Quote:
Originally Posted by luvinurmoney
Congrats man, that's very awesome. We want more details though!
Thanks!
Quote:
Originally Posted by JL514
Travel In Novemeber, we're going to Budapest for a few days, then continuing to Tokyo for a week - for ~$400pp.
Well, I’m back from this trip (11/21-11/30). Short version is we had an incredible time and love the two cities we visited. We thought we really enjoyed CPH when we went in March but there is no question that we would go back to Budapest before Copenhagen, and Tokyo is a must do again.
Longer Version:
Part 1 – Prep:
The trip was trouble from the time of booking. I locked in the tickets at that crazy price but the routing was terrible: LAX-BOS-FCO-BUD-AMS-NRT (on Delta, Alitalia, and KLM), leaving LAX at 9am when we’re based out of SFO. I used some southwest points to get us SFO-LAX at 6am and used some united points to book us NRT-ICN-SFO for the return. GF and I got Hyatt credit cards so between us we had 4 free nights at any Hyatt in the world and intended to use them at the Park Hyatt Tokyo (from Lost In Translation). This was all in May.
Honestly, the itinerary was really ****ty and just asking for trouble with the multiple connections and multiple airlines but what could I do? It’s not every day you get to go to Japan via Europe from the west coast for $400. But a few months later, problems started to pop up. Alitalia had a schedule change out of BOS that completely ****ed everything up, and when I called priceline to fix it they said there was nothing they could do and they recommended I cancel for a full refund. Over the next 2 weeks it took probably 20 calls to Priceline / Delta to massage the itinerary to the point where it seemed doable. In fact it got better as I got rebooked with fewer connections and on a single airline AND out of SFO (SFO-AMS-BUD-AMS-NRT)! We also got great seats on the way to AMS – two aisle seats across the aisle from each other (Like this: |_ _ x || x _ _|)
About a week out, though, there was an equipment change on the SFO-AMS leg to a much bigger plane, and our two aisle seats turned into two middle seats ( |_ _ _ || _ x x _ || _ _ _| ) which sucked for a 12hr flight and all the seats were booked so we couldn’t fix it. In the meantime, I changed our departing flight from NRT-ICN-SFO on Sunday afternoon, which got us back Sunday evening, to a direct HND-SFO flight leaving Saturday night at 1am. Essentially this was the same thing for us because Narita is 90 minutes from Tokyo anyway, so our Sunday would have been: wake up, pack, breakfast, train, airport. Instead we were able to still have a full night Saturday, not have to use another hotel night, and make the short trip to Haneda and fly out when we were already tired. As a bonus, we would also go backwards in time, arriving Saturday at 5pm with time to recuperate Sunday. And the deal seeker in me was psyched we’d be back in the US in time for
small business Saturday.
The days leading up to our trip were uneventful, and we packed and repacked to get all of our stuff into carryons, because 1) It was risky checking baggage with the transfers 2) We didn’t need to much and 3) I’ve found Europe to be a pain with big wheeled luggage. We both have pretty nice carryons that are wearable (
as huge backpacks [do not pay $99 please]) which makes changing hotels and public transportation a lot easier.
TBC…