The "Before:" Where There’s a Will, There's a Way

It's September 8th, 2020. Today marks exactly six months since my last international trip. And in 48 hours, I'll be boarding a plane for my next one.

It's been six months since I arrived home after an unforgettable week-long yoga reteat with Yoga Escapes in Marrakech, Morocco. Only to be followed by a blissful 24-hour layover in Lisbon, Portugal, a city I fell in love with nearly two years before. That was March 8th, 2020. Like many of my trips, I was on a high. Travel and exploring new places has become a part of who I am, who I aspire to be and has provided me countless opportunities for education across this diverse world we live in.

And in 48 hours, I will board a plane, ultimately bound for Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Best Laid Plans....

Back in February not long before I left for Morocco, I booked plane tickets to Slovenia and Croatia for 10 days of solo traveling before ending up at a yoga retreat in Rovinj, Croatia. I'd been craving a good country and city hopping solo journey for ages. As I mentioned in my most recent blog, the last one I experienced that was more than a few days was the trip that started in Switzerland. Despite having traveled a lot since then, it had been six years since that solo jaunt and Croatia was at the top of my list. I was set to leave on Labor Day which is one of my favorite weeks to travel since most of the world is back to work and school after their summer holidays.

And then. Well, COVID happened. Before I go any further. Yes, Croatia is letting us in as I've been asked more times than I can count over the past several weeks and months after sharing my upcoming travel plans with friends. And yes, there are restrictions and guidelines. Trust me, I've been following the ever-changing updates for months. It became part of my daily routine. It kept me awake at night. It left me cautiously optimistic most days. And gave me a sense of dread and apprehension on other days. On those days of apprehension I walked many miles and reminded myself to just breathe. It was during several of those walks that I often found my determination to make this work, if at all possible.

On the roller coaster..... I'm not going to lie and say it's all been smooth sailing. As the pandemic hit and nearly everything shut down only a mere week after I arrived home from Morocco, I never dreamed we'd still be sitting here with many restrictions still in place and many borders closed to us six months later. In the beginning, September felt far away. Those first few months, I didn't give up hope. I couldn't. Certainly the world would figure this out and we'd have this virus under control by the end of the summer, right? But, although I had the travel guides for Croatia and Slovenia sitting on my coffee table, having checked them out from the library before I left for Morocco, they remained untouched for months. I saw them everyday, dusted around them but couldn't bring myself to pick them up and read them. I guess in a way it felt like I could not truly plan my trip until I knew for sure it would happen.

By June, the worry started to set in. I was about 90 days out from departure. Our quarantine here in Virginia was to end on June 10th, a date that had been ingrained in my head since it had been announced in late March. We entered Phase 1 of reopening and as I read the criteria for us to move through the next several phases, the timeline put us back into potential normalcy much too close to my departure on Labor Day, September 7th. Yep, that was yesterday. I checked my flights, several of my legs were waitlisted. But, I had the ability to change flights free of charge before July 31st. So, I decided to wait it out a bit longer and breathe and hope.

On July 1st, a date I anticipated for weeks, the European Union announced that it would not be opening its borders to the United States. I'll be honest; it was a blow. But, after a little bit of research, just a few days later I learned that Croatia was indeed allowing Americans to enter for the purpose of tourism with proof of booked accommodations. Faith was restored, but my trip was still over two months away. Things were changing daily and this virus wasn't going away. Around that same time through one of my many google searches I found a Viber group on a website run by local Croatians who were working to provide updates on the current restrictions and any other needed information for anyone who wanted to travel to Croatia. At its peak there were over 6000 people in this chat group. The message feed was overwhelming, but the information it provided was priceless.

On July 10th another announcement came. The requirement that a PCR test (nasal swab) with negative COVID results, no older than 48 hours upon arriving at the border, must be presented to avoid quarantine for citizens of the U.S. The Viber chat group messages exploded. There were 100's of messages from travelers wanting to know where they could get tested both across the U.S. and in Croatia. There were also stories of successful flights and border entries, and the best airports to transit through in the EU. Information was shared regarding which documents to bring to ensure you could check in for the flights in the U.S., how to present the test results upon arrival and more. Reading through the messages became routine as I went on my nearly daily post work walk. It was from that group I learned so much about what I'd need and how to do this trip safely. It was overwhelming, but almost addictive- anyone who likes to research with a purpose will understand. By the end of July I hit another low. Things were not changing and I just did not see an end to this pandemic in sight. But, I realized I needed to get out of my funk and just plan my trip. Plan as if I was going, knowing that if I had to cancel, it'd all be planned out for when I could go. By this point it was about six weeks away. And even though I'd very successfully planned an extensive solo journey in six weeks or less before, this was different. The bad news was that while I knew Croatia was indeed letting us in, Slovenia, where I'd planned to start my trip was not. I had also tentatively planned to do day trips to Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzagovnia from Dubrovnik, but since borders were also involved there were additional restrictions that would likely make my planned day trips there more challenging, if at all possible. Since a few of my flights were still showing as waitlisted, I called United, pushed my departure back three days so I'd start in Croatia and tried to end in Slovenia in hopes that by September the borders would be open. Sadly, I wasn't able to get a return flight from Slovenia so my time in Ljubljana and Lake Bled was axed from my trip. This was likely going to be a one country trip. And if it happened, that would be ok.

Research, research, research..... Then, I did what I always do when planning a solo journey; I dusted off those long-neglected travel guides on my coffee table, jumped on Trip Advisor and started planning. Where I'd stay, for how long, and what I'd do in each city I planned to visit in those eight days before I arrived in Rovinj for the yoga retreat, which, by the way, was still on. It took about a week to find hotels and figure out a rough itinerary. I scoured over cancelation details for each place I booked and tour or activity I wanted to do. By early August I had all my hotels booked, a rough itinerary planned and was researching my transport options between cities. Then...I checked my new flights. Mere days after I changed everything, one of my new European flights was waitlisted again. There was nothing to do but wait it out. A few weeks later that flight was confirmed. Things were moving in the right direction. By two weeks before my departure, I had found a private car service with a driver/guide, booked my four transfers between cities, several with stops, communicated with the owners of the various tours I wanted to do. Typed everything out and was ready to go. I scheduled not one, but two PCR (nasal swab) COVID tests for the day before my departure to ensure I'd have the results for at least one before I landed in Croatia and hopefully one before I boarded the plane here in the U.S. Overkill? Perhaps, but the hope was that I could rest and relax by having my test results in hand on my journey over rather than hoping they'd be in my inbox by the time I landed in Dubrovnik. I had been stocking up on masks, wipes and hand sanitizer for months for this trip. I planned to self-isolate starting 10 days before I left and to shop for nearly everything I needed to self-quarantine for 14 days after I returned home. I had every document I could possibly need printed in duplicate and had all the necessary travel forms filled out. I was set. Or so I thought.

One last hurdle....

Friday, August 28th. I was on my way home from an essentials run to the grocery store in a massive thunder storm. Sitting in front of my house in my car waiting for the rain to let up, I checked my email and found a message from United. My connection from Zurich to Dubrovnik on the way over had changed, adding 12 hours to my trip. I'd be arriving just before 12 midnight when I was originally scheduled to arrive at 12 noon. Pre-pandemic, I would have taken this all in stride, found a way to leave the airport during my 8-hour layover in Zurich (which, ironically I had on my original flights to Slovenia) and make the most of it. But leaving the transit zone of the airport wasn't possible and I was chasing COVID test results with a timeline. While I'd read that they would accept them if they were within two calendar days, arriving just before midnight put that in severe jeopardy. Sure, I could get retested upon arrival (which is the case if you arrive with expired results) but I'd essentially lose my entire day and a half in Dubrovnik being tested and waiting for the results. So, the next morning, after researching the flight options that would work, I called United again and after an hour on the phone had it changed so that I was arriving only two hours behind my original arrival time. I cannot even express to you the relief I felt. After all the reading, preparing, and hoping I was not about to let this trip slip through my fingers less than two weeks before departure.

Am I Really Ready for This??

You might ask, is the thought that we're still in the middle of the pandemic scary to me? Yes and no. I've read countless articles about the air-filtration on airplanes and protocols that hotels and restaurants are using to ensure health and safety. I've watched the seat maps for my flights for the last several days and plan to pick a seat with an entire row to myself when I check in tomorrow- which is what I normally try to do. There are over 130 empty seats on my long leg to Munich. I plan to wipe down the seat and everything around me like I have been for years, only now I won't get the funny looks like I'm a germaphobe, that I did pre-pandemic. The flying part doesn't scare me. I have plenty of wipes to clean everything I'll touch in my hotels. I am packing enough masks and hand sanitizer to travel for months along with a lot of patience and determination. So, I board a plane in 48 hours. First to Munich, then to Dubrovnik. Am I excited? A little, perhaps because it hasn't truly hit me yet that I am boarding a plane in 48 hours. Right now, I'm just waiting to exhale when I get there. You might also ask, was the roller coaster of emotions and tireless research keeping up with all the changes worth it? Well, I told myself I wouldn't post the before part of this adventure until I knew for sure there would be a during. And, well, if you're reading this shortly after I posted it you'll realize it's no longer September 8th, but three days later, September 11th. And that picture below, that's the view from my room Dubrovnik. Yes, I've arrived, safely I might add. And there will be a during to write about...stay tuned. In the meantime, time to go explore!

"In the end it's not what you have been through that defines who you are; it's how you got through it that has made you the person you are today, and the person you are capable of being tomorrow." - Unknown