link description here

There is contact info on the website, including a phone number. I suspect this
agency has cross-posted the apartment info on multiple sites, so going directly
to them is the better option. This is assuming you rented through them in the
first place, which who knows, but they will at least be able to confirm if the dates
you think you have are taken.

Given your situation, I'd call them.

Is it possible that you did not actually make a booking? the lack of credit card charge makes me think that's possible. You should have been charged at least a partial amount for the initial booking.

I've never used Booking.com, but I know Air BnB sends several reminders about upcoming trips. If you are within two weeks of travel, you will receive email reminders to the email address associated with your account.

I'm not sure whether I gave them the credit card information.

Don't panic.
If you reserved the room I'm 99% sure you have to have given them a CC number to hold it. I've never been able to reserve a hotel or apt without a CC. Some people do it with a cash transfer or paypal but it's not something I'd ever do and I very much doubt you did either.

Being you can't find your notes on the owner or manager, you booked through a booking site like booking.com, airbnb or other. to begin with as the owner's identity apparently isn't out there on the net. So, try those sites first, starting with booking.com as it was recommended when you were looking for an accommodation. You would need to find.the passwords you used to access and reserve on the site(s).

Also, check your trash file as it's possible an email may have ended up there.

Check the availability calendar on AirBnB to see if the dates you reserved are actually marked out. Then you will know if you actually have the reservation. If the calendar shows it is available then you could reserve it now.

I looked at AirBNB, Booking.Com, and VRBO, and do not have an account with any of them. I tried asking questions about how to verify my reservation, and how to contact the host, but the only reply I got was "We cannot answer that question". I also checked the time period that I am scheduled to be there, and it showed that the place was not available during that period.

I just tried to book your apartment on those dates on booking.com, and it shows no availability for those dates.

Then I went to AirBNB - here is a link to the page where you can message the host - Elodie. I just pasted the apartment name into Google and did a search.

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1137746776183530778?source_impression_id=p3_1725027397_P3wG2nNx-tb_Hp0f

Just a note that when you do use the link above to message Elodie, you will need to create an account with Airbnb. In the message, I would explain the entire situation to her and ask her if you have booked it for that period of time.

One more thing to keep in mind. I hate to bring this up but it has happened. It happened to me once with a hotel in Munich, and it happened to my daughter when she booked a site for their family vacation.

In my case, I emailed the hotel, arranged the dates, and then was told to call and provide a credit card for confirmation. Well, I forgot to confirm. So in my head I had confirmed the booking, but in reality, I had not. Needless to say, when we arrived, I had no booking. This happened a long time ago and I have since learned my lesson, but it does happen.

So while you are waiting to hear back from the Airbnb owner, you might want to consider looking for another hotel or apartment in that area just to be on the safe side.

Thanks for adding the clarification Mardee.

Thank you, ShoeFlyer for the info. I sent an email to Welcome2Home.fr explaining my situation, and asking them to help me contact the owner of the property. I'll give it a day or so, and see what kind of response I get.

I am going to be in Bayeux in a few days . . .

Jim Morris....
An 80 year old here....I would go to Booking.com, find a place to rent for your dates with a refundable/cancellable rental and book it AS LONG AS you can cancel up to 3 or 4 days in advance. Then continue with your search for the original rental. If that doesn't pan out, keep your new rental. If it does turn up, cancel the newer rental before the deadline. I have never had a problem with Booking.com over many, many years using them. And I have cancelled several times over the years because I found someplace I preferred, or a better price even on Booking.com for the same place, either through Booking.com or another platform.
Best of luck!

Do not reserve a non-refundable place, even though it is cheaper!

Where will you be before Bayeaux and where will you be after? Could you have booked with the same agency? I would book another accommodation until I got the Bayeaux situation sorted out as suggested.

If whoever you reached out to doesn't respond,
google Le Perle Bayeusaine and then when the links pop go to the Airbnb link. It describes the apartment and shows the property manager as Elodie. If you scroll down on the page you will find a "message the host" and then send them a message explaining the situation.

However, you do have to make a deposit to reserve through Airbnb so I'm thinking you didn't reserve it from them? I can't imagine any agency not charging some sort of deposit for a condo/apt for a 4 night reservation. Hotels may reserve strictly by holding a cc, but something of this nature would surely have charged a deposit to hold.

I agree that at minimum you should reserve a hotel as back up until you get this sorted out. Book someplace you can cancel 24/48 hours before check in

All the best to you.

OP, you have a lot of good advice here. Given that you don't recall just how
(or if), you made the booking, with two weeks before your arrival, getting things
figured out soon is important. If you have to call, call. If you have to set up
an Airbnb account to be able to message the host, do that. Make a backup
lodging plan if you are really unsure of things, as many others have suggested.

It's the weekend, so you're most likely losing 2 days given businesses in France
are not always open on the weekends.

I don't know if this situation is mostly caused by you losing your notes, but your
lack of recall is something to be aware of on a long trip, especially if you are
coming off a transatlantic flight with little sleep. Make sure you have notes,
probably in multiple (paper & electronic) formats, and be careful with things like
getting $ out of ATM's - it's easy to punch in an extra 0 and get 10 times what
you thought you were getting.

This whole thread has been focused on the Bayeux lodging, but do you have
similar issues with other lodging, flight info, transportation, etc? Sorry if this
sounds like a lecture, but better to be prepared (and you still have time to do
that). Get things organized, review them with your friend (so there's backup
in case something gets lost), and you will reduce the chances of something
like this happening again.

Jim, I hope you’ll come back and tell us what happened. We all make errors or suffer “what the heck did I do?” moments.

It happens to all of us. I paid A penalty to a hotel a few months ago because I forgot to cancel. And I just spent a few days ago an hour going through all of the reservations for another trip because I’ve booked and rebooked so many times I wasn’t sure that I had it all straight.

I use applications or websites like TripIt.com and https://wanderlog.com/ to keep track of all my bookings. I just forward booking email to them and it show up in my itinerary. As per cancellation, the same, I cancel the booking then make sure I remove it from the tripIt.com and make sure I do not delete the cancellation emails. Couple month ago Hyatt charge me for a stay that was cancelled. I quick chat with customer service and email cancellation number fix it.

I’ve tried TripIt, unfortunately, I still travel for business and it just cannot handle it and I don’t have time to spend hours sorting it out. But it will put things and trips together that make no sense and then when a business trip get canceled it’s still “live”. No, my trip to Dallas next week is not related to my trip to Europe month from now sorry it’s not all one trip, but multiple trips.

Okay. I got everything worked out. Thanks to ShoeFlyer's advice I was able to contact WELCOME2HOME, and they were able to determine that I had booked the apartment through Booking.com. I contacted them and paid for the rental. Of course, I forgot to notify my credit card issuer that I was going to use the card in Europe, and they declined the charge. After contacting the card issuer I was able to pay the rental charge and got a printed receipt.
So all is well. Many thanks to all those who posted advice on how to handle this situation.

Great news! Glad you were able to get it all figured out.

I'm glad you were able to get it straightened out. As I mentioned above, I've done that in the past and it's no fun dealing with it. I hope you have a wonderful trip!

Glad this worked out, The clue that something had gone awry is no entry on your credit card and no confirming Email -- no one holds an apartment without a deposit. Glad you were able to hunt it down and it was still available.

I did something similar with a local event that I had on my calendar and remembered booking for Berlin -- it was an underground bunker exploration. I had a clear member of booking it -- but it turns out I did not complete the booking properly and no money was taken and when I figured this out the day before when I was checking my tickets and not finding them it was sold out. A small disappointment; not having a place to stay would be a bigger one.

Glad everything worked out well. I can really sympathize with your situation. Some trips are planned many months in advance, and have many "moving" parts. It is easy to forget specifics that are weeks or months old. To try to prevent this, I make a list of the various reservations, tickets, etc. As each is carried out, I check it off. If something is a multistep process, I may break down each step and check off, so if I am interrupted, or the process takes longer than expected ( waiting to hear back from a host, for instance),
I can tell by the checklist exactly where I left off from the process.