As some of you know, I recently quit my job, so now vacation time is no longer an issue with regards to my upcoming Med cruise. So, my Mom and I have decided to extend our post-cruise stay by two days. Yippee! The good news is that we are able to change our return flight with only paying the change fee, which we agree is totally worth the extra time. So now we will be there for a full 5 days! I believe this will be some very enjoyable relaxation time, after our port-intensive whirlwind cruise (12 ports in 12 days! :eek: ).

The BAD news is (I can't believe I'm even telling you this, it's so humiliating...) I can't find my plane tickets!! And these are paper tickets, of course, so it's a major deal to get them reissued, and will cost me $100. I had them sitting right on top of my dresser for the last few weeks, so I'd know exactly where they are. And now they're not there! And here's the most humiliating part about it -- I honestly have no idea how long they've NOT been there. Talk about a major senior moment. I know I took everything off and polished the wood surface about a week ago...but I'd done that before since they were there, and just put them back. And I don't recall if they were there this last time or not. Did I decide to put them away somewhere "safe"? (haha)

So either they disappeared into thin air, or somehow there were moved by someone else (although DH and both my kids SWEAR they never touched them, and I have no reason to disbelieve them), or I put them away somewhere and have blanked it out. I have searched high and low, into every possible place I can think of that I might have put them, to no avail. :(

So, Delta says I have to actually go to the airport and buy brand NEW tickets, for the same price (they will sell them to me at the same fare, according to their written policy), and fill out a lost-ticket report. If I find them before we leave, then I can return them and get fully reimbursed. If I DON'T find them, then after a couple of months they will reimburse me the additional fare, minus a $100 processing fee.

Needless to say, my backside is getting quite sore from all the kicking I am giving it. But I am consoling myself with the knowledge that I'll have two extra days to relax in Italy.

Bummer about the tickets, LeeAnne. Maybe you'll get lucky and they'll magically reappear in the next few days ... :(

Masaki

LeeAnne - ouch! That's a biggie. Did the tickets fall behind the dresser?

We misplaced some tickets to a theater event one time and missed an expensive show.

I bought one of those expanding wallets with twelve pockets - the short ones that have the dates at the top. They are large enough to hold theater ticket, travel tickets. It's see through plastic available a the office supply. Whatever tickets we have go in there right away in a plain white envelope that I write the details on and we have a special drawer. It works well for us.

Oh, LeeAnne, how frustrating. Here's hoping they magically appear. Did you put them in a safer place during your job turmoil? I find that when stressful things are happening (such as Alan's father's illness/death for us this winter) things disappear. Alan and I are discovering lots of incidents where we have "forgotten" something this winter. Maybe that's the case for you. At least you have those extra days in Italy to unwind!!

LeeAnne, keep looking! This sort of thing happens to me all the time! I bet you put them somewhere safe, which means you put them where you thought they belong but you just can't remember where that is :)

Refresh my memory, where are you staying post cruise?

Oh I'm so sorry. Give it a rest and get your mind off of them. Sometimes, out of the clear blue, you'll get an inspiration of where to look. If you believe in guardian angels, let your angel do the work for now.

LeeAnne - Can you remember if you stacked anything ON TOP of them at any point in time? Perhaps you picked them up at the same time to move the stack? I just hate it when things like this happen. Fortunately, you discovered them missing now while you have time to do something about it. Wouldn't it have been horrifying to discover it the day before you were leaving??? Yikes!!!

Your extra days on post-cruise are going to be WONDERFUL!!!! ENJOY!!!

Kathy - I have one of those expanding wallets in the 8 1/2 x 11 size. It's really lightweight and I use it in my travel purse to hold all my tickets, hotel confirmations, cruise docs, rental car info. That way I don't have to dig to find the things when checking in, etc. (Yes, it's a BIG purse - :D :D )

Good luck finding your tickets!

Anthony

LeeAnn,

So sorry about your tickets. I think Colleen is right. Sometimes it helps to just not think about it for awhile, then it will come to you.

Betty

Y'know, I was thinking that it's entirely possible that I moved them during that whole job fiasco, and my mind was so jumbled up at the time that I can't remember where. That's the only thing that makes sense. The bizarre thing is, I've checked every single place where I could possibly have put them, as well as every place that it would make NO SENSE to put them, and they're not there either! Grrrr.

Anyway, the good news is that I CAN get new ones. The $100 is definitely frustrating, but I guess it's an expensive lesson.

Karen, we're staying at a castle in Proceno, a tiny medieval hilltown about an hour north of Rome in the Tuscia region...check out their website:

www.castellodiproceno.it

It's also only a few minutes away from San Casciano Dei Bagni, which has a beautiful spa facility built up around natural hot springs, where we intend to spend a day getting pampered. (Castle guests get a discount on their services.) And that still leaves us with several days to either just relax, or do some leisurely exploring. There are some wonderful places that I've never visited before, within pretty short driving distances. Viterbo, Orvieto, Civita di Bagnoregio (which Rick Steves lists as one of the best back-door destinations in Italy). :)

Look where you keep your passport..

I am always putting things "in safe places".. someday I am going to find a whole bunch of missing stuff..
it's amazing..

If you paid for them using your platinum AMEx card, you may be covered.

LeeAnne, good luck finding those tickets. That kind of thing happens to me all the time.

Claudia, thank goodness I DO know where my passport is! I checked that immediately, thinking I might be losing my mind. Passport is there...tickets are not. Oh well.

Sedona, unfortunately I used a plain ordinary Visa, and I'm pretty sure they won't cover that $100.00 lost-ticket fee...but I'll call and check, thanks for the suggestion. :)

I do have until April 28 to find them and save the hundred bucks, so maybe my grey matter will regenerate by then and come up with some lost memory. Here's to hoping!

In the meantime, I'm having fun figuring out what we're going to do with our extra time. We're staying at that castle in Proceno, but now I'm thinking we might want to go stay in Rome for the last night, since we're flying home from there. I'm currently playing with Priceline trying to get a room at the Hotel Intercontinental. Hey, Don got a great rate, so I'm giving it a shot. Seems like a nice place to spend your last night! Wish me luck.

LeeAnne

LeeAnne, I do things like this all too frequently and I feel for you. Keep looking in places that you have already checked once or twice. It is amazing how much I find on my third attempt. Also, thinking along the same lines as Claudia - look where you keep your passport, where you have placed any of your other travel documents, in your carry-on bag, in your travel purse etc. All of these places are typical of where I have "lost" important papers when preparing for a trip. We also have a fireproof locking box (where I store our passports & other valuable papers). It is usually when I get closer to the trip and start placing things where I think I need them for travel that I get messed up.

Have a wonderful trip!

Good luck and keep looking! We're all keeping our fingers crossed that they will magically appear.

LeeAnne

You are not alone. I hope you find the tickets.

My best to you and family on your trip.

JPar

When we were on our way to Fiji, we stayed overnight in Honolulu; there was a MAJOR glitch in our onward ticketing (bizarre goofup by travel agent) so I sat on hold for an airline agent forever after we got to the hotel. Later, I could only find one set of tickets, and was positive that somehow I had left them at home. Started to call the airline again, and discovered that I had closed the missing set of tickets up in the telephone book.

So, check your telephone book, in case your tickets were in touch with ours.

LOL! Pam, that's a great story. Unfortunately I didn't use the phone book -- I knew Delta's phone number by heart, after all the phone calls I'd made to get our connection time changed on the outbound trip.

Thanks for all the well-wishes, everyone. I did get another set of tickets when we extended our trip by two days, but as I mentioned earlier, I had to pay the whole fare all over again, and now I have to either find them, or wait a while until after we get back to get reimbursed. I have five weeks left, so I still have hope. I continue to poke around in all the likely, and unlikely, spots. They have to be in this house somewhere!

Meanwhile, when I extended our post-cruise stay out to five days, I upgraded our suite in the castle to one of the apartments, with a full kitchen. That means I can do some cooking while we're there! I'm REALLY excited about that. My family, along with my brother-in-law and his family, rented a villa in Tuscany for a week a couple years ago, and I cooked most of our meals. It was fantastic. You just can't get those ingredients over here. All the cheeses, sauces, breads, different kinds of veggies...everything just seems to taste so much better over there. And after the prior two weeks of eating all that rich food on the ship, I think we'll really enjoy some nice home-cooked meals.

LeeAnne, I hope you find them also. I know what a hassle it is to get them replaced but at least it was here and not in Italy.

When we were in London a few years back, Diana was the target of a pickpocket, and lets just say he was very successful. He/She actually lifted her wallet out of her clasped purse and very thoughtfully latched it back when they were finished. Inside along with her money and credit cards were our passports and airline tickets. That was on a Saturday and we were leaving the next morning on the Eurostar for Paris. Well, I guess not!!! :eek:

We had to wait until Monday to get our passports reissued at the Embassy and the first person that we talked to at American Airlines insisted that we purchase new ONE WAY tickets from Paris to DFW. I think it was over $3000. I just hung up and called back and got somebody more understanding. We paid the reticketing fee and picked our new ones up at Orly when we were ready to fly home.

Oh and if you need help in booking the Intercontinental on Priceline, just let me know. I used www.biddingfortravel.com to help me figure out my bid, but I will NEVER post there ever again. The gal that runs it is a $!%(#.

LeeAnne

If it makes you feel any better - I visited my sister awhile ago and decided to wear my 'pretend' diamond ring and pendant. I put the real ones in a tissue (which wasn't the brightest thing to do) and told her where I hid them in case the plane crashed (I have a terrible fear of flying). I forgot to get them as soon as I got back and when I remembered, they weren't there and I have still not found them, although I've searched everywhere.

I think what happened is I washed the particular 'hiding place' and threw the tissue out after it came out of the washing machine looking exactly like it was, a hard bit of tissue! How clever is that? Needless to say, I won't be buying any 'real' diamonds in future.

Lee

Oh yes, Don, I know about that shrew at BFT. I still can't figure out what her problem was with your post...her rules seem so obscure and hard to comprehend! I've read through all the FAQ's a few times, and I still don't quite understand it all.

I tried doing it the way everyone has described -- I started with just the city center, at 5*. My first bid was 175, since that seems to be a common first bid. I then added zones one at a time for each higher bid. My last bid was $205, and I still didn't get it! Aaargh! I'm not sure I want to go any higher than that, since that doesn't include all the taxes/fees, which adds on another, what, almost $30 a night? That's about as much as we want to spend.

I might try again in a couple days (I now have to wait the requisite 72 hours), and maybe I'll go as high as $210. But I'm bummed I didn't get it at the low rates everyone else seems to be getting it at. Oh well, if I don't get it, we'll just stay all five nights at the castle. I've been to Rome a few times already, so I'm okay with skipping it.

Lee, your diamond story sounds SO much like me! Get this -- right after I got engaged (this was some 21 years ago) I went on a two week business trip to St. Louis. For the weekend in between, I flew down to Houston to visit some family. I was really excited to show them my new ring, and didn't realize until I was on the plane that it wasn't on my finger! I was so stressed the entire weekend, thinking I'd lost it. When I got back to my hotel room in St. Louis (I had the same room for the full two weeks), I was SO relieved to find it -- in the ashtray on the bathroom counter, where I'd put it while taking a shower! Right then and there I realized there was no need for me to ever remove that ring, for showers, swimming, cleaning, whatever, because knowing me it would be long gone.

I suppose I should take some comfort in the fact that this forgetfulness isn't a new trait. I was starting to worry about dementia! (Not that I'm not already a bit demented...) :hyper:

Leeann--Have you tried the St. Anthony prayer--Just say "St. Anthony, St. Anthony, please come around, what is lost must be found" a few times while you're looking. I know this is weird, but it usually works!!! I think just saying it relaxes your mind or something so you remember where the lost item is. Usually when I lose something like tickets, etc., I've put them in a drawer or file where they don't belong. Check all those kinds of places that you may have had open or were using around the time your tickets disappeared. Did you have the tickets when you called Delta to change the flight? If so, what did you do with them after the call? I've actually found things I've lost in the refrigerator--now that's absent minded! Try St. Anthony--hope it works.

Leeann--(and everyone else here with similar stories)--add me to the list of experiences with losing things like that.....It was kind of unsettling to hit my 50s and realize that things like that happened more than before, in my life....I've finally learned to hang my keys in the same place FIRST thing upon coming home.....there have been too many mornings of being late to work b/c couldn't find the keys.....documents/tickets, etc., scare me the most, b/c they are SO easy to lay down, get mixed up with other papers, and even thrown away unintentionally. Like Claudia, I've gotten REALLY good at thinking up "safe places" and then can't remember where the safe place was, LOL, LOL, LOL............. :ohmy:

LeeAnne, we had the same problem when we booked for our friends that are going with us. After I got mine for $205, I ended up bidding for them, and it wasn't accepted until we hit $285. They wanted to stay at the same place so they were willing to pay the extra.

any update on the "lost" tickets Lee Ann?

Nope, not yet. Still got a month, so I just keep hoping I'll have some sort of miraculous flash of memory!

Leeann--you'll probably find them in some obvious place that was too obvious to look, LOL. :D