WHAT A BUMMER (All Caps)

I miss the pre-pandemic days when my brain wasn't mush.

Sighhhhh. Remember when I excitedly announced to whoever is still reading this travel chronicle that we were off to Portugal in September in what would be our first international voyage since COVID-19 ravaged the world? Remember how hyped I was that both my kids got fully vaxxed and that we would go someplace none of us has been to before? Man, I even started using language apps to learn conversational Portuguese in preparation for our vacay-slash-recon-mission.

Well, all our plans got shot to shit last night. After weeks of bugging the J-Man to book our accommodations and plot out our Portugal itinerary (we’ve only booked flights at that point), he finally agreed to sit down and look over the meticulous research I’ve collated for our trip. We decided what towns to hit. We found a rental in Lisbon we’d be staying in for a week after looking over pages of options on VRBO and booked it. He started looking up train tickets and in the middle of filling out the reservation, asked if I had our passport information written down somewhere. I said yeah, it’s in our shared note, check there.

“Uhhh….Is this right? Older Kid’s passport expired in 2021?”

My Brain: WTF are you talking about, dude?! How could that be? We were able to book our flights! I ran into our bedroom closet, yanked our box marked “Essentials” open, and rifled through it until I got the ziplock bag containing our passports out.

Yep. Date of expiration, May 2021. What an absolute clusterfuck. My heart sank.

Now, normally, this wouldn’t be a biggie. Plans change and travel dates can be moved. However, if you’re the sort of people who opt for the non-refundable, non-changeable ticket rate, the sort of individuals who scoff at getting travel insurance—because, why would we need it? We’re super sure we’re going, right?—then it becomes a costly snafu. Thousands of dollars down the drain.

It also totally escaped my mind that kids’ passports don’t have the same validity period as adults. I honestly thought we were all good to go, that it hasn’t been long since we flew internationally so there shouldn’t be any issues. Apparently, apart from being the promo-fare-without-insurance type of people, we are also the kind who skip the optional portion of the booking process that asks you to enter your passport information to save time. Yay, us. No wait, the J-Man actually by some miracle didn’t skip that portion while booking the train tickets, so yay only me.

Luckily, VRBO gives out full refunds if you cancel quickly (my cancellation request is still pending as of this writing), but I can’t help but feel like a dick for saying “I’m coming with my family to visit the area for the first time, excited to stay at your place and see what Lisbon has to offer!” then saying “Whoopsies, turns out my son can’t get on a plane because we’re dumdums who assumed his passport was up-to-date, sorry for the hasslesauce!” mere minutes after they accepted my booking.

There was, however, the matter of trying to get a refund for our flight (multiplied by four people) and having to talk to airline customer service to do it. *deep breath* I expected it to be quite the endeavor, having to be on hold for a long time only to be told that nah, sorry cheapskates, you get lose what you paid for. But it was actually pretty easy. We downloaded the mobile app and hit the chat button until we were connected with a rep. We explained the situation and asked what would happen if we cancel our flight, would we be able to get credit?

Whoever is running this world simulation must have taken pity on us because they programmed the code to generate a loophole for us to abuse. The airline rep informed us that since there was a scheduling change in our flight, we actually had the right to reject it and request for a refund, that under normal circumstances, basic economy tickets are non-refundable and non-changeable but since the airline caused the changes, we were covered.

Our original flight schedule was changed by five minutes.

Yeah, I am of course immensely disappointed that we won’t be able to go to Europe as planned, but you’ve got to appreciate the immense luck we’ve had considering the distressing circumstances. We’re going to take care of our son’s passport renewal, which could take between 5 to 11 weeks to process (paying for the expedited option, in case it makes a difference). By the time we get the thing, it’d probably be too expensive to book the same trip, so we’re discussing other alternatives. We can probably use the same airline for our next flight (whatever the destination we decide on) and book the same accommodations when we eventually push through with Portugal.

So yeah, that happened. Not a complete shit show, at least. I’m currently alternating between relief, anxiety, and dismay so if you all would excuse me, I’m gonna need to eat my feelings, listen to some up-and-at-em tunes, and get over the loss of what would have been an amazing escapade.

See ya later! 🤟🏼