I have never been to New York...

Adventure Washington - New York

...and that will remain so for now 😭

It was supposed to be an adventure Washington-New York 2020....

The foundation of our Washington-N.Y. trip was already laid in May 2019. At that time, I stumbled upon the tempting flight offers of Singapore Airlines while looking for vacation ideas for 2020, and I immediately booked a flight to New York for Easter 2020 for our family.

At that time, our ticket cost 475 € per adult, our son (still a "child") paid only 365 €. In my eyes, an unbeatable price for the high season Easter holiday time.

In the summer, I booked all the hotels. Since we didn't want to stay in just one city, but also wanted to explore Washington and the Jersey coastline, we needed a lot of hotels.

In the fall, we did the detailed planning. We booked the musical "Frozen," purchased the N.Y. City Pass, reserved tickets at the Capitol in Washington, the National Library, the National Monument, and last but not least, the Statue of Liberty with Crown Access.

The anticipation grew, but then this happened:

A flu-like virus called Covid-19, also known as "Corona," made the world insecure. Initially ridiculed, then suddenly declared a pandemic.

When Mr. President Donald Trump suddenly closed the borders of the USA on March 12, 2020 - 3 weeks before our planned departure to N.Y. - thus "canceling" our planned New York vacation during the Easter holidays, we suspected: 2020 will not be a good travel year!

On March 12, the email from Singapore Airlines promptly arrived:

"Please be advised that SQ026, scheduled to depart on April 4, 2020, 08:35 from Frankfurt, has been canceled."

The information about the canceled return flight arrived a few minutes later.

So, that's it with our N.Y. trip! Over and done with.... 😭😭

The cancellation marathon was tough - many hotels initially did not want to cancel or refund the money because I had unfortunately booked "non-refundable" offers...

But then the "Corona" policy kicked in, and there were special cancellation rights. All hotels refunded the amounts paid without hesitation, only our Airbnb in N.Y. left us stuck. Unfortunately, I had canceled it 24 hours too early after being asked to do so by the host. And that's precisely where the special rule did not apply yet. We will never know if he deliberately tricked us. He was no longer reachable through Airbnb. Many phone calls followed, Airbnb employees confirmed to us that they no longer had any contact either, all apartments were taken off the network by the host, and he was gone. Great! Through the mediator service, we were refunded half of the amount, but at the end of the cancellation day, we were 500 € in the red...

Kudos to Singapore Airlines - they promptly refunded us the entire amount! Actually, we didn't want to cancel, we just wanted to reschedule the flights (the price was unbeatable!), but since our son turned 12 after the vacation, he would book an adult ticket the following year - unfortunately, the children's ticket couldn't be rebooked for the following year...

Too bad - but that's how it is now. Everything was canceled!

We hope for 2021!!!