Jason had a somewhat last-minute business trip to New York City two weeks ago.
Between terribly missing my better half and a fair amount of possible jealousy (New York City!?), it seemed the ideal time to take that days-long field trip to Washington, D.C. I've been rather optimistically considering.
So as Jason booked his ticket and packed up, I bravely forged ahead: I found a VRBO through Expedia just behind the Capitol that could sleep us all in one room and had a kitchen; I planned an obsessively detailed itinerary for each of the four-and-a-half days; I made a grocery list, a packing list, and a school assignment list.
One tiny snag was that although I had received a receipt from Expedia for the $1000 I dropped on the rental apartment, I never received the promised email from the owner with the entry key code.
Not knowing how these things usually work, I waited until the day of for this email--probably a mistake, in hindsight.
The Itinerary dictated a 1:30pm departure to drive to the city, so I called the Expedia helpline first thing after breakfast and explained that I had no way to get into my rental that afternoon.
Expedia was, to put it delicately, less than helpful.
Their first solution was for me to wait longer. "After all," they said, "it's only 6am in Washington, D.C."
😳
When I pointed out politely and firmly that no, it is, in fact, 9:30...they put me on hold.
Again.
Solution #2 was for me to drive to the property and "then figure it out." They insisted they could do nothing for me unless I was actually at the locked property.
I did not find this a satisfactory resolution to my issue, which I finally expressed to the third person I was on the phone with--in a heated manner at raised volume.
Lo and behold, after this demonstration of high blood pressure, I was suddenly being rebooked at a new property--one that had two bedrooms and two full baths, instead of the original single room, at a $200 lower cost.
I'm a pretty tolerant person, but 2 hours and 14 minutes on the phone with Expedia found my breaking point.
At that point I had to rework the itinerary to reflect the new location of our apartment, taking into account new travel times, Metro schedule, and nearby restaurants.
By now the kids were practically frantic with deferred excitement, so I sat on the kitchen floor to eat a leftover pizza slice and told them they could form a line and ask me one question at a time until I finished my lunch. The new itinerary was brought out and read aloud, and when it was discovered that we were staying in the neighborhood of Foggy Bottom, all impatience was forgotten as they dissolved into hysterics.
One whirlwind of speed-packing later, we were on the road, headed to our new luxury place. Long about Manassas, however, I got a voicemail......from the owner of the original apartment, welcoming me to her place.
Long story short:
-Phone conversation with apartment owner (43 minutes) reveals no one told her my booking is cancelled.
-Second call to Expedia (47 minutes) to object that I'm booked for two properties at once results in a downside: nebulous promise that I probably won't be double charged; and an upside: guy with thick Indian accent pronouncing "Foggy Bottom" on speakerphone while all the kids are listening.
The lesson we're learning here is that too many middlemen = bad. Further confirmation of this came when I blew right past our Foggy Bottom property because the name on the building is completely different than the name I was booked under (the welcome letter inside the apartment had another name entirely).
Conveniently, circling back to a hotel in the middle of D.C. at the height of rush hour was more than enough to answer the kids' earlier question, "What's wrong with driving in a city?"
Because of the configuration of one-way streets, my only option was to make a left onto Pennsylvania Avenue with no traffic light at 6pm, crossing 3 lanes of traffic to do so, which I only managed (very narrowly) by drafting a local driver and holding my breath.
After that we navigated pedestrians and traffic circles while being followed by screaming ambulances and fire trucks.
When it was all over, the kids' conclusion was a trembling, "Let's never do that again."
I was immensely relieved to park but also totally disoriented from circling into the bowels of the parking garage, so we ended up hiking through an office building and around a block with our luggage before arriving in the lobby of our building. And we had to make a second trip to the car to get everything.
But when we finally entered our apartment, we were met with this view from our balcony:
Jeddy pulled out his algebra while Ada helped me make dinner and Lizzy unpacked our groceries. Caleb ran around playing cleaning service with a mop he found in the closet, despite the apartment being so pristine it was unrecognizable as any place we would inhabit.
It wasn't the best dinner I've ever made, but rarely have I been so relieved and thankful to sit down to it. We unwound at bedtime with a chapter of Harry Potter, after which, unfortunately, I had to try to explain to my husband why we had an extra $1000 charge on our account...
I had a night of restless dreams and woke up wondering if this was the start of a disaster, or if it could only go up from here.
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