We have two tickets to fly to Rome, Italy in three days. But Italy just imposed a country-wide quarantine because of COVID-19. This comes as a relief, as we bought airline tickets, a rental car reservation, and hotel and AirBnB reservations months ago. We were planning to go anyway up until today, though it was getting more difficult to figure out how we were going to arrive in Rome and somehow make it up to Zurich without driving through northern Italy. When the quarantine was expanded to all of Lombardy, I contacted the hotel in Como to ask for a refund. They e-mailed me back today and said:

“We are afraid for the actual situation in Italy and in particularly in Lombardy. We hope to quickly reach healthcare solution.

“We accept and confirm the cancellation of yours reservations, without any penalties.”

I hate planning trips because I’d much rather be spontaneous and go with the flow. But this was a trip that Berck had promised to take his mother on, and he made me plan each day and night between Rome and Zurich. I worked really hard on this trip.

But maybe we can cut and paste for next year.

We’ve spent the evening cancelling our AirBnB reservations. In Italy AirBnB will let us cancel them for full refunds because of the Coronavirus. So far they’re only giving us half refunds for Switzerland, so we’ll see what happens there.

My mom has been e-mailing me articles about the Coronavirus daily, and my boss told me I needed to talk to the other two partners about possibly self-quarantining once I got back. Berck and I have been watching the news carefully, since it changes by the hour. I worked from home all day yesterday to try to make up for the two days I was going to be gone this week. I was going to work late every other day this week, but Berck texted me the BBC article tonight, and I turned out of my office light and went home.