Thinking about the Honeymoon - booking flights

The honeymoon... the time you get to unwind and start to really enjoy it just being the two of you...

Credit to The Honeymoon

We thought Europe would be the place for us... beautiful scenery, vineyards, lovely people, so we started researching places to go and decided that France and Italy would be our destinations of choice. With an added start or finish in London and a couple of days to defrost in somewhere warm at the end of it.

We made a few enquiries at the local flight centre close to us and attended the Europe fair that was held in Darling harbour last year but didn't learn much at all. So grabbed heaps of travel brochures instead and let them pile up at home, till on a whim one day we would pick them up and have a look at them and put them down again with our heads filled with dreams.

My new additions (my photo)

I jumped onto the Booktopia website and was lucky enough to find that they were having a deal on lonely planet books with free shipping.  I'll explain now that lonely planets are my addiction and these in the photo below are the current ones that are residing in my book shelf at present. So purchased the newer style Italy and France Lonely planet books, i'm slowly getting used to the new layout of them, but they still are pretty awesum!

My Lonely planet collection

FH already had italian phrasebook and a couple of bigger europe lonely planets. We'd decided to do a trip a couple of years ago, so had been researching it then, but one of his friends decided that he didn't want to go so we all ended up going to Vanuatu instead. Awesum holiday mind you, it was this time two years ago as it was around my birthday time, so I got to spend my bday at a lovely restaurant at Iririki Island Resort. Stunning! 

Good Coffee Recommendation (my photo)

One of my patients that I was looking after a wee while back was from Italy and he recommended that we should go and try out this coffee shop in Florence, photo on the left, because apparently its a good one. He wrote the address on a handtowel which I put in my pocket, so I wouldn't lose it and then put it in my Lonely planet at home for safe keeping. 

Anyways back on track... because FH is going to be going away with work overseas for a few months and there is only just over 9 mths to go to the wedding, we made the decision to go and actually see someone at Flight Centre in Miranda.  The other flight centre that we'd been too, didn't really seem interested and canned one of our appointments without informing us which was highly annoying, so we thought we'd give Miranda a try and was not disappointed at all!!!

Random flight centre  - Credit Pharos.com

We walked in on Sunday and it was just a little bit busy, one of the girls beckoned us over and it turns out her name is Kristi, and she's lived in europe for 5yrs and is a honeymoon expert. Meant to be... i thought. We told her our plans and dates etc, and she decided that it would be easier to fly into London and work our way down through France and Italy, instead of flying into Rome which was my original plan and work our way up. She said that the trains are less frequent going up and there are heaps more going down. So flying into London and catching the Eurostar across was to be the plan.

She checked for flights on our dates and low and behold, there was an awesum deal with Emirates going at the moment. Fly from Sydney to London a couple of days after our wedding, and depart Rome to Bangkok after 4 and bit weeks of travel and then spend four days in Bangkok and fly Bangkok to Sydney at the end of the five weeks in total. Very very impressed with what she came up with and its all flying Emirates with minimal stop over time, and for two people was just under $4000. Awesome!!! Just happens to be a Europe deal on at present. Even more meant to be... glad I dragged FH up there, cause I think we would of missed out the price if we hadn't of gone.

Bored on night shift (my photo)

So needless to say, FH and I had a quick discussion and locked those flights in. So we now have ourselves a honeymoon planner and some real flight dates to work with. Stoked!!! I was on night shift last night and read through the France lonely planet and sticky noted and highlighted all the places I wanted to go. Pretty much the whole book.. hahah....  Next is the Italy Lonely planet if we're not busy tonight...

I've sent Kristi a basic itinerary of the places we'd like to see.. so I'm looking forward to seeing what she can come up with...