Planes, trains and automobiles; boats, buses and BlaBla
Getting from Point A to Point B these days is nothing like it used to be. When I had an international job, based in Amsterdam, I had a travel agent, a pile of miles for lounge access and upgrades. I have a whole village of ceramic Dutch houses, filled with genever (Dutch gin), a parting gift given by KLM to business class flyers as they de-plane. I used my generous luggage allowance to transport materials for my job.
Those days are gone. I have not had a mile to burn in over a decade so trying to go to Europe and not go broke has required a lot of time on the internet. I wanted to recap the process we used in cobbling together this marathon. As I said in my last installment we had some tourist destinations (Venice; Split, Croatia; San Sebastian, Spain) and some friends to visit (Amsterdam; Mainvault, Belgium; Paris; Barcelona; Tenerife). The practicality of all this depended a lot on how we could order the cities and connect the dots.
For the transatlantic segment we decided to leave from the east coast for a few reasons. There are several new low-fare transatlantic options from the northeast, and my family is there, providing a chance to spend some time with my parents before and after the trip. Last year we flew from Hartford on Aer Lingus. A traditional legacy carrier, Aer Lingus was flying a 757 from Hartford to fill a niche in the market and connect my hometown directly to Europe. It remained a good deal but there was a new player, Norwegian. Another option you might here is WOW Air, an Icelandic newbie. If you poke around, you can find others, depending on where you are. XL, a French airline, just launched some affordable flights to Paris.
Norwegian is a regional airline that has, over the last few years, begun flying ultra-cheap flights across the Atlantic and elsewhere. This year they announced that would begin to fly from Hartford (and a few other smaller airports in the Northeast) to Edinburgh for stupid low fares, as low as $99 one-way. Yep, that got my full attention. We booked that trip as soon as we could reasonably nail down dates. Adding bags, and seat selection and meals, we paid less than $500 each to go to Europe. We would begin and end of journey in Edinburgh, 5/8-6/19.
Norwegian flies from a few cities near us in Albuquerque, notably Denver, to London and Paris. It is a deal, though not as tantalizing as those trips from the east coast. A few friends have already taken advantage of those flights. But buyers beware. Norwegian has not been shy about abruptly starting and ending service. A couple of months after we booked Hartford to Edinburgh we got a message that our flight, three months away, had been cancelled. They offered options from another airport in New York State, 90 minutes away, on dates that did not synch with the rest of our travel arrangements. After a little cold sweat and some collaborative work with their call center in Oslo, we found suitable flights on Norwegian from Providence with a schedule that matched the Hartford flights exactly. So long as I could twist my sister's arm to get us to T.F. Green Airport, we could proceed as planned.
I like a travel planning challenge, but this trip never would have happened without www.rome2rio.com. I don't recall how I found r2r, but it is amazing. You can plunk in any two places and r2r will give all of the different travel modalities you can use to get between any two places on the planet. The site let me model all different combinations of dates, and ways of traveling. Connecting Venice to Split seemed to involved an epic and pricey train ride through Lubjlanja and Zagreb and only one flight happened a week, r2r suggested the train-to-ferry combination we found magical. Google Flights also proved helpful, particularly with locating cheap airfare options.
R2r was big on offering intercity buses. Europe is full of cheap high-tech bus systems, the biggest of which at present is Flixbus. We used Flixbus from Amsterdam to Brussels. We ordered our tickets onto the Flixbus app on my phone and ubered over to Sloterdijk Station where the long-distance buses pull up. The drivers were the ticketing staff. Our bus was express to Brussels Gare du Nord, and arrived a little early, with a time better the Intercity train that day, and at less than half the price. You even got a an hour of free wifi. Getting from the bus platform into the BGdN station proved difficult, due to a lack of helpful signage as we made our way to our train to Ath.
We did trains in Italy from Venice to Ravenna, then Ravenna to Ancona, the starting point for our overnight ferry to Split, Croatia, then again in Belgium from Brussels to Ath to meet Gerard, and then from Lille to Paris.R2R gave us the idea, but the actual trips had to be booked through the various national rail companies. The Italian and Belgian tickets were easily bought same-day. The Lille-Paris trip was on the TGV, high speed, and required reservations. In that case it was easiest to download their app and buy the tickets. You could do this at home and print the tickets, as many people had.
There was some car rental here-- in Croatia and Spain, but that deserves its own discussion. As I write this we are in the middle of the second rental episode and we are mightily ambivalent-- we love the chance to see the countryside but the costs... more later. Another four-wheeled mode, a ride-share system called BlaBla Car got consulted, but those rides never have jibed with our desired schedules.
Much of the travel was to be done within Europe on planes. Hey, we had to get to and from Tenerife that only happens by plane... We did this by booking oh so early on the trinity of cheap airlines of Europe- Easyjet, Norwegian and Ryanair. As I monkeyed with the schedule and the order, a cheap flight on KLM popped up, from Split to Amsterdam.
These fares can be ridiculously low-- the lowest in this itinerary was $22 from Tenerife to Barcelona. The most was $120 from Edinburgh to Venice, and that had been lower, but I had lagged on buying that ticket. As both Mark and I had a checked bag, it was another 25-30 for that, but still, this was cheap. These airlines, particularly Ryanair, have lousy reps for customer service in general and on-time departures in particular. This can be nerve-racking when you have plans at the other end. I worked hard to ensure that a single airline screw up would not cause much in the way of knock-on failure. There are days between flights, in case Ryanair fails on Sunday, I have two days to sort out getting to Edinburgh for our trip home... for example. Still everything thus far has been hassle-free and on-time. I do tend to prefer early morning travel, as delays due to airport complications are fewer then. These airlines rarely fly these routes every day nor at the same time each day, so getting rebooked without your vacation suffering some major setback is a matter of luck and planning. As I said, so far, so good.
I give full marks to Easyjet for have a comfortable, professional product-- Norwegian as well. I am not looking forward to our date with Ryanair on Sunday, but I would be happy to be proven wrong.
When the dust settled the air, bus and train for the entire six weeks came in around $1200 each. The air was all spent by February 1st. All of it was non-refundable. Some people wouldn't like that but we thoroughly had discussed the parameters. We also knew that we could cut losses with refunds for the AirBnb and hotel nights being refunded.
Overall, this travel itinerary has worked like a gem, with just a few legs left. I would be happy to help anyone sort out this kind of travel, as the result, some great tourism and time with friends, has been so rewarding.
No comments:
Post a Comment