Roughing it (sort of): The Tour du Mont Blanc and South of France (SQ J/LH Y/U2 Y)
Jul 30, 2017, 1:58 pm
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Join Date: Dec 2016
Posts: 116
Roughing it (sort of): The Tour du Mont Blanc and South of France (SQ J/LH Y/U2 Y)
I absolutely love reading all the TRs on FT so I figured I would take a stab at contributing. This is my first attempt at a TR and I am definitely not a wordsmith so I apologize in advance if I'm missing any key info!
In July 2017 my husband and I went to Europe for the first time since 2012 (with the exception of a long weekend in Iceland, which we did not particularly enjoy). This started as a discussion last year as a 35th birthday celebration, but in the end it grew to a group of 8 friends gathering in Chamonix over 4th of July to do the Southern trek of the Tour du Mont Blanc followed by a week at our friend beautiful family farmhouse in the south of France. Not too shabby.
Everyone planned their own air travel as they spent the long July 4th weekend in different parts of Europe before we all met for the trek. To get ourselves to Europe from NYC we obviously had a ton of options. We are pretty new to the world of points and miles so we didn’t have enough to get us there in business or first. We settled on the relatively new Singapore Premium Economy product from JFK-FRA. The generous pitch and 19.5” wide seats on the A380 seemed like a good value despite the mixed reviews. We bought tickets in December for $1100 each and upgraded our JFK-FRA redeye leg in early June with Chase Ultimate Rewards points transferred to the KrisFlyer program. I watched for any saver fares for a long time before just pulling the trigger on the standard upgrade since research showed this route rarely had upgrades. We figured getting some sleep in a lie flat seat was more valuable on the red eye than on the way back. Plus, there was no saver or standard upgrade availability on the return flight anyway. This was our first time on SQ and I was looking forward to trying both classes.
Our TMB Southern trek was booked with luggage transfers and a professional guide via Alpine Exploratory – a UK based adventure travel company. Our group has mixed experience with adventure travel so we decided it was best we have the cushiest version of this tour, which can be as rough as camping or group huts every night (not our cup of tea). The southern trek is a 4D/5N experience with a mix of 2-3 star hotels and 1 hut. It was incredible, but much, much harder than any of us expected it to be.
Our week in Gascony was very relaxing and mostly consisted of consuming a lot of duck confit, cheese and wine. It was the perfect way to end the trip.
Our itinerary was as follows:
JFK – FRA in SQ J
FRA – GVA in LH Y
Tour du Mont Blanc
GVA – TLS in U2 Y
TLS – FRA in LH Y
FRA – JFK in SQ J (we were upgraded from Y+!)
This ended up being one of the most incredible trips I’ve ever taken and I even really enjoyed my first experience on a European LCC – easyJet!
In July 2017 my husband and I went to Europe for the first time since 2012 (with the exception of a long weekend in Iceland, which we did not particularly enjoy). This started as a discussion last year as a 35th birthday celebration, but in the end it grew to a group of 8 friends gathering in Chamonix over 4th of July to do the Southern trek of the Tour du Mont Blanc followed by a week at our friend beautiful family farmhouse in the south of France. Not too shabby.
Everyone planned their own air travel as they spent the long July 4th weekend in different parts of Europe before we all met for the trek. To get ourselves to Europe from NYC we obviously had a ton of options. We are pretty new to the world of points and miles so we didn’t have enough to get us there in business or first. We settled on the relatively new Singapore Premium Economy product from JFK-FRA. The generous pitch and 19.5” wide seats on the A380 seemed like a good value despite the mixed reviews. We bought tickets in December for $1100 each and upgraded our JFK-FRA redeye leg in early June with Chase Ultimate Rewards points transferred to the KrisFlyer program. I watched for any saver fares for a long time before just pulling the trigger on the standard upgrade since research showed this route rarely had upgrades. We figured getting some sleep in a lie flat seat was more valuable on the red eye than on the way back. Plus, there was no saver or standard upgrade availability on the return flight anyway. This was our first time on SQ and I was looking forward to trying both classes.
Our TMB Southern trek was booked with luggage transfers and a professional guide via Alpine Exploratory – a UK based adventure travel company. Our group has mixed experience with adventure travel so we decided it was best we have the cushiest version of this tour, which can be as rough as camping or group huts every night (not our cup of tea). The southern trek is a 4D/5N experience with a mix of 2-3 star hotels and 1 hut. It was incredible, but much, much harder than any of us expected it to be.
Our week in Gascony was very relaxing and mostly consisted of consuming a lot of duck confit, cheese and wine. It was the perfect way to end the trip.
Our itinerary was as follows:
JFK – FRA in SQ J
FRA – GVA in LH Y
Tour du Mont Blanc
GVA – TLS in U2 Y
TLS – FRA in LH Y
FRA – JFK in SQ J (we were upgraded from Y+!)
This ended up being one of the most incredible trips I’ve ever taken and I even really enjoyed my first experience on a European LCC – easyJet!
