Thanks Idsant

My wife and I have an equal number of miles (as detailed above) so 2 tickets is a realistic possibility. It's always nice to but tickets however I'd rather save my $$$ as a defence against Paris's high prices!

A ticket via Europe is not that far away. Our Global Rewards points will tip over 40,000 each shortly and that will be enough for a Boston to Paris round trip ticket. 60,000 United miles will get you from Melbourne to Boston return so I simply have to find the remaining 14,000 miles each . I could possibly use Hilton Honours to transfer some of my other miles to United but that is expensive.

My personal preference is to fly via Asia however. It is just a question of what combination of miles and points I could use to get from Melbourne to Paris via say Hong Kong or Singapore.

One possibility might be to work towards Continental's 20,000 miles saver award from Cairns to anywhere in Asia. So I could use some miles to go from Melbourne to Cairns then Cairns to say Hong Kong and then some more miles Hong Kong to Paris.

I think I may have asked this question previously but I don't recall getting an answer I was happy with. I searched for the previous discussion but could not find it. Apologies if I have doubled up.

Still at worst I could probably get to Europe via LA as described above. The upside is that I could have a look at the new California Adventure (Disney) theme park that's just opened.

cheers Peter