Topic Wiki

Points Used:

UR: 133K
MR: 40K
SPG: 90K
AA: 148K
UA: 95K
Hyatt: 4 free nights
Marriott: 146K and 2 free nights (still waiting for some points to post and then change cash res. to points)
IHG: ~130K (still haven't decided which hotel in Belgium to stay at)
Melia: 22K
BA: 4.5K
And 1 BRG :)

Desired Locations: (Strikethrough means booked)

Israel
London
Paris
Zurich

Rome (Car rental booked FCO-FLR-PSA-VCE)
Florence
Pisa
Venice
Madrid (RT train booked to Toledo)
Barcelona
Seville
(Car rental booked SVQ-GIB-SVQ)
Gibraltar
Bruges/Ghent (Belgium) (Have to book trains within Belgium and RT to AMS.)
Amsterdam

Days Scheduled in Each Location
In no order in particular...

Rome 3.5
Florence .5
Pisa .5
Venice 4.5 including Shabbos (although others said it can be done in less time)
Israel 12
Amsterdam 2
Paris 4 including Shabbos
Dublin 1.5
London 4 including Shabbos (although others said it can be done in less time)
Zurich 1 (b/c it's the United <24 hour stopover, but I'm sure there's more than 1 day's worth of activities there)
Belgium 1
(Amount of days in the different Spain cities are short and were very calculated based on suggestions, as I wanted to save any "extra" days I had for other countries.)
Madrid 1
Seville .5
Gibraltar 1.5 including Shabbos
Barcelona 1.5
« Last edited by @Yehuda on June 08, 2014, 06:26:36 PM »

Author Topic: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon  (Read 108048 times)

Offline @Yehuda

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #180 on: February 10, 2014, 11:49:41 AM »
Your  call. If you want to save a little spg for hotels...

Right. Okay, back to planning. Thanks for ur help

Offline flyingace

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #181 on: February 10, 2014, 11:51:29 AM »
A pleasure. Did one for my son last summer, its really nice when it all comes together...

Offline @Yehuda

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #182 on: February 10, 2014, 12:00:30 PM »
A pleasure. Did one for my son last summer, its really nice when it all comes together...
Yeah, but until then it's really hard lol

Offline @Yehuda

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #183 on: February 10, 2014, 03:06:49 PM »
OK! So... we have a route reserved!

KEY: *connection
TLV-MAD-BCN-LHR-DUB-*LHR-BRU-(train to AMS and back)-*LHR-CDG-(open jaw for 11 days to take trains/cheap airlines to see some or all of: Paris, Marseilles, Nice, Zurich, Venice, Florence, Pisa and Rome)-FCO-*MAD-JFK-BOS
(BOS leg is only in there b/c you need an AA metal flight, but I won't actually take that leg unless we decide a visit to BOS would be nice :))

Woo hoo!! It finally works! All on business class for 90K pp but haven't got the YQ yet (although I'm sure it'll be cheaper than passing through LHR on the way to NYC), rep said the system needs to process it ???

2 things:
1) SPG need to transfer to AA so this route may not be available by the time that happens.
2) It was only at the end of our hour-long call that we realized MAD-JFK was available. Now, I'm thinking of changing the whole itinerary around to move East-West through Europe (which logically makes sense coming from Israel and heading to NY). I can start TLV-BRU or TLV-FCO via JetAirFly or EasyJet and piece together the non-hub cities until I'm ready for the OWE to knock out the hubs and end in Spain for the MAD-JFK...

I am probably most definitely overthinking this.

Offline Marco Polo

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #184 on: February 10, 2014, 03:13:38 PM »
OK! So... we have a route reserved!

KEY: *connection
TLV-MAD-BCN-LHR-DUB-*LHR-BRU-(train to AMS and back)-*LHR-CDG-(open jaw for 11 days to take trains/cheap airlines to see some or all of: Paris, Marseilles, Nice, Zurich, Venice, Florence, Pisa and Rome)-FCO-*MAD-JFK-BOS
(BOS leg is only in there b/c you need an AA metal flight, but I won't actually take that leg unless we decide a visit to BOS would be nice :))

Woo hoo!! It finally works! All on business class for 90K pp but haven't got the YQ yet (although I'm sure it'll be cheaper than passing through LHR on the way to NYC), rep said the system needs to process it ???

2 things:
1) SPG need to transfer to AA so this route may not be available by the time that happens.
2) It was only at the end of our hour-long call that we realized MAD-JFK was available. Now, I'm thinking of changing the whole itinerary around to move East-West through Europe (which logically makes sense coming from Israel and heading to NY). I can start TLV-BRU or TLV-FCO via JetAirFly or EasyJet and piece together the non-hub cities until I'm ready for the OWE to knock out the hubs and end in Spain for the MAD-JFK...

I am probably most definitely overthinking this.
I think AA holds reservations for 5 days.
Quaerite et Invenietis.

Offline @Yehuda

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #185 on: February 10, 2014, 03:16:09 PM »
I think AA holds reservations for 5 days.
Yes, but they can only hold IB flights for 24 hours.

Offline @Yehuda

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #186 on: February 10, 2014, 03:55:20 PM »
YQ just came through. $644 pp. Hmm that's more than when I was taking BA across the ocean (but didn't have the LHR-DUB-LHR leg in there). I guess each BA leg adds a lot of YQ.
Total cost so far:
To Israel $150
OWE $1288
Still want to buy a few ~$100-150 short hauls during that open jaw but we're still within Zaidy's money.

Offline Drago

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #187 on: February 10, 2014, 04:00:27 PM »
You're definitly starting to overthink it.
You've got a good looking itin, and if you've got the $$ to pay the YQ, then jump on it.
At some point, the hours you spend planning this also have a high value.

Offline @Yehuda

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #188 on: February 10, 2014, 04:14:06 PM »
You're definitly starting to overthink it.
You've got a good looking itin, and if you've got the $$ to pay the YQ, then jump on it.
At some point, the hours you spend planning this also have a high value.
Not if you're having fun doing it :)
Thanks

Offline flyingace

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #189 on: February 10, 2014, 05:02:06 PM »
Why not avoid flying in and out of LHR? You can get in and out of Europe avoiding it?
I think your point 2 will be much smoother- you don't need so much hub flying around to see what you really want to, and easy jet and ryannair do a lot of those places.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2014, 05:06:06 PM by flyingace »

Offline @Yehuda

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #190 on: February 10, 2014, 05:16:30 PM »
Why not avoid flying in and out of LHR? You can get in and out of Europe avoiding it?
I think your point 2 will be much smoother- you don't need so much hub flying around to see what you really want to, and easy jet and ryannair do a lot of those places.

So I can start looking into those airlines and I guess it makes sense if I keep that cost below the YQ of flying via LHR.

Offline flyingace

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #191 on: February 10, 2014, 05:21:08 PM »
Trains in Europe are great as well. Or just do one or two hubs and spread out from there.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2014, 05:26:02 PM by flyingace »

Offline @Yehuda

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #192 on: February 10, 2014, 05:22:20 PM »
Trains in Europe are great as well.

True but not necessarily so much cheaper.

Offline flyingace

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #193 on: February 10, 2014, 06:37:21 PM »
Have you plotted this itinerary on the Great Circle Mapper? You will see clearly if the route makes sense. Quick glance shows that from BRU it makes no sense to go back to LHR. Just make your own way to Paris. And do your own thing  from there.  CDG-FCO does makes sense distance wise. But you still will be traveling in a circle, landing and departing from Madrid.

Offline Ergel

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #194 on: February 10, 2014, 06:51:05 PM »
Have you plotted this itinerary on the Great Circle Mapper? You will see clearly if the route makes sense. Quick glance shows that from BRU it makes no sense to go back to LHR. Just make your own way to Paris. And do your own thing  from there.  CDG-FCO does makes sense distance wise. But you still will be traveling in a circle, landing and departing from Madrid.
who cares. He's got plenty of time. If there were something else available then great. But no OW carrier flies bru-cdg
Life isn't about checking the boxes. Nobody cares.

Offline @Yehuda

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #195 on: February 10, 2014, 08:30:16 PM »
who cares. He's got plenty of time. If there were something else available then great. But no OW carrier flies bru-cdg
+1

I could look for some random carrier for BRU-CDG, maybe even DUB-BRU and skip LHR both times, but I was trying to get as many flights on OW as possible that made some sense - i.e. DUB and BRU to LHR are like 1 hour flights, so having to stop back there isn't so crazy. Once I'm in CDG, I no longer want to go back to LHR before ZRH or anywhere in Italy, so at that point I think I would take the random carriers. Also, I'm not sure 100% on the math, but paying ~$100 for a random carrier BRU-CDG may be just as expensive as the YQ for BRU-LHR-CDG.

(And yes, I have been using gcmaps. Interestingly, gcmaps has my trip at around 9100 miles and AA said it's 9700. Couldn't figure out where the discrepancy was although as long as I'm under 10K that's fine.)

Offline flyingace

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #196 on: February 10, 2014, 09:40:25 PM »
I understand you are trying to maximize OW flights, but why pay YQ to fly back to a city you've been to  when that same flight can move you to a new destination? Easy jet flies to Nice or Milan or Geneva for 60-70 dollars in July....from Brussels.

Offline @Yehuda

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #197 on: February 10, 2014, 10:38:46 PM »
I understand you are trying to maximize OW flights, but why pay YQ to fly back to a city you've been to  when that same flight can move you to a new destination? Easy jet flies to Nice or Milan or Geneva for 60-70 dollars in July....from Brussels.

That's a valid point. In fact, just a quick look and I found Ryanair goes DUB-CRL (which is another airport in Brussels) for also $50-60. Will look into some more of these routes tomorrow.

Offline @Yehuda

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #198 on: March 26, 2014, 07:41:52 PM »
Well, hello again! Been about 6 weeks since I posted here and about 6 weeks since I got sick of looking at different OWE options. Just got into it again yesterday when magically, I was browsing aa.com and found ORY-JFK on the date I wanted to depart Europe! After scouring most of February for Europe-NY (and only coming up with LHR-JFK and those crazy YQs or HEL-JFK and travelling out of the way to HEL, raising my distance travelled by way too much), this Paris flight looks perfect!
Spent 2 days trying to piece everything together (you may have seen me in the Spain/Gibraltar Master Thread trying to fit Spain in) and now it all looks good. Pretty crazy. I mean, we dropped certain places, like Zurich and Athens, but I realized you just have to be realistic and happy with what locations you can fit in.

Anyway, I've been waiting a few hours for it to price out, and I just called AA to find out 2 startling things:
1) The trip is over 9000 miles, which means it requires 90K pp (business)
2) Total YQ is >$1100 pp!!

What??
1) Even when I had HEL as my final route to NY, it was under 9K travelled, which meant it fell under the 80K tier.
2) When I had LHR-JFK in there - supposedly the high YQ flight - it was around $700 pp.

Oy. :'(


Offline Ergel

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Re: @Yehuda's Israel/Eurotrip Honeymoon
« Reply #199 on: March 27, 2014, 12:40:02 AM »
What's your routing?
Life isn't about checking the boxes. Nobody cares.