Once again, forced change of plans

A person can make plans - but sometimes they are crossed by events beyond our reach. My sister and I had planned a Chrismas trip to Vienna and Bratislava (the capital of Slowakia). We had booked our flight, made reservations for hotels. All set, or so we thought.

On Thursday we received an email from the airline, notifying us that our flight from Brussels to Vienna 'had changed'. When you read that, you expect that the time of departure has been altered by some minutes or half an hour. But no, instead of a flight on Friday, they offered a flight on Saturday! When I called the airline and explained this wouldn't do for us, the attendant wasn't very friendly. He tried to persuade us to take the flight, or even one very early on Friday morning. I explained him (calmly) this wouldn't do either, as we depend on public transport and there are not trains running before 6 am in the week or 7 am in weekends. I told him we'd liked to cancel the flights and get our money back. It finally got done, but with a lot of sighing.

I really don't appreciate the attitude of this airline. We had a similar experience twice before, and both times, we could cancel the flight without any problem and got our money back on the spot.

 Cancelling the reservations for the hotels wasn't difficult either. We always make a reservation where you can cancel up to the day of arrival. It costs you a bit more, but it pays when you need to cancel unexpectedly.

Then the next problem came: what do do instead of going to Vienna/Bratislava??? We were set on spending the first week of the holidays abroad. For European flights it was already a bit too late to get the least expensive flights. And we've seen pretty much of Europe already. We brainstormed for a couple of days and spent a lot of time online, searching for destinations.

Finally we found something that appealed to both of us and wasn't too big a stretch on our finances. We are going to Egypt. Finally have the chance of seeing the piramids and crossing one more line on my bucket list! And a plus is that the weather will be around 23° Celsius - a week to soak up some suntan and enjoy the warmth....