Once You've Booked It

I will admit that I have been neglecting our upcoming trip to Chamonix, France. I booked it months ago and just kind of let it sit. As it is now approaching about a month out, I needed to review everything. Tip: I like to book seats and then keep returning to the airline page and look at upgrading our seats. You have to stay on this. Unfortunately, I did not, so I do not think upgrading is in the cards for this trip. Sometimes the airlines will send emails the week that you are leaving, so fingers crossed. I then looked at visas. The UK now has a visa requirement for US citizens and it even applies if you are just there for a layover (it depends on what terminal you are in but for $20 just buy it - better safe than sorry). No visas needed for our layover, our arrival airport or any of the countries we will be skiing in. We are staying in an air bib so checked the website for rooms and beds (the girls are joining us on this trip). Learned a damage deposit link will be sent 14 days before arrival. Good to know so that I didn’t just ignore the email. Tip: I often create a folder in my email to hold all emails regarding a trip. It allows me to find them quickly, especially if I do not know the sender. I can just go to the folder and see them all. I also checked on our ski/snowboard passes and made sure that I had a screenshot of the bar code, just in case. Next it was on to check on the hotel reservation for the night before we fly out. Good thing I did. . . it was over $2000! So I had to find a new hotel as I was not paying more for 1 night than our entire stay in the Airbnb. Turns out we could stay at the same hotel (less than 2 miles from the airport) by booking 2 rooms for less than half of what they had us in. So that is the current plan. I will probably still check around for cheaper hotels, however, we know from past experiences in Europe that traveling with this many people usually makes the rates at airport hotels VERY high. The last thing to check on this weekend was luggage. We are traveling with our ski/snowboard gear. Tip: When traveling with large luggage always check ahead of time and be prepared to pay the fees. I have heard people argue to try to get their items on. The only place I have seen this work was in Egypt and it had to include an under the table payment (more on that later). It is always a necessary evil. They are big, cost more and increase the rental car cost (just to fit the gear!). We are flying Delta so I checked the website. I learned that one ski/snowboard bag plus boot bag only counts as one item but does have to follow the weight rule or they charge extra fee. If the outside linear dimensions exceed 115 linear inches, the bag will not be allowed. The interesting detail was that as we exit Europe our bags will be charged in euros. That makes sense.