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.

 

[elanshin]

Day 1 - Travel day Part 1.
MEL-SYD

Woke up a bit early to see if we could move to an earlier flight, but unfortunately D-I agent denied that as there wasn't too many spare seats on the flights left. Incidentally we felt a bit silly going to the premium line which took significantly longer than the regular line. Interestingly our agent printed 2 different tags for our bags - MEL-SYD-HKG and HKG-HEL-LHR. Here's to hoping our bags will show up at LHR.

Nothing interesting to report besides the MEL dom J lounge's spice bar was open in the morning doing fried eggs with a salsa and chilli sauce. I don't remember the spice bar being open in the morning before but granted i haven't taken an early morning MEL flight for a while.

I reported the D-I transfer at SYD in the other thread as currently QF Gate 15 internal transfer isn't running. Overall fairly quick and efficient. Got through to QF First for breakfast and we caught Nestor on the way in and my partner got a selfie with him. Had about an hour to get some corn fritters and Turkish eggs in us before we were called for boarding.

Coffee and whisky, can't say I've had that combination too often at the start of a day.


Asianna A380 and QF A380 parked in front of us, although the QF bird was quickly towed away and a Xiamen 787 parked. Its amazing to see that even the 787s parked here looks small compared to the 777s and 380s. Scaffolding in front is the J lounge works downstairs.

SYD-HKG QF127
We sat at the gate for just over an hour waiting for the engineers to fix a data log issue according to our captain. It wasn't too bad and we were off into the air. No WiFi for this flight and the 333 (QPD) has seen better days but we'll leave the QF 330 fleet for another thread. I had no inseat power of any kind (both power plug and USB ports weren't working).
The hour delay meant we lost an hour of time at the Pier.

Menu for the flight

QF amenities kit to HKG. I believe there's a different bag for various routes.

Went for the Mushroom Soup for lunch which turned out great. Stir Fry Chicken was a bit average and the aalted caramel and blood orange for dessert was alright nothing I would ravr about. A couple of movies and nap later, we were descending into HKG. As we planned to goto Pier F for dinner, we skipped the light snacks before landing.





I'll post the other half of our journey to LHR once we get there. Currently 40 mins out from landing into HEL.

Fun fact my partner is in 2A for all 4 legs. (I'm in 3A for all the widebodies).

 

[Flyfrequently]

On board with you @elanshin and +1
Enjoying this TR already.

 

[elanshin]

Day 1.5 Travelling Part 2
HKG - HEL

We landed into HKG airport about 1hr late and went through the transit gate pretty quickly followed by a quick wander of the Disney store before we headed over to the Pier. Our AY flight was at gate 5 and I thought it would be a good idea to go Pier for dinner then Deck afterwards.
Took this photo coming into HKG.






We missed @Dantas by half an hour due to the late arrival, but heeded his suggestion of the mushroom ravioli - it was quite tasty. 2 tasting experiences replacing the mains with dandan noodles, mushroom ravioli and Sichuan eggplant finishing the meal with some ice cream. As my phone had now dropped dangerously low (4%) I suggested to my partner to go take a shower here whilst I charged my phone up before heading back to Gate 5. If there's any pet peeve of HKG airport, its that it takes ages to go from the Pier back to a low gate as the people mover goes only in one direction.



Also had to order my glass of Cathay Delight when I go by HKG.


Labubu's have been popping up at HKG. The artist that designed them is HK based.

So as I mentioned earlier the initial plans were to head to the deck, but I thought I'd stop by the gate and get our boarding passes reprinted onto AY stock. We like to have our boarding pass in the operating carrier's stock. It was at that point I realised I had miscalculated the boarding time required for AY - (50 mins before departure) as they were boarding when we were got there. I'm too used to Cathay timings at HKG where they start boarding 20mins before departure. We got our new boarding passes and immediately were ushered onto the plane. Side note, I should have picked up that my OWE and my partner's OWS dropped off our AY flights when the Pier questioned if we had access. I still don't know how it dropped off as it's on our MMB.




First time taking Finnair's A350 J seat and I have to say personally, I quite like it. I can see why some don't like the non mechanical recline but as a sofa lounger and even bed lounger, this suited me fine. Surprisingly a lot of storage in cubby hole in the corner. I quite like the IFE system although Finnair's movie content can be a bit weird (no Marvel and why only Starwars episode III). Overall there's enough content to keep you watching.

I tried out the WiFi a bit later into the flight and with 21 users I got about 8Mbps down- solidly useable as I posted the previous post while on board. 1hr complimentary WiFi and cost for 3hr was 13Euros. I loved that the welcome screen showed the timeline for the flight in both departing (HKG) and arrival time (HEL). As a result we decided to try and power on as much as we can to minimise jetlag.

Supper was served about 1.5hr after take off. Because my OWE had dropped (which I confirmed as the crew don't have us on their pax lists), we were among the last to be asked for meal preferences and only had the seafood option left. The meals themselves were ok, but nothing to ravr about, more or less what I come to expect on QF. The AY signature drink was nice and as a fan of blueberry juice, I had a few glasses.

My partner managed a solid 7h on board whilst I got somr work done and a 5h nap. Breakfast was being served shortly before landing. Overall a solid product and flight - especially as the 350 is so much nicer than the 330 however I found the HK based crew a bit stiff. They're polite enough, but felt more like they're going through the motions and then disappear off into the galley to chat for the rest of the night.

Before we knew it, we were descending into the rain and darkness that was Helsinki to transit to our flight to London.

 

[elanshin]

Photos

Amenities at our seat.


Offered water, champagne or blueberry juice predeparture.




Contents of the amenities kit.

Loved that the homr screen showed the flight in both HKG time and HEL time.


Nuts and drink once we got airborne. They also handed out hot scented handtowels before the service started.


Supper- the crab salad was nice. Rest of it was very average. Honestly just a nicer presentation on what felt like a good economy meal at a tip airline.
Dessert was nice.


The crew came by at 3am HKG time and offered me a fruit cup.



Breakfast. I've still yet to have a good plane breakfast and this doesn't change that.

 

[elanshin]

We crammed 4 days of things into 3 here in London, which was why i didn't really do much. Averaging 25k steps a day. We're going to head over to Prague later so i might write some more.