I meant to update this last weekend, but never got around to it and this was just as well. Did I ever mention that often our trips evolve before we actually get to travel? Well, this one definitely is. This time last week, I had booked all the hotels in Hong Kong, Xi'an and Beijing. I have to admit the only one I was 100% happy with was ironically the one in Xi'an. I love the location of the hotel in Beijing, but I was at the same time longing for something with a bit more character.
The weekend was full of mixed emotions. Friday evening I noticed that a spa junior suite had become available on our cruise and better still, changing over to this would save us about £400. This is the second time in our journey with Royal Caribbean that we saved money by upgrading. Better still, this will also give us access to the suite restaurant Coastal Kitchen and the solarium again. By the time I spotted this, the UK office was closed, but fortunately it was still there Saturday morning and I got this switched over. I then made reservations to Coastal Kitchen straightaway.
Unfortunately my good mood did not last very long. Graham had tried to book our flights and the price had shot right up. This was now more than he was willing to pay and it looked like that this trip may go the way of the dodo. I was breaking my head over how we could salvage this trip ever since. In the process I realized that I was actually pretty indifferent about Xi'an. I figured we could cut this out to save some cost on the flights. When I came home from Mandarin class on Wednesday night, we had a chat and Graham asked if I wanted to keep the cruise. Too right I wanted to keep this. With the issue with the flights, I never had told him about the fact we were now in a junior suite. I was not really willing to give this up.
Yesterday morning, Graham looked at flights while I was getting ready for work and found a really good deal on flights to Hong Kong. They are with Etihad via Abu Dhabi. We had not realised that they had a sale, but Graham just happened to check at the right time. Unfortunately the website was being temperamental and kept throwing up error messages. I quickly checked the website of one of the suppliers we use at work and they were even slightly cheaper for the same flights so I booked this via them. We figured that we would get the internal flights at a decent price.
I went off to work, but Graham was at home for the day and around lunch time, I got a somewhat cryptic email from him saying "The trouble with starting to speculate on possibilities is you come across other interesting places. Guilin is such.” Of course, I had to Google this and what I saw just took my breath away. Here is a bit of a sneak preview:
I then checked hotels and they are insanely cheap with 3 star hotels that look nice and get fantastic reviews costing as little as £63 for both of us for a five night stay. So at the moment, this looks like the way to go. Graham suggested that we should do a land-based trip at a different time taking in both Beijing and Shanghai. That sounds good to me. I am hoping that we will finalize the arrangements over the weekend and then I will share our plans in more detail.
On a different note, I put in for leave today for the Run Disney weekend at
Disneyland Paris in September and this was approved. I am hoping to run both the 5K and the 10K this year. Now I just have to wait for bib only bookings to open.
may I ask how you find good international flights? That’s one thing that stresses me about trips is finding the flights.
