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Tag Archive: COVID

11/2021 – Where to spend Christmas in a world gone crazy from COVID?

After 25 months of hanging out in the states, several cancelled trips, a few rescheduled trips, in September 2021 we decided things were looking good enough to plan a Christmas trip to Germany for the Christmas markets, a visit with a German friend and meet up with some Iowa friends who had the same idea we did.

We bought the tickets from Lufthansa – direct to Munich so no stops to cause possible problems.  We found some great hotel rates since December in Munich is not a big visit time, lined up a schedule with Jutta and Sam and Josh. We were fully vaccinated and even got our boosters in November.  We investigated how to get the online Vax Pass for Germany, where to get a COVID test 72 hours before flying home to Denver and uploaded the Luca app for contact tracing in Munich.

Everything was looking pretty good when COVID decided to attack Germany. We watched Bavaria and Saxony cancel their Christmas markets only a few days before the markets were supposed to start during Thanksgiving week. After we watched rules change for restaurants and museums, we gave in! Cancelled everything and rebooked our plane tickets for some made up dates next Fall.

Now where could we go for Christmas?  We knew Hawaii was packed already but what about Tahiti?  United flies direct from San Francisco, seats were available, and we could find hotels to stay in.  Why not?? About 4 days later, we’d booked the flights, reserved hotels, and investigated Tahiti entrance rules – not in that order!

Paperwork and testing!

We needed to fill out a ETIS (electronic permission to board the plane and enter the country), prove we’d been vaccinated and pay $50 each for testing when we landed.  At this point, we also needed a COVID PCR test within 72 hours before departing – 2:05 PM 12/7.

Tahiti gave us permission to come, took our $100, and all the documentation still told us we needed a COVID test (PCR) 72 hours or an antigen test 48 hours before departure from San Francisco.  This meant we needed COVID tests after 2:05 PM on Saturday 12/4.  We went on-line and managed to find one in FC.  Actually, we found and scheduled 2 different ones in Fort Collins just to be sure – one for money and one for free.

I’m a big chicken when it comes to scheduling flights out of Denver in the winter with connections so we were flying from DEN – SFO on Monday 12/6 and then SFO – PPT on 12/7 (Tuesday). 

Everything is going merrily along when Thursday 12/2 hits.  I checked the French Polynesia entry requirement ONE more time (I have them memorized at this point.) and see that Tahiti changed the COVID test to 48 hours before departure, thanks to our Omicron friend.  Now we need our test after 2:05 PM on Sunday. Time to cancel the FC 72-hour tests.  (BTW – United still said 72 hours on their Travel Ready website and we’re thinking there are going to be LOTS of pissed people at the airport.)

Now what are we going to do?  It is really hard to find a test in FC on Sunday that will get you results quickly.  There’s always the SFO airport but those tests cost about $250 each and we made some reservations there just in case.  Mark did great research and found a place in SF who would do a test on Monday afternoon and was even free.  Another set of reservations were made!  We just needed to take BART into the city and go from there.

Now it’s Friday and United texts us to inform us that Tahiti changed their entrance requirements to a test 24 hours before departure. I’m pretty sure they were wrong but who am I to argue with United when they control access to their planes?  More research!  Mark finds a place that will perform rapid antigen tests in San Bruno about 4 miles from our hotel by SFO.  We make more reservations for after 2:05 PM on Monday and cancel the ones in the city.  We rent a car for the day, too, so we can actually get to the test site.

Saturday and Sunday, I keep checking United and French Polynesia which still don’t agree. 

Monday rolls around, we fly to San Francisco, pick up a car, and wait until close to our reservation time for our COVID test.  Google maps gets us to the address which has the correct signs and is a repurposed shipping container. We drive up; fill out a bunch of forms on our phones while we sit in the car.  The lady does the test and we head off to Target to pick up some socks since Susan forgot to pack any.  By the time we bought socks, our results were available.  We passed!

SFO was ready for Christmas!

Back to the hotel for the next stress point.  United makes you upload a picture of your passport and the app has a bit of trouble actually focusing. No, you cannot upload a jpg file. The app has to take the picture.  We also had to upload the file with our COVID test results.  Mark downloads the file on his tablet and uploads it to the United website.  Approved!  Susan downloads the file on her laptop and uploads it to United. Fail!  Not accepted!  Try number 2 – Fail!  Mark reads the comments closely and sees that the file can’t be read.  SO … Susan sends link to Mark, he downloads the file on his tablet and uploads it to United – Approved!

We are ready to go and had a few beers and wine at dinner to celebrate! 

Lessons learned for COVID travel:

  • Check and double check and triple check the rules and regulations for testing. Everyday is a good benchmark!
  • Print out EVERYTHING!  If you have any form that is electronic, print it out.
  • Take then entire pile of paper with you on your flight.
  • Download any files that you couldn’t print to your phone AND to any other device you are traveling with.

One Year Later – 4/2021

I just looked at the last post I put on the website and it was 13 months ago – March 8, 2020. I see that we weren’t too worried about COVID at the time. Little did we know about the illness, deaths, online school, toilet paper shortage, cancelled and changed plans of everything from travel to graduations to weddings that were about to occur.

This website is about our travels and I want to update you on the travels we’ve done in the last year. First is where we left off in Kona, Hawaii in March 2020. We changed our return flight and flew home 10 days early when it seemed as if no one had any idea what was happening with domestic travel. We landed at 6 AM in Denver to a virtually empty airport and drove home to FC with very little traffic.

One of the resort cats who loved to sit on the chairs with us to sleep in the sun and help with SUDUKO.
Empty airport at 6 AM in Denver

Our travel work for the next month was undoing all the plans we’d already made when it became apparent that travel had come to a halt worldwide! Seabourne cancelled our sailing from Miami – Morocco – Funchal – Barcelona, leaving us to undo flights. After many a phone call with United we got all our money back. It helped that they changed one of our flights by about 8 hours! Hotels to cancel, “Hamilton” tickets in London to cancel, walking tours to cancel … Then we started on the Berlin and Munich flights and hotels moving on to a flight to Singapore and a cancelled trip with a German friend to Nepal. We could quickly see where this year was heading even if we did have lots of Costco TP in our basement.

Sum total of April 2020 travel. The most distant points are Costco and a friend’s house for drinks on their patio.

May, June – nothing to report. July we drove up to Steamboat where we were lucky enough to stay for a 2 weeks in a friend’s condo on the mountain. Nice place to escape! Not to be forgotten was a one day road trip to Breckenridge to be friend’s “responsible adults” after hand surgery. The traffic was the best we’ve seen on I-70 in years.

Clark, CO valley near Steamboat.
“Masks required” coming off Rabbit Ears Pass into Steamboat

August, September – nada! October we escaped for the weekend to Denver!

Social Distancing at Jackson’s Bar and Grill in Denver

We spent 4 days at Thanksgiving in a nice cabin in Estes Park. The park didn’t need reservations at that time of year and the scenery is always good. December, January, February, March – more no travel!

Now it’s April 2021 – 13 months after this all started and we’re back in Maul, thanks to vaccinations and negative COVID tests. We followed the state of Hawaii rules – account on Hawaii Safe Travels, negative COVID test at approved sites, Health questionnaire, magic QR code – and here we are. DIA was much more crowded than this time last year. Yeah! It feels great to be someplace different for a while.

First flight in a year!
Morning rainbow
Pineapple Wheat to go with poke ….Yummmm

That’s the end of the 2021 travels but it IS only April! The EU announced today they are going to be open to fully vaccinated individuals from the U.S. so we are hoping MAYBE to get a trip in to the Christmas Markets in Germany.