The plan was to fly into Munich in Mid June, allowing a few days before to ensure we had Business Class seats from Etihad standby. Then it’s an easy train ride down to Innsbruck and across to St Johann where the walk starts. However, after Ian’s “win” with the French Open Tennis tickets, this plan was shelved and we needed to fly into Paris at the end of May. Paris is one of my favourite cities in the world, French Open or not, I love going to Paris. So for me it was a good excuse to just be in Paris.
Bonnie arranged the standby tickets with Etihad, but as the 26th May, our chosen departure date, got closer, the business class seats began to disappear. We made and executive decision for me to leave separately and earlier on May 23rd with a better chance of business, and Ian would stay and play a Redlands tennis match on May 26th and leave that night.
I managed to score business the whole way from Sydney to Abu Dhabi then on to Paris where I bought a weekly Navigo Discovery Metro train ticket for 28 euro and went straight to the Hotel de Reims which I had hurriedly booked in Abu Dhabi for 4 nights, as our Air BnB at Metro Nation which we had booked for the week in Paris, wasn’t available before May 28th. That was all easy and relaxing as I had slept for 6hrs on the first leg from Sydney to Abu Dhabi and 2hrs on the next leg into Paris.
However it soon became obvious that if Ian stayed for his Tennis match on Sunday 26th, not only would he not get business class, but he may not even get on in economy as the flight was oversold. Quickly finding a replacement player, Ian went to Sydney on Saturday, only to find, as expected that the flight was full. Bonnie quickly found an alternative route via Hong Kong with Virgin, then Etihad from Hong Long to Abu Dhabi and on to Paris. Though it was economy to Honk Kong, there was Business class teh rest of the way.
Thanks Bonnie for all your help.