Pre-wedding Honeymoon in Europe

[elanshin]

Inspired by @HirafuHeartAttack 's trip report, I thought I'd give this another try. With our wedding in January coming up and busy Christmas season we'll be jetting off for a holiday before all of that craziness in just over a week. This trip was booked as part of a OWA J that started on NYE and is the 5th stopover of the ticket.

Previous Sectors in the OWA:

• KUL-SIN-HND (Holiday over the new years to Japan)
• HND-SYD
• SYD-ZQN (Getaway to Queenstown and South Island - got some engagement shots done there)
• CHC-SYD-MEL (Initially Direct, however changed to go via SYD after schedule changes).

Upcoming Trip OWA J Sectors in Bold.

• MEL-SYD-HKG (QF) - HEL-LHR (AY)
• LHR - PRG (BA, Y)
• VIE - BCN (VY, Y)
• Train from Barcelona to Paris to Amsterdam (SNSF overnight + Eurostar)
• AMS-HEL-HKG (AY)-KUL (CX)
• KUL - SIN (MH, Y)
• SIN - SYD (SQ J)

This is our final "stop" of the OWA for 2025. Initially I wanted to take CX direct to LHR (and could even see the CR flight) but alas QF call centre could not see it. I was hoping that we could've had the Aria Suite to LHR but we'll settle for AY Business. We'll only be staying in London for a few days before jetting off to Prague. I've always wanted to go to more Eastern European cities and whilst Prague isn't quite as Eastern, it's much further east in Europe than we've been. We'll pick another time to go even further east (maybe next year - planning another OWA right now).

From Prague we'll head via train to Vienna and thanks to ChatGPT I have now realised we'll be in time for their Christmas Markets as they start mid November. I was quite tempted to book a Ryanair flight to Barcelona from Vienna (or Prague) but the Vuelling times and prices were ever so slightly better - so it's time to see how IB's LCC does. Barcelona was the one place my partner requested as she loved the city when she last went a decade ago with her family.

We'll then travel by train to Latour de carol in the pyrenees borders before taking an overnight train to Paris and connecting Eurostar to Amsterdam. I could have chosen to fly, but instead felt like opting for the scenic train route. In hindsight after more research, I realised I should've booked to fly to BCN first then take the overnighter from Vienna to Amsterdam instead on the OBB overnight as it was a much nicer train - but hopefully we get some good views of the Spanish/French pyrenees to make up for it.

Our time in Amsterdam is relatively brief as it was just one of the cities that had award space open to connect into helsinki and I wanted to check out the Van Gough Museum. We'll try and spend a few hours in Helsinki and check out some suggestions by Matt before getting into Hong Kong for an overnight stay and KL. I'm hoping that CX will through check our bags to SIN at KUL even though it's on separate tickets.

Singapore is the last stop before heading home for my grandmother's 90th in Sydney. We'll be attending a convention which also conveniently is work related so I can claim some of the costs. Looking forward also to trying the SQ a380 J seats.

Hopefully I can try to keep this report up to date as we go around Europe.

 

[elanshin]

Just to add, we'll be Accor heavy for this trip so I'll see how they stack up in Europe.

 

[HirafuHeartAttack]

Just to add, we'll be Accor heavy for this trip so I'll see how they stack up in Europe.

Another similarity to our trip! Best of luck. Very excited to tag along here.

 

[jase05]

Just to add, we'll be Accor heavy for this trip so I'll see how they stack up in Europe.

Set your standards to moderate and you won’t be disappointed. Unfortunately most Accor properties we have stayed at Europe have been not a patch on what you find in Asia, the ME and even Australia. There are some very good ones but have found them to be few and far between.

Best of luck and definitely tagging along for this one

 

[elanshin]

Set your standards to moderate and you won’t be disappointed. Unfortunately most Accor properties we have stayed at Europe have been not a patch on what you find in Asia, the ME and even Australia. There are some very good ones but have found them to be few and far between.

Best of luck and definitely tagging along for this one

Thanks, we'll end up at Swissotel Stamford in Singapore at the end of the trip so something to look forward to if everything else is terrible. No Crest Suite this trip though as we'll need to swing by Singapore sometime next year for a wedding and the SNU seems better value then.

 

[elanshin]

Will be flying down to MEL where my partner will meet me tomorrow night and staying at the airport for our early morning flight to SYD. Thought I might be able to move flights tomorrow night to a slightly earlier one until I got a notice about full flight and seeing EF showing Y0 for the majority of the evening flights. I think ACDC is on in Melbourne. Nothing fancy for Day 0. Melbourne accomodation felt a tad pricier so Ibis budget it is to start the trip out as it's closer to T1 than Novotel/Styles and Park Royale was full.

 

[elanshin]

Day 0.
Had to do a fair amount of work. Opened my Qantas app to see that flow forward was open and I could make the 18:25 flight to MEL. (A321XLR) So i pushed it forward and called an uber. 16min journey to the airport would've left me with about 20mins before bagdrop closed. Traffic on the M5 was green so I thought it would be fine.

Happily minding my own business as we went past SYD Int'l on Qantas Drive, when my uber driver suddenly decided he needed to cut across a couple of lanes and got honked at. I looked up just in time to see him take the turn off Qantas Drive onto the M8 on ramp .... And even though i pointed it out that was too late.


For those that know the area, once you get on the M8 on ramp, you can't get off until Beverley Hills (which coincidentally was where I came from). As soon as he made that mistake I knew I missed the flight. I could have made it if it was my normal SYD-MEL trip but alas, I had a suitcase to check in.

35mins later we pull up to T3 terminal just as QF465 was mostly done boarding. I thought I'd do the flight a favour and tell them exactly where I was and to just take me off the flight list when they called. Turns out that made it impossible for the service desk outside to take control of my ticket and move me. Luckily it wasn't too bad getting a hold of a call agent who moved me to the 20:00 departure.
Checked in to that flight, had a look at the seat map and saw an exit row seat open. SYD then proceeded to enter single runway operations which meant the flight was delayed.

I've never seen that many Group 1 and Group 2 boarding a flight before. Had to have been at least 40+ plats and even 15-20mins in I can seee the Gold's still boarding.

Rest of the evening was uneventful other than Melbourne being frozen and forgetting that Ibis budget doesn't have a lift. Time to get my travel e-sim and we'll see if we can't shuffle to an earlier flight tomorrow morning so we have more time at SYD F lounge.