Eastern European Itinerary help Please

[deka2]

I am after a bit of help with part of our proposed itinerary May/June 2012.

Planning a oneworld RTW 140,000 point trip, part of which will be in Eastern Europe.

We wish to visit St Petersburg, Tallinn and Istanbul and I am having trouble finding the route with the least flying time, when putting in dummy bookings even for May 2012.

These would be our first stops from Sydney and any order is fine, even part by train may be good.

Istabul seems to be the problem, even through HEL.

From there we will head to Austria.

 

[drmikki]

I wouldn't waste a flight leg on Tallinn, it's a 2 hour ferry each way Helsinki-Tallinn and when we were there about 40euro return! Probably cheaper than the taxi to the airport, let alone the fees/surcharges!

HEL- LED has about 3 direct flights per day on Finnair, and you should be able to get LED-IST or HEL-IST (via budapest) on Malev - note the LED-IST with a single stopover looks to be only Fri and Sundays, the other days seems to be an LED-HEL-BUD-IST marathon. Not sure about availability of award flights on any of the above.

I believe there may also be cheap buses/trains between St Petersberg and Tallinn/Helsinki, and then there are also low cost carriers such as air Baltic which will get you to all of your destinations. At least, their website says they go there - YMMV!

Good luck

 

[deka2]

Many thanks Drmikki.

I thought that wa sthe case.

Pity because the flight from eithr LED or HEL to IST has to be via BUD which makes it a six hour journey.

 

[medhead]

Can you go the other way, fly into IST from Australia/Asia/ME?

Well I guess that just makes the 6 flight to HEL go the other way.

 

[deka2]

Yes Medhead I think your'e right.

The other problem flying into IST from Australia is that according to the oneworld interactive map you must go through AMM. Not very keen on that.

We have time and I will keep on playing with various routings.

 

[soh]

I did this last year as part of a LONE4. Helsinki to Tallin is a quick and cheap commuter ferry trip and from either to LED is a bus or train journey. LCC like Air Baltic is also an option for you if you wish.

We also went through AMM and ended up spending a week in Jordan doing our own thing. Fantastic country and pretty much went border to border in that time. Can't speak any more highly of the Jordanians and would go back in a flash.