Lesson learned: Double check dates before you book a flight with no refunds

I couldn't help but write about my first experience booking cheap travel to Italy. Let's just say, sometimes mistakes turn into advantages :)

So my roomie Sara and I decided to join our other 2 friends for a long travel to Italy during Thanksgiving break. When we discovered a flight for 4 pounds instead of the 45 they paid we  instantly thought, "What a deal! Let's book it now!" For some reason we thought Thanksgiving was always the third Thursday of November and so we charged our Visa's right away for our flight from London to Venice and the cheapest flight from Rome to London, since we'll be touring Italy for a couple of days. In total our round trip equaled a whopping 40 pounds, more or less only 75 U.S. dollars. We thought we scored this huge deal, especially since our friends booked for 45 pounds 1 way, and so we started to spread the word to other people to join us :) Sara and I were on cloud nine, since we instantly posted on our Facebook statuses our extremely good deal. 2 hours later I get a phone call from our friend telling me Thanksgiving weekend does not land on the third Thursday of November, but the last! 

Frantically freaking out, we immediately checked the calendar thinking everyone else was crazy and we were right. Sure enough, Thanksgiving lands on November 26th not the week of the 18th (what we originally thought). Here we were hearts pounding as we read no refunds for our tickets already booked but instead cancellation fees that cost the equivalent of our ticket! Somehow mistakes I guess can come out for the best because some of our other friends decided to go with us the same week. Considering the cheap tickets and our allowance to skip 1 lecture of each class, we decided to forget class and forget paying more, we're keeping it! After a couple deep breaths and laughs, the heart rate went down and we were all good. Now, I think there will be a total of 6 of us going! So in the end, I learned to ALWAYS check dates and refund fees. However, mistakes can also work for the best too! I'm going to Italy round trip for 40 pounds who can beat that! 

xoxo

Jenna in London