The Covid-19 pandemic is still with us, but as of March, 2021, vaccinations are being given across the globe, and the number of cases is dropping. We will see if the cases continue to drop as we go forward.
Stephanie has been fully vaccinated with both doses of the Moderna Vaccine for several weeks. She received her vaccines through her workplace, a skilled nursing rehab facility, which was included in Phase 1a of the vaccine rollout. As of this post date, I have received my first dose of the Moderna Vaccine, with my second shot scheduled for April 5, 2021. Luckily, the Governor of South Carolina included anyone over the age of 55 with the Phase 1b vaccine rollout, and I was able to schedule an appointment for my vaccine through our local Publix Pharmacy. I had been looking at the online registration site for Publix vaccines for a few days, and luckily, Stephanie saw the breaking news story on one of her patient’s TV about the announcement from the Governor updating the qualifications for the vaccine distribution, which was to start on March 8, 2021.
I went online immediately and was able to secure a vaccine appointment for 10:00 AM on March 8, 2021 at Publix. Within about 20 minutes, all of the appointments were filled at all of the Publix stores within our immediate area. I could have initially scheduled an appointment for either March 5th or 6th, but was concerned that I might be turned down since my age group was not “officially” qualified until Monday, March 8, per the Governor’s announcement. I took the conservative approach and chose the 8th just to be sure. When I went for my vaccine, they only asked who I was at the check-in, no proof of identity was required, so it led me to believe I could have gone to an earlier appointment.
Part of that may have been that we are registered with Publix for our prescriptions, so I was already in their system. It was only a few days difference, and after waiting as long as I did to qualify, I was just glad to get the appointment for the first dose. Enough of our vaccine history.
We made the decision to go ahead and re-start the planning effort for this trip. We will at least refine the trip itinerary, and look at booking fully refundable hotels or apartments. I was looking into airfare, and it is about $2,800 for both of us to fly to Europe in September. Luckily, all of the airlines are waiving change fees, but the fares are still non-refundable, so we need to better define our dates and itinerary before purchasing flights.
Our preliminary planning dates are for a departure on or around Tuesday, September 7, 2021 and return on either Friday, October 1, or Saturday, October 2. This would give us a trip duration of 24-25 days.
We are still looking at flying into Zurich, Switzerland, and departing from Munich, Germany. This gives us good starting and stopping points for making a somewhat circular path as shown on our preliminary Itinerary map that we previously posted. However, we are discussing making a possible alteration to our plan and maybe skipping revisiting both Lucerne and Zermatt in Switzerland. As much as we liked visiting there on a previous trip, maybe that would be time better spent in some new locations. One possibility would be to start the trip in Milan, Italy instead of Zurich. We will need to investigate other cities to visit, either in northern Italy if we fly into Milan, or other cities in Switzerland if we fly into Zurich, as planned.
In any event, any accommodation reservations we make will be fully refundable in case we have to cancel due to the pandemic. We will hold off on making any flight reservations for a while, and continue to monitor the prices.
This is all for this update, but we are excited to at least feel like we have a trip in the works again after all of the Covid-19 restrictions.