Our upcoming trip to the Netherlands was precipitated by American Airlines and the Argentinian government. I had previously booked a trip to Argentina via American for this past February, but the more we read about the economic conditions there the less we wanted to go.
I’m not sure if you are aware, but if you want to visit Argentina and not get ripped off by the government, you need to bring US cash in $100 bills, and then change your money into Argentinian pesos via an underground exchange service that you meet on the street. I’m not kidding! If you use your credit card, you will pay DOUBLE the actual cost due to the government controlled exchange rate. While plenty of people say this is safe, I’m not comfortable having thousands of dollars in cash in my own house, much less taking it to a foreign country!
So, bottom line, when I canceled my American Airlines tickets, I found out I had exactly one year from the date of purchase to use the credit or it was lost. Not to just buy a ticket, but to actually fly somewhere. United, which I normally use, is WAY more lenient on credits, so this was a surprise.
After searching, I found decent flights to/from Amsterdam. We will spend 5 weeks almost entirely in the Netherlands (with some day trips into Germany), and I want to give a huge “thank you” to the Trip Advisor travel forum community for assisting me with our plans. Below is the map of our upcoming trip. Simply click on the box in the upper right if you want to open up the map.
Thanks for reading!