Fly Eastern Europe-Marseille,Fr on December 22nd.. When should I book?

[morglum82]

Hey all,

I'll be travelling for a couple weeks in early december, and I'll eventually have to fly/train to be in Marseille on the 22nd.

When do youthink I should book? Now, or wait last minute? I'd like to fly from Vienna, but Budapest or pretty much any other eastern european city would be a good bet.

What I'm seeing right now is that it's going to be as expensive to be vienna-marseille than it was to do ottawa-paris-prague two weeks earlier, and I hate that..

I could also train, but all the fast train seems to need me to first go to Germany, then Paris, then south to Marseille..

Any idea?

[asdfvcx]

Skyscanner.net is showing from Bratislava (only 2 hours from Vienna by train) to Marseilles for 78 pounds on Dec. 21.


However, there are a number of warnings with this fare. This is actually two separate flights through Ryanair, through Brussels. So you are going to have to pick up your baggage at Brussels and then re-checkin for the flight to Marseilles. As well, I'm not positive, but I pretty sure that you will also have to pay the baggage fees, credit card fees and other fees twice... once for each flight.

And, if the first flight is late and you missed the second flight, I don't think Ryanair is going to do anything to help you.


So, I guess you'll have to decide whether the risk and hassle is worth it.

[morglum82]

I didnt know of that website, I'll give it a look.

Thanks!

[morglum82]

Sweet!
54 euros for budapest (a city I wanted to visit)-paris-marseill
e (+taxes)
on WizzAir.com


they have cheap flights to milan and barcelona, I'll see if I'm not better flying there and taking the train instead..

[asdfvcx]

I didnt know of that website, I'll give it a look.
Skyscanner is the standard search engine most people use to search for discount flights within Europe. So you didn't know that, I expect you don't normally spend much time in the travel forum.


So given that, I'm guessing you might not be too familiar with discount airlines within Europe (although I could be wrong). So while many of us have used discount airlines within Europe many times without problems, you need to be familiar with some of their quirks.

There are usually many fees on top of the ticket price and taxes:

Fee for using your credit card to book. And most people have no choice but to pay it, because they don't have access to any European debit cards.
Fee for any checked luggage.
Huge fees if you go over the the small size and weight limits for both checked and carry on luggage. And the usually check.
Fees is you don't check in online. (And some have made online check in mandatory).


As well, they sometimes use airports very far outside the city, which can be a pain to get to. For example many of them in Paris use Beauvais airport, which is more than an hour by bus from Paris. The only reasonable way to get to and from the airport, is to catch a bus run by the airport that currently costs 13 euros one way.

[morglum82]

I'm afraid I don't speed enough time in the travel forum indeed :)

Thanks for the tips, I remember being pissed at having to pay 10 euros for checked luggage and 5 euros just for the privilege of paying with a credit card, but hey, the flight is free :)

Here's the new itinerary since we're actually going to Draguignan, which lies 1h30 east of marseille, and the only flights between budapest and marseille arent direct and arrive very late after going through Paris:

Flight from budapest terminal 1 with WizzAir for "free", or 30 euros (15 euros taxes, 10 euros luggage and 5 euros booking fee) to Bergamo, "next" to Milan at 6 in the morning. I'm going to hate getting there at 6. That was found with Skyscanner.net :)

Land at 7h30. Get from Bergamo airport to Bergamo train station, can't be too long. Take the train (35ish euros) from bergamo to draguignan at 11h10, arrive in Draguignan at 17h37.

Basically what I've got left to figure is how to get from/to both airports.

Now that I think of it I probably would have been better off taking a night train from budapest instead of flying out at 6, but those eastern european rtain website dont work that great (heck, even the italian wont let me book for christmas and the french will, but crash), so I thought I might as well take this deal and be done with it.

Thanks again!

[asdfvcx]

Just in case it isn't obvious, if you are planning to take a train in Italy that close to Chirstmas, you desperately want a reservation just to ensure that you aren't going to be spending 6 hours standing up. As you noticed the Italian rail website normally is useless, although the French normally doesn't give me any problems.

I'd try the French again in a couple of days, to see if you can get it working. If you can't, raileurope.ca or a travel agent such as Travelcuts may be able to sell you the train ticket and reservation. But if they are bought through a Canadian travel agent, they will probably cost considerably more than buying it through Europe.



The Budapest airport isn't too far outside the city, and I know there used to be a reasonably priced shuttle service that served most of the main hotels. However, I don't know if it still operates and if so how early it operates. A google search may find it.

If not then taxi, in theory, shouldn't be too expensive as it isn't a long trip. But the reality is probably quite different. :)