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So it’s Thanksgiving weekend (the Canadian one in early November) and the stars and planets have finally aligned and Marie and Caitlin’s schedules have come together to make it possible for us to travel over Christmas again this year… but there’s just one small problem… we can’t seem to settle on a destination and we’re about 6 weeks from our departure date and tickets aren’t getting any cheaper… I’m all in for something elegantly European – maybe Paris or Amsterdam or perhaps somewhere in Germany… Marie is leaning towards sun and sand on an island in the Caribbean. Caitlin says she doesn’t care where we go as long as it’s not Vancouver (she’s still traumatized by the cold and snow from last winter)…
We’re going to be flying using Avion points again so will just have to pay the taxes, airport fees and any dollar amount over the maximum allowable price (which varies depending on the destination)… Who knew – well we kind of did but that just ruins any narrative tension so just pretend we’re a bunch of rubes who think that everyone stays home pounding rum and eggnog round the Christmas tree – that tickets for travel over Christmas would be so expensive! As in sell a couple of kidneys or your firstborn child expensive! Even with the bulk of the ticket cost covered by Avion points the taxes and fees were still well over $1000 per person for the places we wanted to go… And they use up a lot of Avion points (55,000 per ticket for travel to Mexico and the Caribbean, 65,000 per ticket to Europe, 100,000 per ticket to South America)… Turned out Paris was going to be $1500 and change per ticket so that was a big non!! Amsterdam would be $1100 so looks like the only red-light district we’ll be seeing this Christmas will be the colour changing lightbulb on our neighbour’s front porch… Germany was clearly not happening as most of the flights there were going to cost substantially more than traveling to Paris. In all, it was not looking good for Europe. And the taxes and other fees for most of the laid back, get-away-from-it-all Caribbean islands were going to be over $1000 with some running well over $1500. We did find cheap flights to the Bahamas and Jamaica but neither of those destinations really appealed to me. We’d originally thought of going to Cuba but Avion doesn’t seem to have any flights there at all… So then we thought of flying to Mexico again for $575 and then hopping on a $250 flight to Havana… But at this point even Marie wasn’t jumping up and down to go to the affordable sun and sand places because most of them are ridiculously popular Christmas travel destinations… Surely there had to be something in Europe that we wouldn’t have to sell body parts to travel to…
So we started looking at Portugal or Spain… They’re reasonably priced compared to a lot of other parts of Europe. They’re warmer than Vancouver in the winter (well some parts of them are at least)… And, added bonus, both are close enough to England that Caitlin could maybe squeeze in an extra week in the old country before meeting us in Spain or Portugal… Why England you ask? Well it’s where you’ll find Leicester of course… Which just happens to be where a certain young man is attending university… And which is not that far from where he’ll be spending Christmas with his folks… So all of a sudden Spain and Portugal were looking pretty appealing to Caitlin… and even Marie – dewy-eyed romantic that she is – was starting to lean heavily towards Europe.
And this is where it starts to get a bit weird. Our first thought was Portugal. It’s positively cheap compared to most of the rest of Europe and it’s got a nice mix of history/culture/food, etc. and we’d enjoyed our visit to Lisbon immensely (and I really enjoyed Lisbon, Porto, Evora and Tomar when I was there solo). But, alas, the cheapest ticket we could get through Avion was going to cost us $1500 in taxes and fees per person for a route that would see us flying Air Canada to Newark and then TAP airlines from Newark to Lisbon… And that was about it… all the other tickets were even more expensive… and remember this was the just the part we were paying – Avion points covered another $1300 per ticket… We really need to start traveling at times other than summer and Christmas… But what about Spain? $800 from Vancouver to Madrid… All things considered not the cheapest destination but… Spain… Tapas… Paella… Cold, cold beers… Sangria… Chorizo… Museums of ham… Spain is looking pretty darn good at this point… But here’s the strange part.
The route from Vancouver to Madrid would be Air Canada from Vancouver to Newark, then TAP Airlines from Newark to Lisbon and then TAP again from Lisbon to Madrid… Yup… the exact same flights from Vancouver to Newark and Newark to Lisbon… but add a flight on to Madrid and all of a sudden the ticket costs just over half of what it would cost just to fly to Lisbon! I’m sure there’s some arcane airline logic that explains it all… And as it turned out, that Vancouver-Newark-Lisbon route must serve as some kind of gateway flight for TAP because adding pretty much any TAP flight out of Lisbon reduced the price substantially… so much so we were able to put together flights for Caitlin (who mercifully flies out a week before the Christmas holidays start) that will see her to fly to London, train to Leicester where she’ll hang out with Lewis for nine days, then fly (via Iberia Airlines) to Madrid where she’ll join Marie and I for Christmas and a couple of weeks exploring Spain, then fly home with us on the same Madrid – Lisbon – Newark – Vancouver route for a grand total of $750… I don’t understand airline pricing. I expect I never will…
So Christmas in Spain it is. Tickets are booked. Points have been deducted. Even turns out we have enough points left for one more ticket to Europe… hmmm… wonder what Marie will be doing while I’m in Europe this summer… We (Marie and I) will land in Madrid on December 22nd, Caitlin will join us in Madrid on the 24th and the three of us will travel around Spain for a couple of weeks before flying back to Vancouver on Jan 4th. Now we just need to settle on where to visit in Spain, find some hotels, book some train tickets, plan some activities… and start packing!! Stay tuned…
