I have very little experience booking AP award tickets, so please correct me if I'm not getting good value for miles here.

I want to book 3 weeks in Europe (flexible, but probably Spain, Turkey and Italy or Greece) with a 5-6 day stop in the Maldives in between. I'm planning to be away from December 17 to Jan 7 or 8. I understand award availability is limited that time of year, but hoping there are some options. This is what I'm looking at doing (2 people):-

* YVR -> BCN (AC PY - paid)
* 1-way award to MLE (J)
* Paid 1-way back to Europe (or vice versa - not enough miles for RT)
* IST -> YVR (AC PY)

From what I can tell, the only *A direct flights from Europe to MLE are LH via FRA, TK via IST and Swiss via ZRH (but less frequent). For the MLE leg of the trip I'm flexible on the city to leave from, and the dates, and would probably plan the rest of the trip around it if there was a good flight option.

I found BCN->IST->MLE on TK In J 2 weeks ago but now can't find anything that is not 3-4 stops routing through Cairo and India.

Are there other options / ways to combine the above flights?