Our Dream Holiday in Europe

For travellers, visiting Europe is always on the list. But going there is not that easy given the costs and visa requirements, especially for us Filipinos (you know why).  I honestly had never imagined myself stepping foot on the continent in this lifetime, but thanks to a husband who feels he was born to eat and travel. Given enough savings, eagerness to search for cheap deals and most of all, the determination to go there, we were finally able to breathe life into this dream.





Our initial step was to search for cheap fares. We remembered that in mid-2010, Air Asia offered promo fares to New Zealand and Paris, costing only 17k. Since we were not confident at that time that we will easily get Schengen visas, we chose to go to New Zealand.  And a  year later, just two weeks after coming back from NZ,  hubby was able to avail again of a promo fare from Air Asia to Paris. At around 63k, which wasn’t as cheap as offered a year ago, we were able to buy 2 round-trip tickets already, and this is almost 100% discount from the regular price. Although, we still had to book tickets for the Manila to KL leg since the Air Asia Paris flight was coming from KL. Add to that the air transfers within 3 countries through Easyjet and Vueling, our total air fare cost us around PhP 103000. This was the amount that we had to risk since, after paying for all these fares, which are non-refundable, we still had no Schengen visas. Why did we buy tickets even without visas? Well, fares are usually cheaper if you book them ahead of time. The same goes for hotels.  We booked online through booking.com and these bookings can be cancelled anytime before 2 days of the scheduled arrival without charge.


We waited for 6 months before we were able to lodge our Schengen visa application at the French Embassy   and during these months, we prepared all the requirements. But just one month before contacting the embassy for an appointment, we received the news that Air Asia had cancelled their flights to Europe (Paris and London) due to financials constraints. Good thing, aside from the option to reimburse or to transfer to another Air Asia flight to other destinations, we were offered the option to transfer to another airline going to Paris at no cost.  Of course we chose to be transferred to Malaysian Airlines, but the agony and stress that this option caused us was immeasurable.  But still we were thankful that Air Asia issued us our tickets, although just 9 days before our flight.  Our visas were issued 2 weeks before the flight, and given this,we hadn’t had much time to plan out our vacation, in the sense that we were not able to book additional flights to go to other countries because the fares had gone up.  So instead of making this vacation like a tiring field trip, we decided to just content ourselves with Paris, Barcelona and Rome.