ginia.org

Ah, 2020. The year started off promisingly:

• January: South Africa with friends (Jo’berg, Cape Town)
• January: Vegas, baby! also with friends
• February: I’m pretty sure we also visited Orlando

We had so many epic trips planned for 2020:

• March: Singapore, Indonesia, Tokyo (ANA First class!!!!)
• July: Tokyo again (JAL First class!!! I was going to do a head-to-head comparison!)
• July: Milkweed Inn with friends
• Autumn: Chris was going to go Prague with his mom while I was going to visit my dad in Seoul
• December: Chilean Lake District (to see the solar eclipse) and Patagonia with friends

Even when the pandemic became a reality, we were slow to adjust and we tried to go to Puerto Rico in March. Reality finally crashed hard there, as lock down in San Juan hit our second day on the island and soon it became apparent that COVID wasn’t going anywhere. So we cut our trip short and went home.

By September, we were getting stir crazy, so we burned 100k Hyatt points on a Park Hyatt Chicago staycation. And that was… fine. We had a lovely room (which has since been renovated) and dined at NoMI Garden, the hotel’s rooftop restaurant, where they were opening lovely vintages each evening to be made available by the glass.

On the minor (MINOR) upside, there was no need to worry about maintaining travel statuses or expiring travel points, as everyone rolled over statuses into 2021 and deferred expiration dates. So there was that.