I am an idiot!!!

Oh my gosh you guys. I am writing this from the plane from Chicago to St. Thomas (thanks free WiFi American).

My heart is kind of still beating fast from the events of the last 12 hours.

Last night, my parents arrived, and we went out for a quick dinner. Everyone was packed, all ready for the trip today- 6:15 flight out of Madison.

Well, while we were sitting there at dinner, I got a message on my phone from our St. John VRBO host saying, “Looking forward to welcoming you tomorrow!”

I glanced at it and thought, oh, that’s funny- they must be sending an automated message a little early. We don’t get to St. John until next Wednesday. Our first week (today) Wednesday 3/25 – next Wednesday 4/1 are on St. Thomas. Then we’re supposed to take the car ferry to St. John and stay there for 4 more nights, returning home Sunday 4/5.

I opened the app to message them and let them know that it’s next week, when my stomach dropped: right there, in clear English, it had our reserved dates on St John: Wednesday, March 25 to Sunday, March 29.

Oh. Shit.

I booked the wrong dates!!!!!!!! 😩😩

Somehow- SOMEHOW- I must have clicked on the wrong week. (I booked the St. Thomas dates last March. But I added the days in St. John in like, November or December. I had found a good place and I think I may have been just rushing to lock it in and made a mistake.)

The crazy thing is, I have opened the VRBO app like, 20 times in the last few months. Both bookings with their dates were right there. It should have been so obvious! I think in my head, though, this was a March trip, so when I saw March dates listed, it seemed right.

I guess it’s one of those things where I was just so certain that I didn’t even really comprehend or look at the dates again, you know? I somehow never noticed that both places had a start date of 3/25…

Anyway, panic basically ensued. This meant we had flights booked home on 4/5, a car rental through 4/5, no where to stay on St. John, AND next week is Easter week (ie peak travel week in the Caribbean).

I searched St John and basically found like, 4 available suitable options for a group of 6 and they were all like $14,000 for our 4 nights. Not in my budget, especially considering that we are already out the (not cheap) VRBO on St. John, because it’s too late to cancel.

I messaged our St. Thomas VRBO host, who I have talked to multiple times now and is super nice, to see if I could extend our time there. She said she was unfortunately booked up but offered to contact some other local friends with rentals.

I ended up finding a great looking place (available) on Water Island, which is a 10 minute ferry ride from St. Thomas. It is a tiny island without a TON to do, but the place has million dollar views and the island does look beautiful.

This created a few other issues, because you can’t drive a car on Water Island (so our car rental for those days may go to waste, if I can’t cancel the end). Most people rent golf carts on the island, which are also mostly all booked up by this point (and that’s an additional /unplanned expense too). We’ll need to turn the car in early I guess and taxi to the ferry and I’m still working on the golf cart thing.

BUT, one silver lining was that our St. Thomas host actually called me and said she could extend our stay by one day (she had it blocked for some work to be done, but she said she could reschedule that) AND, she said that because she felt so bad for my situation and bc I’m a fellow Wisconsinite, she wanted to let us stay that extra night for free!!! How amazing.

So, in the end, we now have 8 nights on St. Thomas + 3 nights on Water Island.

We also have a “second island home” (lol) on St. John for the next 4 nights, so I guess we may just go and stay there at least for a night or two, since we paid for it!! I am torn because our resort on St. Thomas has great pool etc and I didn’t want to miss out on too much time there, either….). It helps that we get the extra night now to offset things a bit.

I was REALLY looking forward to exploring St. John, and I loved the look of our VRBO there too. I guess we’ll just have to do an abbreviated version. (It is further complicated because I have a boat trip booked on Friday evening on St. Thomas which is right in the middle of the days we have the St. John VRBo….).

Anyway, I think it will (hopefully) end up being a case of “all’s well that ends well”, minus a sucker punch to the gut over the $$ loss/ unexpected extra VRBO rental!

Ivan has been… not so happy with me today so far. 😩 (I will try to blame his crabbiness on the early flight… I think he’s starting to come around and maybe once he gets on island time and gets a drink he’ll let it go. Ha.)

But I mean, come on. I have booked a zillion trips, cars, excursions, etc flawlessly!! I guess something like this was bound to happen eventually. I am also human. Give me a break and a little grace!!

I just could not believe it when I realized. I kept saying, “I am such an idiot! I am such an idiot!” over and over. But then finally I took a deep breath and was like, ok Kaelyn, calling yourself an idiot and being pissed is not going to change what happened. Let’s think here and figure something out.”

Sigh.

Thankfully, at least I think we got a great replacement place. (My first thought was that maybe we’d end up in some dump just to find any place available….Its not super easy to find places for 6, with at least 2 bathrooms, on short notice like this….).

Look at the views!!!!!

Someone must have cancelled??

This definitely all throws a wrench in my “plans” that I so carefully thought about and sketched out…🤬

Hoping it somehow turns into a beautiful mistake and an adventure and one day, after the bills are long paid and we forget about that part 😬, we can all laugh about it….

Here we are at the airport… we made it. Crisis (sort of/narrowly) averted.

(I was too amped up on adrenaline to sleep very well so I’ll probably crash early, but thank goodness I realized when I did and there was some sort of remedy. I guess another option would have been to just change our flights and come home early and cut our losses, but that option sounded even worse, and anyway , these stupidly overpriced “cheap” spring break flights (🙄 ) don’t come with free flight changes, anyway… )

Anyone want to hop a jet to St. John today and take my VRBO til Sunday??? 😅😅

Hopefully the rest of the trip is smoother sailing. On the plus side, zero issues with TSA or flights. Next stop, St. Thomas! 🌴🏖️

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful that we found good places to stay, and also for the kindness and generosity of our St. Thomas host.