We didn’t set about to travelling through 4 different countries in the midst of a global pandemic. However we found ourselves in a situation in July 2020, after the Government opened up airbridges where we couldn’t cancel and claim the holiday we planned and had payed for back in December 2019 on insurance. I decided to write this to record our family experience and help others who maybe worried about travelling at present and the months to come.
In December 2019 my husband found some great priced plane tickets to Bari in southern Italy. An area of Italy we had often looked at visiting in the past. We decided to combine the trip with a stop in Switzerland, to visit my brother, who lives with his family in Basel and spend a long weekend with my parents to celebrate my fathers 80th birthday. My parents had also bought tickets to fly out with us from the UK to have a family celebration for a long weekend in Switzerland however they decided to stay at home given that they are in their late 70’s and 80’s and in a high risk group for Covid 19.
Stopping in Basel gave us the opportunity to fly direct to Naples and visit the sites of Pompei, Vesuvius and Herculaneum before travelling to other side on the boot to visit Puglia (Apulia). So we went for it and booked our plane tickets, very expensive one way car hire (from Naples to Bari) and our accommodation. We had dreamed of visiting Puglia and staying in a beautiful Trullo. We spent evening after evening looking for the perfect Trullo which ticked all the boxes; pool, my husbands insistence of air con, a separate room for the kids with a real bed as opposed to a sofa bed and in beautiful surroundings. In the end we found 2 so decided to split our time in Puglia with 5 night sin one and 3 in the other.
In truth once we had gone into a national lockdown in March I had assumed that our holiday would not happen as I couldn’t imagine that we would be able to leave our borders and risk the rise of R again! So I had gone into full vegetable planting mode knowing that this summer we would be here to pick our precious vegetables for once! We also restarted a search for our elusive dream of owning a camper van. A dream which we had once had but went down the tent route instead. Here was the opportunity to pursue that dream and we thought we might spend the summer camping around our beautiful land.
A month before our departure date I called our insurance company to cancel our holiday unfortunately our insurance only kicked in 28 days before our depture date and on the 29th day before departure the Government changed the travel restrictions to the countries we were going to visit, namely France (Basel Airport is on French soil), Switzerland, Germany and Italy. This sent me into a whirlwind of worry and anxiety. I strongly believed that we shouldn’t be traveling after all the sacrifices the country had made. I also felt very guilty about going away when so many had holidays cancelled. I was also extremely anxious about the threat of Covid and stepping onto an aeroplane. Our trip involved three flights. I felt we were putting ourselves in a position of risk after being careful for months. I had only been into a supermarket once since March at this point. We had been extra careful as my parents are in a risk group and as they live next door didn’t want to put them in any danger.
The flip side was that we now couldn’t get our money back, we didn’t have funds for an alternative holiday in the UK, dashing all dreams of the camper van. My husband had been working crazy hours since March and not spent much time with us as a family so we needed a family holiday like never before BUT at what risk. We came so close to cancelling the whole thing and forgetting about the monetary loss as I was becoming increasingly anxious and it was beginning to show however my youngest is in year 6 and had missed out on so much already this year and I had completely underestimated how much he was looking forward to seeing his cousins in Switzerland and going away on a family adventure to Itay. His tears at the prospect of cancelling the holiday changed something in me. Now I realised that their was a real reason for us to go and I went into full on planning mode.
First the for the plane we used the following:
KN 95 Masks - these were fantastic and very easy to breathe through and keep on for the duration of our time in both airports and on the plane
A bumbag and a man bag with the following close and easy to hand
Hand Sanitiser
Spare disposable masks (just in case! We actually needed these as two of our KN 95 masks didn't;t last the journey)
Disposable gloves ( to avoid touching luggage trollies etc)
Passports
Homeopathic travel remedies
Cotton masks
Printouts of Carhire etc
A phone necklace - This was given to me as a pressie months before and proved invaluable. It enabled me to always have my phone at hand for electronic boarding passes etc but without rummaging for it.
Plastic bags to pop all our bits for security to avoid unnecessary contact.
Our own food. We were unsure about what would be available and I’m really pleased we did this as it made me feel much better and took out another uncertainty.
The Airport
Gatwick
The airport was much quieter than we had ever seen it.
Not all the shops were open
Not all seats were available to sit on as they had been taped to encourage distancing
We needed our two hours to calmly check in, eat our packed lunch and make our way to the gate.
Basel Airport
Social distancing spots were stuck on the floor and mostly observed.
As we were on French soil and not Swiss soil masks had to be worn in the airport
The Plane
We had three flights all with Easy Jet and two were full with no distancing. However all the planes were very new and the largest we had ever used with Easy Jet:
snacks were served
I tried not to encourage the family not use the toilet whilst on the plane but this was not always possible
We had to wait our turn row by row to exit the plane.
There was no great social distancing when queuing for the plane
We all had cloth bags for the plane with our bits in
I let the kids watch their tablets to help distract them from wearing masks
Me having a bumbag and my husband having a man bag on the plane made the flight a lot less stressful having everything form sanitiser, wipes and fresh masks all to hand.