I am bummed but glad to safe rather than sick. My wife along with two other couples were going on our annual RS tour doing the Heart of Portugal in 12 day tour. We received our full RS refund over a week ago. We were flying KLM SFO-AMS-LIS and return from Porto. After several attempts at reaching KLM I was able to reach them. They waived the change fee and provided two travel voucher. Which requires booking within one year of cancellation but travel as far out as you can find a flight. We plan to return next year (as long as the World in a better place) so I took the vouchers. Our hotel cancellation was processed via email with no issues. Our pre tour guide was sorry but since we were paying at the tour no refund needed. The folks at Eating Europe who we have used in both Amsterdam and Stockholm were very nice. They offered a 50% additional credit if we took advantage of their Flex-Path vouchers. I jumped at this as I am sure we will be using them again in the future. The Taxi cab I had reserved through the hotel was another matter. It took several attempts to get them to issue a credit which was minus a cancellation fee.
My biggest fight has been with my travel insurance company Seven Corners. It took a week of daily calls to finally get them to call me back. The secret was to call them first thing when they open. Once the option to get a call back was offered I took it and about 3 hours later they called.. Since I was outside my cancellation period, they allowed me to move my travel dates out to what I think will be our 2021 RS tour. As long as the travel does not exceed 30 days and it's within 2 years of my purchase date they will not change me for new policy.
Our 2020 tour was the Best of Eastern Europe and we meet a wonder couple on the trip. As we were looking at 2020 they were booked already but were very interested in the Best of Turkey in 13 days for 2021. So it looks like a late May early June tour of Turkey.
The even better news is my wife expressed interest in doing back to back tours next summer to make up for our missed tour this year. So any suggestions on what works good as a back to back with Turkey would be greatly appreciated.
Sigh... I wish I was on my the plane right now but as Forrest Gump said "Life if like a box of chocolates, you never know what you gonna get."