Flexing the COVID-Affected Italy Travel Plan

“OMG, what did you do?” you may be asking yourself.

Well, the stress levels went up a bit, let me tell you. Rick Steves Europe is a great tour company, but it’s definitely not a hand-holding operation. And they are quite clear about that - you book your own airfare, figure out how to get to the starting hotel, deal with your own luggage, etc. And if you get COVID, well…you are on your own pretty much.

Which is understandable - the guides have 20 other people to deal with, and a schedule to keep. I think Bob said it best when communciating with the tour office - “Leaving the tour is by its nature I suppose a rather abrupt process—one day you’re comfortably on the tour with plans firmly set and the next day you’re essentially orphaned in a hotel room in Palermo Sicily with no plan.  Mentally you need to work through that change in a hurry.  We understood the RS no hand holding policy regarding leaving tours, but it’s another thing to experience it firsthand.”  

We spent the first part of the day dealing with immediate concerns. Our guide arranged for us to stay another 3 nights at the tour hotel - we had to check out Sunday, the hotel had no availability after that. We got on the phone with TravelGuard travel insurance to find out what would be required for any claims. We communicated with Rick Steves Europe about documentation for insurance and the prorated refund we would get from the tour. We contacted On Call Global Assistance, the resource the tour contracted with for exactly this kind of situation, and found them useless. The best resource? Hotel front desk staff. They were awesome.

Then we walked down the street to a pharmacy that offered COVID testing, so we would have the required documentation for travel insurance - and, oddly, for Rick Steves Europe. Despite the fact that the initial test was administered by their guide, and we were kicked off the tour by Rick Steves Europe - we had to provide proof of the positive test to initiate the refund. (note: they did say “self-test” results were accepted, but no info on what, exactly, that could be. A photo? Don’t know.)

And then we went to lunch. This is what someone with COVID looks like at an outdoor waterfront restaurant in Palermo:

We discussed next steps, and decided to look at continuing to tour Sicily on our own. Maybe take the train Sunday to Catania, do day-trips from there to Mt Etna, Siracusa and Taormina. Then continue with the original plan to fly from Catania to Naples and travel to Sorrento.

And then we looked at the weather. Rain. All week.

New plan! After exploring a possible Cinque Terra option, we decided on Rome. I easily changed our flight on RyanAir (and it was so easy, their app was great to use…the actual flight, not so much). Could not believe my luck in finding a room at Hotel Cellini, not far from the Rome train station and walkable to pretty much everything - it was, after all, the week before Easter.

And then we sat back and tried to figure out what to do with 3 unexpected days in Palermo, with COVID restricting what we felt we could responsibly do.