Planning a good road trip takes time and even though I'm one of those people who usually think the planning is half the fun, for some reason I haven't really committed to our upcoming road trip until northern Portugal. I did a rough planning of the car route in April and pre-booked a number of hotels, but since then I haven't spent any time at all on the trip. Until last week when I realized I hadn't looked up at all what I should have looked up.
It has been a bit unclear about extra beds in some of the hotels, which is absolutely necessary for a daughter who will soon be as tall as myself. Just the thought of having to share a narrow southern European queen size bed of 1,40 with both husband and daughter, feels more like a sardine can than a holiday. Which reminds me, I also haven't checked if the hotels have air conditioning, so it could basically be a sardine can in a sauna. Doesn't sound like anything to look forward to at all. So last week we contacted the hotels and asked about an extra bed. Four of the hotels answered basically straight away that there were no problems at all, it would in a few isolated cases cost a few Euros extra. From two of the hotels, however, it is dead quiet. I can see that one of the hotels has looked at my message on the booking site and then chose not to respond. The other hotel doesn't seem to check their messages at all. So today I thought about it.
A little out of irritation at the poor service and a little out of the fact that I probably didn't book the best route, we made the decision to cancel one of the hotels today. The will simply be no Évora on this trip. Luckily, I booked all the hotels that were cancelable, so now I just needed to find a new hotel. Easier said than done. Almost all the good hotels are already fully booked the week we are going here, but I finally managed to find a pousada in a small village up in the mountains on the border with Spain. Which also actually looks really promising. Now my thoughts revolve around whether I should also cancel the other hotel that did not respond to us. Today, however, we decided to give them another chance and emailed them by regular email and not via the booking site and see if they can respond now. I don't like to call, but prefer to have the answer in writing by email so that misunderstandings are avoided and any extra costs are received in writing. It is far too often that I need to pull out the reservation at check-in to show that we actually both booked a room with breakfast and also pre-paid for the room. So the excitement is unbearable – we will be able to stay at the vineyard in the Douro as we planned (with an extra bed), or will I have to cancel and rethink here too?
How do you usually do it? Do you also tend to book, cancel and reconsider? Or do you have any good travel tips in northern Portugal that we shouldn't miss?
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