I’ve mentioned before that we had a trip to Ireland planned for this month. It’s our younger daughter’s fall break from college and we decided to spend a week with her exploring the Emerald Isle.

Unfortunately, we had to cancel the trip. My daughter broke her arm and needed surgery. She’s in a sling for another month, so it did not make sense to go forward with the trip. She’s recovering well, but can’t really hike around the Cliffs of Moher (or anywhere else) for a while.

Thankfully, it took me less than an hour to cancel everything. I had booked refundable accommodation in Dublin (Hyatt using points), Doolin (small hotel), Killarney (AirBnB), and Kilkenny (small hotel). It took a couple of clicks to cancel all of those. Our flights were on United using LifeMiles (points were refunded immediately and taxes took about a week) and Aer Lingus using Avios (points were refunded immediately and taxes were refunded minus a $55 per person change/cancel fee). I’m probably going to submit the $165 cancellation fees on a claim to my annual travel insurance. I also canceled our rental car reservation in two clicks.

I had booked a couple of tourist sites in Dublin, the Kilmainham Gaol and the Guinness Storehouse, to make sure we could get our preferred entry times. Kilmainham Gaol refunded my tickets right away (although I lost 90 cents on the change in the Euro/Dollar exchange rate since I had booked) but Guinness would not refund the cost. However, they promised I could change the date to next year and still use the tickets.

I hope to re-create this trip next October. At least I have already done all the research and planning, so it will basically come down to flight availability using points and I won’t know about that until the end of this month at the earliest.

It’s always disappointing to have to cancel a trip, but the advantage of using points and miles (and refundable hotel bookings) is that it’s usually fairly easy to cancel and you don’t get stuck with expiring credits on airlines you rarely fly.

If you enjoyed this post (or have questions), let me know in the comments or send me an email at emptynestermiles@gmail.com. If you are thinking about opening a new credit card, please use one of my links.