We managed to come home before the whole world shut down

“We started to plan our dream holiday about 12 months ago. We had wanted to see the Northern Lights on a Viking cruise leaving from Bergen in Norway. The cruise was to sail north to the arctic circle and return to London after 13 days. The plan was then to incorporate a rail tour of England, Wales, Scotland and then a coach tour around Ireland. Our trip was to take over seven weeks and was meticulously planned and arranged by our travel agent Julie Lunn.

Our flights went all to plan and we boarded the Viking Star ready for our adventure. After setting sail from Bergen in the afternoon we had a lovely dinner and evening and were excited for our next port of call in Norway. Sadly we were woken at 6.00 am with the announcement that our Viking cruise was to be cancelled due to the potential threat of Coronavirus and we were sailing directly to London. Well that created a nightmare as our whole holiday plans were now going to be affected and with this coronavirus fiasco escalating we just had to try and get home.

Luckily we had our travel agent who came to the rescue. Julie managed to book new transfers from our ship docking early in Tilbury to London as well as securing a hotel for us in London. Our other tours and travel arrangements also cancelled due to the virus outbreak and we were stuck in London. Julie found us some available flights a few days later and thankfully we managed to come home before the whole world shut down.

We are most grateful we had a great travel agent in Julie Lunn from TravelManagers who worked tirelessly through the nights to make it all come together. We are now safely home and have completed our home isolation.

Unfortunately, our plans came unstuck this time and we are going through the refund process, but we will begin working on our next trip again with Julie.”

Thanks again and cheers, JD and Annabelle

Julie Lunn is a personal travel manager based in Ferntree Gully, VIC.