We are still developing our travel plans for this trip, and we have accomplished a few more things in the last couple of weeks.
First, an update on our Delta Flights, specifically the Comfort + seat selections we had made with the latest flight reservation change. In the last post, I explained how we had upgraded our seats and paid an additional $300.00 for the flights to cover the seat upgrade fee. There was an issue with the receipt and I also had to reselect the seats when the reservation went through.
Well today, I received a notification from my credit card company that the charge was being deleted, it had never posted as a charge, it was always “pending”. there must be some type of time frame for the posting to occur or it is dropped, and that had happened today. I called Deta Customer Service for the third time on this same issue, I just knew something was not correct, it had not posted last week when I called either.
I got through to a representative and explained the somewhat unusual situation. The rep completely understood, and checked the ticketing in the Deta system. She was able to see that I had never paid for the upgraded seats, and gave me the fee amount, which was just over a dollar higher than what I had thought it should be. She could not explain the difference, but though that might have been the reason the charge never happened, there was a mismatch in the amounts of the pending charge and the actual amount.
She took my credit card number over the phone and I paid the seat upgrade amount. She immediately sent me a revised receipt, and after I got off of the phone, I was able to see the revised amount including the seat upgrade fee. The mismatch was some type of tax on the seat upgrade charge, it was not much, but enough to throw something off in their system.
I was glad this was resolved, and I had jokingly said I had hoped I was getting the seat upgrade for free, but the rep had told me it would have surfaced at check-in, and I would not have had those seats at that time, they would have shown as unpaid. That had been my fear, and now this was resolved.
On to other plans.
We have also made reservations for the flight from Rovaniemi to Bergen on Finnair. I was able to select one of the early afternoon flights from Rovaniemi departing at 1:00 PM, and arriving in Bergen at 5:20 PM, with a stopover in Helsinki. That gives us a one-hour and 45-minute layover in Helsinki, which should be sufficient. It was the longest layover time available, there is only one flight to Bergen on Finnair in the afternoon.
The reservations were a little odd on the Finnair website. I initially selected the “middle” non-refundable economy rate which also included seat selection privileges, and was changeable. When I went through the process of selecting the flights and seats, I found that there was a seat fee for each selected seat. We just don’t like to leave the seats to chance, so it looked like I was paying for seats. I had noticed that the highest economy rate for the flight included “free” seat selections, so I started over to see what the difference in total fare would be with the other rate. the higher rate was also 100% refundable if canceled before the initial flight, so there was some value in that. What was surprising was that the higher fare was less than the middle fare after adding in the seat selection fees. Well, this was a no-brainer, I could select seats and get a fully refundable airfare for less, so that is what we did.
I guess the airfares are certainly structured differently, maybe it was because these were one-way airfares, but maybe people in Finland don’t care about seat selection, or maybe they just do it at check-in and are good with whatever seats are available, we might not ever know.
We also purchased some trip insurance for the portion of the trip that is not part of the Viking Cruise, which is mostly our time in Finland. We have been making non-refundable reservations, and these need to be protected with travel insurance. The amount we are saving for non-refundable reservations is about three times the cost of the insurance, so it makes sense to get travel insurance to cover the non-refundable reservation costs versus paying more for fully refundable reservations.
We also made a hotel reservation in Helsinki at the Scandic Grand Central Helsinki, which is only about 500 feet from the train station in Helsinki, which is where we catch our night train on Saturday night. There were three different hotels near the train station, and Stephanie and I compared them all on the Booking.com website and decided to reserve the room at the Scandic Grand Central Helsinki, we could get a non-refundable rate savings and we would get a free breakfast.
I was originally booking the reservation through Booking.com, but I always check the rate to reserve the room directly with the hotel. or hotel chain. I saw that if I joined the Scandic Hotel’s “Scandic Friends” program for free, there was a substantial reduction for booking directly on the Scandic Hotel website. Apparently, Scandic is a large hotel chain in Finland and maybe other Scandinavian countries. I joined the program, and once I logged in, the reduced rates automatically came up, so we selected a Superior King Room, it was a little larger and just a few dollars more than the Stabdard Kiing.
We requested a late check-out with the reservation, and it appeared there was a charge but we will pay it if need be, we would have to check out at noon, and then wait until 7:20 PM for the night train departure, so having a little larger room for an extended check out will be nice.
We have not begun any planning for our stay in London at the end of the cruise. However, Stephanie was able to confirm that we can stay with her cousin Michael and his wife, they live in London and he works for the US Embassy there. That will be nice, we just need to find out where they live so we can know how to get around to the sights we want to see.
The next thing we will be working on is determining some of the other activities we want to do both in Finland and on the two extended cruise stops in Tromso and Alta Norway during the cruise. We are looking at dog sledding and reindeer sleigh rides at each location to see what is offered and at the different costs. .
That is about all for this update.
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