The planning of our Spanish trip.
Planning a journey to Spain sounds very easy… unless of course you live in France ! Iain required some time to return to England to see the family, I could not go at this stage due to having to look after all the animals. So we first arranged a return flight to England and arranged for his Parents to return with him, to take care of the animals whilst we were gone, everything seemed to go fine for this stage. No real problems, travelling from France to England and back again is very easy, although now the cost have gone up quite a considerably due to double taxes.
Now planning a journey to Spain from here is a different kettle of fish altogether, we would have had to drive to Paris or drive to one of the other airports and fly to Paris, and then fly to Spain. Firstly, from here not a good journey to drive into Paris, so that got aborted. OK, cant see the point of driving to another airport and flying to Paris and getting across Paris to CDG airport to fly to Spain, at the cost of over 800 euros each. Did not want to tackle the drive to Spain of over 2,000 miles round trip, our car is not that good with the petrol consumption.
OK.. so our plan developed we would fly to Stanstead which is only an hours flights and then fly to Granada or Malaga. Sounds easy – try booking it !…Cheap enough, but all flights out of the region, whether it be Dinard, Nantes, Rennes, are afternoon flights and we would have missed the afternoon flight into either Granada or Malaga. So we then searched French to English airports including the new route into EMA but could not get connecting flights for the same day. The only flight available to us was Tours into Stansted which was a lunchtime flight, we have flown from Tours before and it’s a great airport. So for the flight going out it arrived early enough to get a same day connection, unfortunately the return flight we miss the same day connection which meant arriving at Stansted late evening and catching the next flight to Tours the following morning.
OK, no problem we shall arrange to stay at Stansted for the night. Taking into account certain days with Ryanair which were cheaper than others, we booked for eight days. This of course made it more difficult to find reasonable accommodation for the extra night in Spain, but we seemed to manage that ok. The only problem that we seemed to envisage was that arriving at Stansted 11.45pm and after searching around found it was difficult to get a bed and breakfast place for the night. The nearest one which would take late arrivals was some 10 miles away with a costly taxi fare. The only option was the hotels at Stansted and the minimum for that was 170 pounds, well that seemed so expensive from 12 midnight till 7am in the morning, so we decided to stay at the airport and kill time.
We thought we had everything arranged so we set off on our journey to Tours at 9am. Everything went fine, arrived Stansted, and then caught our connection to Granada, it could not really have gone any smoother and we enjoyed the travelling. Arrived Granada and picked up our hired car with no problems whatsoever and drove to our accommodation, arrived about 10.30pm tired but happy. Accommodation was lovely, a small self contained apartment with a welcome pack, on the edge of the mountains in Andalusia. So a hot drink and into bed.
It was in the morning at our Spanish trip started taking a turn for the worse……
Now planning a journey to Spain from here is a different kettle of fish altogether, we would have had to drive to Paris or drive to one of the other airports and fly to Paris, and then fly to Spain. Firstly, from here not a good journey to drive into Paris, so that got aborted. OK, cant see the point of driving to another airport and flying to Paris and getting across Paris to CDG airport to fly to Spain, at the cost of over 800 euros each. Did not want to tackle the drive to Spain of over 2,000 miles round trip, our car is not that good with the petrol consumption.
OK.. so our plan developed we would fly to Stanstead which is only an hours flights and then fly to Granada or Malaga. Sounds easy – try booking it !…Cheap enough, but all flights out of the region, whether it be Dinard, Nantes, Rennes, are afternoon flights and we would have missed the afternoon flight into either Granada or Malaga. So we then searched French to English airports including the new route into EMA but could not get connecting flights for the same day. The only flight available to us was Tours into Stansted which was a lunchtime flight, we have flown from Tours before and it’s a great airport. So for the flight going out it arrived early enough to get a same day connection, unfortunately the return flight we miss the same day connection which meant arriving at Stansted late evening and catching the next flight to Tours the following morning.
OK, no problem we shall arrange to stay at Stansted for the night. Taking into account certain days with Ryanair which were cheaper than others, we booked for eight days. This of course made it more difficult to find reasonable accommodation for the extra night in Spain, but we seemed to manage that ok. The only problem that we seemed to envisage was that arriving at Stansted 11.45pm and after searching around found it was difficult to get a bed and breakfast place for the night. The nearest one which would take late arrivals was some 10 miles away with a costly taxi fare. The only option was the hotels at Stansted and the minimum for that was 170 pounds, well that seemed so expensive from 12 midnight till 7am in the morning, so we decided to stay at the airport and kill time.
We thought we had everything arranged so we set off on our journey to Tours at 9am. Everything went fine, arrived Stansted, and then caught our connection to Granada, it could not really have gone any smoother and we enjoyed the travelling. Arrived Granada and picked up our hired car with no problems whatsoever and drove to our accommodation, arrived about 10.30pm tired but happy. Accommodation was lovely, a small self contained apartment with a welcome pack, on the edge of the mountains in Andalusia. So a hot drink and into bed.
It was in the morning at our Spanish trip started taking a turn for the worse……
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