zanzibar's European Adventure

[zanzibar138]

Years ago, we discovered that we have distant(ish) relatives (whom we've never met) on my dad's side who live in... Strasbourg. So I've definitely heard of it.

All together now...

 

[pkondz]

So I caved last night and ended up rebooking the Cheyenne direct through Disney and cancelling my Qantas booking. I was just so worried about issues linking everything through MDE.

I hadn't even thought that could be an issue.

Yes, I am right at the tail end of the millennial generation who really dislike picking up the phone, even more so if it's for an international call that I know will be expensive and possibly poor timing.

Yeah... for me it's the latter part that bugs me.

On the plus side though, everything is now linked perfectly in my MDE and we're all ready to go! I can even start making restaurant bookings through the app.

Yay!

All together now...

 

[iona]

I was quite happy to have a night in a random town as a stopover, but when I looked up Strasbourg, it actually looks kind of amazing! And since we were going to end up with 8 nights in Salzburg, I've decided it's worth spending 2 nights in Strasbourg on the way through since the train to Stuttgart leaves early in the morning.

Strasbourg is supposed to be worth visiting - we’ve got it pencilled in for the European road trip we’re doing in 2026 or 2027. Keep an eye on the hotel prices though - apparently they skyrocket if the European Parliament is in session there.

 

[zanzibar138]

Strasbourg is supposed to be worth visiting - we’ve got it pencilled in for the European road trip we’re doing in 2026 or 2027. Keep an eye on the hotel prices though - apparently they skyrocket if the European Parliament is in session there.

Good to know, thanks!

 

[zanzibar138]

The first change of plan​

So you know how I said our flight to Europe was really a few days too early... well I received an alert for the same flight a few days later!

So we will now be flying Bangkok to Paris on the Sunday, the day before my birthday. Since we will be arriving late at night, we'll probably stay in a cheap airport hotel that night, then make our way to DLP early the next morning. So I will now need to call Disney to change our dates. We'll go back to Plan A of having Monday to Friday at DLP, then head into Paris for 2 nights and onto Salzburg from there. We may still decide to go via Strasbourg since I've now got everyone all excited about going there lol! I'll have to look up the trains to find out what will work.

Although the flight will still cost us around the same (aside from any mild fluctuations in the exchange rate), this flight will put us in a better position to be able to reduce the total amount of time we'll be away to be able to save some money that way.

 

[Steppesister]

We have lift-off!​

Cue the happy dance I have just secured our first long-haul flight!

That's a huge step for sure. Congrats!!

Here's what we can expect:

Whoa... cushy!

but the forum seems to have that problem again where I'm randomly being redirected so I lost it all

Yes, there are definitely some annoying glitches and no one seems to be in any hurry to fix them.

We're actually quite excited about the theming, it looks like a lot of fun, with a wild west theme with a Toy Story overlay.

That does sound really fun. I'd be down for that!

On the plus side though, everything is now linked perfectly in my MDE and we're all ready to go! I can even start making restaurant bookings through the app.

WOoOHooOo! That must feel GREAT!!

All in all, I think I'm happy with my decision.

And that's all that counts, right?!

 

[pkondz]

I wonder how many more changes you’ll have!

 

[zanzibar138]

I've finally managed to redo the itinerary (again lol!), and have updated my second post. I'm feeling much better about this itinerary. That new flight really solved most of our timing-related problems. We're still left with a little less time in the UK than would be ideal, but leaving that couple of days later has given us another couple of days we can use at the other end if we need to, and we're getting better ideas on how we can maximise our time.

Now to just hope for more good luck for the return flight to work out nicely for us too!

I wonder how many more changes you’ll have!

It is entirely possible that there will be more changes to come!

 

[zanzibar138]

And we're coming home too!​

I have been stalking Qantas for the last week, trying to find something with availability for 3 in business class. Any European airport, any Asian airport, with about a week of flexibility on the timing, even considering flights with a layover too. Just nothing. We are now getting very close to the end of that week-long window, and I was starting to get very nervous. Yesterday I experimented with searching for just 1 or 2 seats, and found some availability, so I spoke to Hubby about potentially splitting up and flying on consecutive days. This morning I did some more searching - trying to find availability on consecutive days for the same departure and arrival points brought its own challenges!

So I'm very relieved to confirm that we have now booked flights from Paris to Kuala Lumpur with Malaysia Airlines, with me leaving on the 14th and Hubby and Grandma following on the 15th. It'll be easy enough for us to get back to Paris on the train from London, so that's not an issue. We gave up on the idea of a stopover on the way home. Hubby and Grandma won't be arriving in KL until the Friday morning, and I need to be back at work the next week, so we'll just get home from there as quickly as we can. Disappointed to be missing out on my favourite HKDL, but it'll be easy enough for us to do another quick trip there at some point (yes, as a West Australian, I consider a 7.5 hour flight to be a nice easy trip ).

Malaysia Airline's current business class offering is fairly average, but still includes the all-important lie-flat seat. Plus lounge access is always nice, even if it's not a great lounge.



Having said that, they have just launched a new business class product, so hopefully we'll get the shiny new version!



Malaysia Airlines is pretty much the best value airline for rewards flights though. The fees and taxes are decent (around $630 AUD p/p), which will help to offset the high costs for the flight over on Air France.

And now we can finally work out our UK itinerary. With those dates, at least we'll be getting a good amount of time in Wales!

 

[zanzibar138]

Well that was a quick change!​

Thank goodness for flexible reward bookings is all I can say lol!

So I was discussing the flights with Hubby. He said he and Grandma would plan to just take the train to Paris with me and spend an extra night at the airport hotel. I jokingly suggested they could spend the day at Disneyland, before realising if I'd made the bookings the other way around, I could have done that myself lol! I told him I'd originally been booking flights to Hong Kong before I realised availability was going to be a problem, and I'd booked it that way hoping to sneak in a Disney day on that end.

Hubby then started talking about having an extra couple of days in KL with Grandma, maybe even heading up to Penang or Langkawi. I will have to fly home that Saturday so I'm ready to get back to work, and realised that we'd be flying separately from Paris to KL, meeting up for a night, and then flying separately from KL back to Perth. So when Hubby said I should check availability for flying into Hong Kong, I thought why not!

Long story short, I will now be flying out of London early the Wednesday evening, transiting through Helsinki, and then flying through to Hong Kong on Finnair, arriving early the Thursday evening. I'll be able to spend 2 nights and 1 full day at HKDL before flying home on the Saturday.

I've never really taken much notice of Finnair, but apparently they have a relatively new business class product, with an interesting 'lounge' style seat. Rather than reclining, there are leg rests that pop up to create one long surface that you just lay down on. I usually get a lot of use out of the 'lounge' recline position when watching movies etc, so it'll be interesting to see how I find it. Main thing is that I can stretch out fully for sleeping.

 

[zanzibar138]

Options in Austria​

As much as I've always wanted to visit Salzburg, and was pretty excited about that part of our trip, the more I research, the more I'm finding it may not be the best option for us after all!

Although it's a smaller city surrounded by lovely mountains, it's still very much city, and overly touristy city at that, meaning costs are a lot higher than I was expecting, and crowds could definitely be an issue (although probably less given we're visiting in shoulder season). The city is spread out and hilly enough to make getting around slightly inconvenient with Grandma, and we can't afford to stay in the more charming central area - we'd be relegated out to the main station area. Finding affordable accommodation with stair free access, internal lift, walk-in shower and air-con has been a real problem.

After looking at several options in different parts of the country, I'm liking the look of Bad Ischl.



Bad Ischl is at the end of the bus line from Salzburg, just past the lovely alpine lake we were going to visit on a day trip. It seems to be a well connected town, also on a train line to other local areas of interest. Access from Paris would be via Stuttgart and Attnang Pucheim, which is a small and easy to manage train station on the main line to Vienna. I think the extra connection would be worth it.

The town is in a valley surrounded by mountains, with a lovely river through the centre and a charming and compact old town area. It should be easy enough to get around even with the wheelchair. While there's not a huge amount of accommodation to choose from, there are a handful of nice looking boutique hotels and B&Bs that would be appropriate, with appropriate pricing and extras included like breakfast, fully flexible terms and even a regional sightseeing card offering significant discounts on local attractions.

There are many attractions that would be easy to access on public transport.

Hallstatt is the insta-famous quintessential Austrian village nestled on the lake. Whether we want to deal with the crowds is another story. You can also take a cable car up the mountain for amazing views and a tour of the historic salt mine.



Lake Wolfgangsee with the towns of Strobl, St Wolfgang and St Gilgen. In St Wolfgang you can take a historic cog railway up Schafberg mountain to an amazing lookout, or in St Gilgen there is a cable car to the top of Zwolferhorn.





Lake Traunsee with the towns of Ebensee and Gmunden.



There's even another easily accessible ice cave in nearby Dachstein. To be fair, the ice cave on the other side of Salzburg does look better, but Dachstein also has the famous Five Fingers lookout and a suspension bridge over a glacier.



And then of course we'd probably want to do a day trip to see Salzburg.

There's even a nearby town called Bad Aussee, which I kind of want to go to just to take a photo with the town name lol!