We have continued our planning effort for this trip even though we are still not certain it will happen because of the Covid 19 Virus. We have been seeing that the European Union (EU) is starting to establish opening dates for International travel to all of the countries in the EU. From what we have been reading, Switzerland is following the EU guidelines, as well as a few other non-EU countries, which was encouraging since a good portion of our travel is in Switzerland.
We have purchased our travel insurance policy, and bought it within 21 days of our United Flight reservations so that we would be able to benefit from the “Pre Existing Conditions” waiver. Ironically, if we are unable to go because of Covid, the insurance probably will not provide us with any coverage because it is a known pandemic. Only if we have to cancel for some other reason, such as a medical conditions for us our our mom’s, we would get some benefit from the insurance, but since we have gotten all fully refundable hotel reservations, our only non-refundable cost is the flight. For that, we will be able to make a change without any penalty and use the airfare credit within a year, so there is not any real cost there either. Probably the biggest benefit from the insurance would be if there was some situation that forced us to come home early after we already left, so that does give us some comfort.
As of today, we have also completed all of our accommodations reservations for the trip. As we were finalizing those reservations, we also made a couple of minor changes to the Itinerary. Instead of staying for three nights in Interlaken, we chose to go to a small town nearby called Grindelwald. We chose that town after reading a lot of recommendations for smaller towns near Interlaken, which is not that scenic of a city. It is not far from Interlaken, but more convenient to see some of the mountain sights in the area.
Several of our accommodations are apartments. On our last trip to Italy in 2019, we had a few apartment type accommodations and realized that they are much more roomy and also afford us the opportunity to eat meals in since there is a kitchen. They are not that much more expensive, but usually do come with a cleaning fee, but that is worth having the extra space. In addition, we have selected apartments with clothes washers at strategic points in the trip so we can more easily do laundry. Hand washing clothes in a sink is not fun. Lastly, apartments afford us free parking for our rental car that we have at the end of the trip. Hotels in city centers may have parking, but usually at a cost of 20-25 euros per night.
One other itinerary change was to eliminate staying in the town of Lienz, Austria. Instead, we will be staying in a small town north of Lienz called Großkirchheim. This is near the start of a very scenic drive called the Großglockner-
Our next stay will be in Fusch an der Glocknerstraße, which is a small town on the northern end of the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, but outside of the portion of the highway that requires the purchased daytime pass.
The only other small modification was to make a final determination on our last night’s stay before we fly home from Munich. After considering several options, we selected to stay the last night in Salzburg, and train to the Munich airport from there in the morning. Our flight is not until 12:20 PM, so we have plenty of time to make the 2.5 hour transit from Salzburg to the Munich Airport if we leave about 6:30 AM. It was not much easier to stay in a hotel near the airport, we still would have two public transportation rides from the airport train station to and from the hotel, about 20 minutes each. We just opted to make the transit directly to the airport from Salzburg and avoid having to take those two bus rides with luggage in tow. We will still need to take a bus to the Salzburg train station, or we may opt for a taxi. Buses are generally on time early in the morning and not too crowded. Only time will tell if we made the right choice.
The remainder of the Itinerary is the same. We will add the revised Itinerary in separate update. We will also be adding a listing of our accommodations in a separate post, with links to each of the properties websites, if one exists. We made all of our reservations through Booking.com, we have used them in the past with great success, and hope this continues for this trip.
One last note. We will be renting a car once we get to Innsbruck and have that for the remainder of the trip until we leave Salzburg. We will have to drop the car off at the train station in Salzburg the day before we fly home, they are not open early enough to drop it off the morning we transit to Munich. Unfortunately, keeping the car and driving to Munich was not an option financially. Since we start the car rental in Austria, dropping it off in Germany added a significant drop off fee of around $300, not worth the cost. The total for the rental, with drop off in Salzburg, Austria is about $545 for the 10 day rental through Auto-Europe. The rental will be through Budget in Innsbruck, so hopefully we will not have any issues, although online reviews are not that good. However, the reviews were not any better for Avis, our only other feasible option. We will continue to look at the rental prices, we have not completed the rental, but it will be 100% refundable when we make the reservation. (Footnote: It is a little ironic that the desk to rent both an Avis Car and Budget Car is the same at the Innsbruck Airport and for drop-off at the Salzburg Train Station. The prices did vary between the two companies. We did not find this out until we rented the car through AutoEurope later in our planning)