I miss Europe....wahhhhhhhhhhh

I miss my parents. That is all.

Me too........should have been in the Dordogne in May and had to cancel.....then planned to leave for Switzerland this Thursday and had to cancel.......maybe the planning is therapeutic!

I think we all know how privileged we are to be in the position of "missing Europe". I am profoundly grateful that this pandemic has only caused me inconvenience, and not physical and financial suffering.

But still, I too miss the joyful sparkle of planning a trip to Europe.

where are you planning to go? i get what you mean i had the chance to come to Greece and stayed here for 3 months, things seem fine here and hopefully things will be completely recovered by February with this whole covid.

Completely understand! I should be in Salerno, Italy today. Instead, I’m in Idaho with bad air quality from the horrible fires on the West Coast States.

Next year....

On the positive side, all of our hotels and B&B’s gave me either refunds or vouchers, and we received full refunds from Delta airlines.

It sure is a lot less fun to undo reservations than to make them! ; )

I miss my parents. That is all.

Same, adding in my brother, sister-in-law and nieces.

I’m in Idaho with bad air quality from the horrible fires on the West Coast States.

So are we! It's incredible how far the smoke travels. I witnessed an incredible orange sunrise this morning.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/11/california-wildfires-cause-orange-glow-uk-sky/

Yep. Me, too. We had to cancel two weeks in Italy that was to be a HS graduation gift to our son. He had a great attitude about having to cancel/postpone, but on the day we would have been leaving, I hid in the bathroom and cried! Not my best moment! I have found that I am happiest when I have a concrete thing to look forward to and plan for. And since I can't make real plans yet, I am a bit depressed about it. And I agree, we have been affected less by the pandemic than a lot of people (we both work at a university and have been able to work/teach from home) and am lucky that I can spend my time thinking about our next vacation instead of wondering how to feed my children.

Sooooo, what is stopping you from researching future travel? Pick a theoretical date and city, review hotels or AirBnBs, start a spreadsheet of what you would do on which days, note what needs pre-booking. Then watch youtubes, order RS books (if you didn't stalk up on his sale last month), or check books out of the library.
Dust off your fine china and stemware. If you have time, make an ethnic meal from scratch or order it in. Play appropriate music.
Consider this as time well spent, because some day (soon), you will be free to travel and you'll have it all planned out and ready to confidently take to the air with short notice.
Otherwise, I can recommend bird watching as a very distracting hobby - and you can take it with you when travel becomes a reality again. Lemonade, folks, lemonade...

We really miss travel and touring. Also, taking in a cruise.

We have traveled a lot, and even lived overseas.
However, we are in our early 70s and want to make the most out of the rest of our lives. Since I retired 10 years ago, we have done an average of 2 or 3 overseas trips a year. We have been stuck at home since our last trip in June 2019. A safari is scheduled for East Africa in July 2021, so that will be two years with no overseas (or significant US travel).

Hope a vaccine is available for us in early 2021.

Well said MarieF👍👍👍

Sorry,MariaF!

It sure is a lot less fun to undo reservations than to make them! ; )

Isn't that the truth! And waiting on refunds is even less fun, ha!

Sooooo, what is stopping you from researching future travel? Pick a theoretical date and city, review hotels or AirBnBs, start a spreadsheet of what you would do on which days, note what needs pre-booking.

I should have prefaced it with, we had a trip canceled, like so many others on this board, so I have months of well-researched hotels, etc. already on the docket. Which is cool--I can definitely pull together the same trip quickly when we are allowed to travel again, but for some reason right now I just don't have the heart for researching theoretical trips.

Truly not trying to have a pity party, I just miss international travel right now. :)

I'm planning to do the same trip to Ireland that was canceled on May, 2020, in early October, 2021. There should be minimal tweaks, the biggest being that we will be able to travel again by then.

In the meantime, I've been doing online jigsaw puzzles at jigidi.com which someone here on the forum suggested. There are many that are images from Europe.

I know it can be hard to do theoretical travel at times, but I must admit it has kept me going through some hard times. Maybe it is because I love to learn and feel no research is wasted. I have an ongoing Excel spreadsheet of 'maybe' trips.
I had my first week off since Christmas as unlike most of you, I go to the office everyday as I am essential services. I will admit, my week's taste of enforced staycation made me glad I haven't be at home every day, but not sure how many would really want to trade it for a covid lab job.
Sometimes you need a little pity party, then pull out that sunny face and remember things could be much worse.

Kelly- I hear you! I miss Europe as as well. We would have been in Palermo, Sicily today. Like other West Coasters we are experiencing very unhealthy air quality in WA St. That said, in the meantime we are dreaming about future travels and reminiscing about former journeys. Also grateful that our family and ourselves are well. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

It sure is a lot less fun to undo reservations than to make them! ; )
Isn't that the truth!!

I will redo my 2020 trips, so it should be easier to rebook the 2nd time around. Except that I'm noticing that with all this free time, I'm finding more (and more!) to add to my itineraries. Another city here, another sight there...I better start working on some new trips, before these become the War and Peace of travel itineraries!

I agree with MariaF . If the 2021 RS tours are a GO, I am planning to take 2 and am building an itinerary around those 2 trips. It’s fun to dream and I stay hopeful that it will all become a reality. On another note re: missing family. I hope you get to see your loved ones soon. Now that our community is out of lockdown I’m going to see my son next week. My heartfelt sorrows to all the people in CA, OR, WA (and surrounding states that are dealing with the smoke) that have lost everything. I wish there was something I could do.

Me too! I am with you

I've been planning a wonderful trip to England/Wales. But my daughter says she wants to go to France for her high school graduation present. (we've already been to England, but I'm an Anglophile!) So I've been planning a trip to France for Spring 2022. But I'm secretly planning the England/Wales trip too! I'm having a really good time researching everything. I'm excited about both, but I feel a little silly planning a UK trip that won't happen for at least 4 years. But everybody has their hobbies!

Supposed to have been boarding a flight to London as I write this. Instead drove 11 hours today to visit my in-laws in Brandon, Manitoba. Brought 4 travel guides with me to pass the time.

My hubby and I had to cancel our May trip to Vienna and Budapest. Very sad but I have 2 different trips planned one that we hope to take November 2021 and what I call our dream trip. Too long and too expensive but fun to plan and dream. We are learning German with Rosetta Stone have had it for a few years and never actually used it. Now we are everyday from 2-3 in the afternoon followed by 1/2 hr of wherever Rick is going. We have seen all the shows but watch them anyway. It takes us away for awhile!

David,
I see you are planning a trip to Armenia. We were looking at a tour by Gate 1 of Armenia and Georgia. What are you planning there?

I have pended all hopeful thoughts of a trip to Europe until next fall, the continual cycle of disappointment and confusion really gets to me. I miss the thrill of heading out to explore a new country and feel like I am trapped here with no hope of escape any time soon.

I missed my trip to Romania with time in Budapest in May, and right about now I would be heading off to London for a few days; my job is stressful and 100 times more so in summer, so I had become happily accustomed to treating myself to a big trip before the hell breaks loose in May, and then again when it quiets down in late September.

We canceled our trip for 2020 but this time has really inspired me to set travel goals and do some travel soul searching. A good friend keep sending me 2021 and 2022 travel ideas and I just sigh. It's going to be painful when I have to tell him no. We want active trips like biking and hiking .... he wants to sit in on a beach somewhere. But I am prepared to say ... this COVID 19 experience has really given me time to think about how we want to spend our limited travel dollars. The silver lining of this long 6 months - from smoke filled eastern Washington.

I too miss Europe and travel, though have been filling free time planning trips to Europe or just fantasizing about them!

While my next trip to Europe is fairly well planned out already (it was to have occurred in late July/early August but for obvious reasons was put off until [hopefully] sometime later next year), I've spent a fair amount of time reading up on other trip ideas, watching travel videos on YouTube, revisiting old Rick Steves episodes and other travel show episodes, and so on. I'm sure I'll have so many potential trips and itineraries laid out by the time travel is again an option, the next issue will be deciding which ones to try first and in what order!

I miss Europe, too. To manage my possible disappointment in advance, I won’t let myself have too much hope for travel in 2021. If one of the RS tours I’m interested in runs, then I will be over the moon. Otherwise I believe 2022 is a more likely time for me to feel safe enough to travel. Meaning I have been vaccinated and Europe is open to Americans again.

Kelly, go ahead and have your pity party for a few days and thanks for letting us feel a bit of group-bonding disappointment. I definitely had one day of feeling incredibly sad.

Travel planning has been a huge hobby for me for the last ten years! I could easily spend entire Saturdays on it when I worked. But for me right now, it just doesn’t hold that same excitement of upcoming anticipation right now. And that’s okay. I decided I needed something completely different, so we are spending 4 hours a week right now at home (we’re retired) helping a charity in Africa that we’ve supported for years. It feels much better to spend that time towards something helpful vs. my travel planning with no timeline right now.

If you look at the hours spent I think I spent more time planning my trips the ON my trips.
But I enjoy the planing. And the build up and excitement of the trip is fun in and of itself.

Of course with my fathers chronic illness I am afraid I won’t be traveling to Europe any time soon as he needs someone to take care of him and with the cost associated with that and with the downturn in work I am afraid I couldn’t afford to go if I had the time.
So I am denied even the fun of planning.

But if I was someone that had to cancel a trip then I would definitely spend the time planning as much as I could. Obviously things will change as hotels air trip schedules and all of that stuff will be effected by the pandemic. And I doubt I would plan a trip to the more rare/ obscure destinations as those probably will be effected the most. You will alwas be able too look at the Eiffel Tower and you will be able to find SOME hotel in Paris. But some little out of the way town with one 4 room inn may be an issue if the inn does not survive the pandemic.

But either way you can have fun doing the research. I have been watching a lot of the videos that I used to plan my last two trips. To kind of relive them. One of them ended two years ago last week and the other started three years ago this coming weekend. So it is fun to relive them. Sort of getting a few more hours of entertainment out of them as it were
And anyone planning a trip for ATP (After The Pandemic) can enjoy the planning while we are stuck at home.

PS I knew the folks on this forum were nice but I never expected you all to give up traveling in 2020 just because I couldn’t go anywhere this year.... 😁

Yep, we're nice about stuff like that.

Well, assuming the timeline for the vaccine is spring and summer 2021, maybe next year? At this point I wouldn't be committing to anything until we see the efficacy of the vaccine on the general population.

With two school-age kids at home, we are planning several contingency trips based on: (1) when it is possible for my wife to travel due to her job related Covid travel restrictions, and (2) our kids school schedules.

So, assuming that my wife cannot travel unrestricted until a vaccine has been widely disseminated (she will get it early while the rest of our family is much lower on the priority list), we are assuming late summer 2021 at the earliest and October 2021 as the most realistic.

Here are my possible options:

July - August 2021
Prague to Ljublana
Croatian coast - Venice to Dubrovnik
London to Dublin
Norway

October 2021
Spain - Malaga to Madrid (this is what ee had to cancel for this October)
Greece - Athens plus an outlying island

March 2022
Loire Valley
Spain - more Southern areas

I am about to watch the virtual screening of a movie at the Toronto Film Festival about truffle hunting in Alba, Italy. We were supposed to be there next month; the movie will have to do for now....