"Focus on the journey, not the destination." - Greg Anderson
*END OF 2022 UPDATE*
We DID take the risk and traveled to London, Belgium, and Amsterdam in September. We also DID come home with COVID (darn it). It was still a great trip and we were lucky to have relatively mild cases.
It’s surreal to be here in December of 2021 with the COVID pandemic still such a prevalent part of daily life in the United States and around the globe. A couple of months ago, we started discussing plans to go on our trip abroad that was initially planned for 2020. We started to feel that antsy excitement and anticipation while discussing dates and possibilities for London, Belgium, Amsterdam, and Paris because we were vaccinated, boosted, and actually felt pretty comfortable with the idea of going to a faraway destination.
Enter Omicron (or Megatron as we like to jokingly call it).
We were hoping to book our trip for spring of 2022 to catch all of the beautiful flowers in the cities on our itinerary, but now we find ourselves back in a holding pattern. Do our vaccines/boosters still do anything? Are cases of this variant generally more mild? Will we even be allowed to get in and out of all of the countries we are interested in visiting? The questions are pretty endless.
Let’s take a moment to acknowledge that everyone has their own level of risk that they are comfortable with. Throughout 2020 and 2021, we didn’t feel comfortable leaving the country due to the risk of months of planning falling apart due to a positive COVID test, or worse, having to quarantine abroad due to one. Naturally, as soon as we started to see the light at the end of the tunnel, we have been pushed back into uncertainty with this new variant and rising cases. We may actually be pretty high on the risk-averse spectrum based on the many travel pages we enviously watch still traveling throughout the pandemic.
Many times we have wished that we could just take the risk and “go with the flow,” but with the loss of Pam’s mom this year due to a respiratory virus, and other family members we are concerned about, we struggle to do that. We worry that we would miss that “carefree” feeling that we used to revel in while traveling abroad and that it would be replaced by anxiety about testing, entry requirements, and trying to stay safe.
With all of this said, we are trying to remain positive that this variant will not be as serious and may be being blown out of proportion. We probably won’t continue with plans for Spring 2022 at the moment, but as more accurate research comes out, our fingers are crossed that we can go ahead with some planning for Summer or Fall. In the meantime, we will continue to find fun and interesting places to visit around the U.S. We have a trip to Charleston, South Carolina, and Florida planned for this winter since we will desperately need a change of scenery and some warmer weather! We will be trying to live by the quote at the top of the page, “focus on the journey, not the destination.”
For those of you that have traveled abroad a lot during this time, did you experience any of this uncertainty? What tips do you have for travelers like us that are itching to go abroad while staying as safe as possible? Let us know in the comments or shoot us a message!
We know that we can't be the only travel lovers facing these dilemmas during this crazy time, so we hope that a little solidarity is helpful for those of you who are in the same boat. Thank you all for sticking with us and we hope you all have a wonderful holiday!
We'll have to start to go by “mother and daughter who really wish they were abroad” for the time being (*crying*).
Nikki + Pam
