Jeejee!
Hello world, here we come =) After fighting six weeks we managed to buy the flights today. Before telling what we bought and from where, im gonna tell you what NOT to buy and from where.
We started searching the RoundTheWorld flights after Christmas when we were in Finland. Finnair was the first one responding with some kind travel plan and prizes (which was going to be 700e more expensive in the end) so we decided to go on with them. What a mistake! Dont EVER buy RTW-flights from the flying companies directly since they have absolutely no experience how to build them up. Better stick with travel agencies who have no preferences to flying companies and their only job is to find you the best connections, which they do really well.
Well, we thought that since Finnair is part of the OneWorld stuff they must have some nice connections and nice prizing - and techically they do but in practice we were forced to add one continent more to our destinations since they wanted us to have one long-haul connection with Finnair, and that was New York - Helsinki. Why not to go to New York for few days, except adding one continent in the list increased the prize with 500e... Huhhuhh...
Maybe the biggest problem with Finnair was that all the emails we sent, went to the customer care center queue, and in total there was five persons trying to arrange the flights for us. And if you wanted to call to the person and talk about the modifications we wanted, you could call to the call center and from there they absolutely couldnt connect you to the person you wanted to reach. So the people working there trying to arrange the flights have no phone numbers and no personal emails. Thats what they call a good customer care - my ass... With this fancy system we spent four weeks trying to get the destinations and times and prices so that they were ok.
The last drop maybe was that we wanted to fly from Auckland to Santiago de Chile before Rio, and one of the ladies had mixed up SCL with SLC, and suddenly after the tickets were payed, and we saw for the first time the names of the aeroports written open, we noticed that we had a flight from Auckland to Santiago and the next one from Salt Lake City to Rio! We immediately sent an email to the lady telling the mistake (of course not possible to call) and she said that "iiiiits oukei, the codes are just similar (SCL versus SLC) but that our flights are ok". Well, hell no! And then when she finally called us and understood the problem she "corrected" it by making the flights Auckland-Salt Lake City-Rio!
After making all the corrections when we were ready to pay, the credit card company didnt want to accept the second payment done by Finnair, since the pay limit for one day was over already due to the one round of cancelled payment. At this point we decided NOT to take the flights from Finnair and thats it! And this was two days ago..
Some people buy their RTW flights months in advance, we now barely bought them in days advance =) First we contacted Travel Nation and they responded immediately giving personal emails and phone numbers. The girl found nice connections in less than one hour, but the only problem was that we should have had to start our journey from London. And with all this other hassle we decided to contact Kilroy and ask from them. We called there this morning and four hours later we bought the flights - with normal bank transfer and not with Visa =) And this is how they look like:
7.2. Helsinki - London - HongKong (arrive 8th)
12.2. Hongkong - Sydney
14.3. Cairns - Melbourne
17.3. Melbourne - Auckland
24.3. Auckland - Santiago de Chile
5.5. Rio - London - Helsinki (arrive 6th)
The idea is that we will travel in Australia during one month from south to north - from Sydney to Cairns. And during the other month in South America we will travel from west to east - from Santiago to Rio. If someone has some nice travel tips or other must see -things where we should stop during our way then we are definitely interested =)
And finally since the time went so tight, thanks to bloody Finnair, the tickets stopping in Bahrain and Taipei ended up being super expensive. Sorry Sonia and Rheda - we will come and see you latest when you have built up youre house in Tunisia or before that in Paris =) And Jeff, Alissa and the girls - you all we luckily met just at the new year =)
So thats all folks. We have our flights from Paris to Helsinki booked (already before the actual RTW-flights) for next wednesday the 2nd. Due to the travel insurance stuff we have to start our journey from Finland but thats ookoo - then we might have time to see some of you all there.
Now my travel fever is finally rising a bit - or is it the normal fever since i have horrible flu, dont know.. In the middle of the worst circus when arranging the flights we really thought that we should maybe stay just at home. That maybe someone was trying to tell us something. But luckily we didnt give up and le Tour du Monde is about to begin, at last =)
*bisou*
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Voie Vert
Heippa all,
Quite some time has passed and no texts have appeared on the blog. From one simple reason - we havent beer traveling anywhere. Nojoo, we came to Finland for the Christmas to spend some time there, and it was truly nice. Big kiitos for all you who took us to sleep or spend time on your sofas. It was super nice to see you all <3 And sorry for the ones who we didnt have time to meet. Next time then ;o)
But now we have been spending the last few days traveling a bit. Not around the world yet, but around the French countryside and especially Charente and Gironde. By bike! We went last Friday with our C.Car to Brunos grandmas palce in Sy Hilaire de Barbezieux where we left the car to spend the winter. We had our bikes with us as usual, and on Saturday after eating lunch with grandma we jumped on our bikes and drove for four hours and 50km to Angouleme to spend the evening with Brunos friends Clement and Alexandra.
The landscape was lovely, the sun was shining and it was really nice to bike along all the small countryside roads which went though small villages, wineyards and fields of Charente. Lovely!The day after the way back to grandmas place was somewhat more though since after all the first days biking at least i was a bit tired from the legs, but anyhow the sun was still shining and the view was nice.
On Monday after lunch again we started biking to Laruscade to Chris' and Isas place, which was just perfectly placed on half way between Barbezieux and Bordeaux. And that was suhch a nice +50km ride aswell, since most of the way was called Voie Vert, which means Green Way, and it is an old steam train track that has been transfered as a biking and hiking road. Jubii, still nice view but no tough up and down hills. And then yesterday after breakfast we biked the last part home to Talence. So atleast it was a small trip and worth to write here i think =) Unfortunetly i didnt have my camera with me, so no pics this time =/
And also i can now tell that we really havent buried the idea about flying around the world, but it just seems impossible to be in a good contact with Finnair to be able to fix some nice Round The World flights. Now after over three weeks of exchanging mails with the lady in the customer service we are closer than ever in actually getting the bloody flights... But lets see, the last nail hasnt been hit in the coffin yet, as they say in Finland... I will let u all know as soon as the flights are in our pockets =)
Untill then!
*bisou*
Quite some time has passed and no texts have appeared on the blog. From one simple reason - we havent beer traveling anywhere. Nojoo, we came to Finland for the Christmas to spend some time there, and it was truly nice. Big kiitos for all you who took us to sleep or spend time on your sofas. It was super nice to see you all <3 And sorry for the ones who we didnt have time to meet. Next time then ;o)
But now we have been spending the last few days traveling a bit. Not around the world yet, but around the French countryside and especially Charente and Gironde. By bike! We went last Friday with our C.Car to Brunos grandmas palce in Sy Hilaire de Barbezieux where we left the car to spend the winter. We had our bikes with us as usual, and on Saturday after eating lunch with grandma we jumped on our bikes and drove for four hours and 50km to Angouleme to spend the evening with Brunos friends Clement and Alexandra.
The landscape was lovely, the sun was shining and it was really nice to bike along all the small countryside roads which went though small villages, wineyards and fields of Charente. Lovely!The day after the way back to grandmas place was somewhat more though since after all the first days biking at least i was a bit tired from the legs, but anyhow the sun was still shining and the view was nice.
On Monday after lunch again we started biking to Laruscade to Chris' and Isas place, which was just perfectly placed on half way between Barbezieux and Bordeaux. And that was suhch a nice +50km ride aswell, since most of the way was called Voie Vert, which means Green Way, and it is an old steam train track that has been transfered as a biking and hiking road. Jubii, still nice view but no tough up and down hills. And then yesterday after breakfast we biked the last part home to Talence. So atleast it was a small trip and worth to write here i think =) Unfortunetly i didnt have my camera with me, so no pics this time =/
And also i can now tell that we really havent buried the idea about flying around the world, but it just seems impossible to be in a good contact with Finnair to be able to fix some nice Round The World flights. Now after over three weeks of exchanging mails with the lady in the customer service we are closer than ever in actually getting the bloody flights... But lets see, the last nail hasnt been hit in the coffin yet, as they say in Finland... I will let u all know as soon as the flights are in our pockets =)
Untill then!
*bisou*
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