Friday, February 17, 2012

Europe Trip 2012

It seems like my vacation to Kenya just ended and already I'm in planning mode for the next trip!

As a lover of all things Olympics, I placed my order, about a year ago with the company selling London 2012 tickets and came out with a pair of tickets for the Canoe/Kayak finals, and Closing Ceremonies - I was hoping for Openings, but I'll take what I can get!  In total I paid $841.00 US (includes $35 shipping to Canada). 

And this week, I was approved for the time off from work to plan this trip!  The dates are: August 10 - 26

Yesterday I emptied by Aeroplan account and used 60,000 miles for the flight to London and back from Venice (I'll explain why Venice later).  By using miles, all I had to pay for were the taxes.  I'm flying US carriers on both ends of the flight, and found that instead of flying Air Canada I saved about $300 in taxes.  In total the taxes on Ottawa - London and Venice - Ottawa were $117.81!! Just for fun I pulled up Expedia and US Airways and checked what the price would have been for the exact same flights with the same layovers and the total was a shocking $3,964.68 -- completely worth using miles for the flights.

The second flight I booked last night was from London to Prague on August 13th. Since that's the day after the end of the Olympics I guessed that air travel would be quite high leaving the city that day, so I'd better book my flight right away.  My flight is with British Airways (from Heathrow) for $161.13.

I've fine-tuned the list of cities I'd like to visit and here's what I'm thinking - 3 nights in each:
Prague
Bratislava
Budapest
Zagreb (still contemplating over this one)

Since flying out of Eastern Europe would have meant I needed another 15,000 miles (which I didn't have), I looked at ending the trip close to either Italy, Austria, or Germany -- If my last city is Zagreb, I'll take an overnight train to Venice in time for my 11:30am flight back home.  Still working out those details.

I'm going to work on my budget over the weekend and get a better sense of cost of accommodations -- stay tuned for that post on Monday!

It may not be sunny, but I'll definitely enjoy this long Family Day weekend!

4 comments:

  1. That sounds like so much fun! I'm jealous :)

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  2. ahhhh! You're going to have such a great time! I can't wait until I can travel to London and Budapest and Prague... actually maybe you can just take me with you?

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    1. It is always cheaper to pay for accommodations when there's two people! :)

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  3. I really envy you! I plan to visit as many European countries as possible now that I live in Austria. I have travelled to some countries before and want to see more. Bon vogage!

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