Itinéraire starting to take shape for my October trip. Will include France and Espagne, specifically Toulouse, then over to the coast (Pays basque/Basque country), then probably Barcelone. Not sure what order to do things yet though.
Will probably have to book two separate tickets to get over there though. The severe limitations of living in a small city.......
So you start in the centre of the Pyrenees, go west to the Atlantic, St Jean de Luz or Biarritz perhaps, and then drive all the way back, sooth of the mountains I guess, to Barcelona. Seems like a nice trip. Give my regards to the Pays Basque, I holiday'd there every years through the '90s. It will rain there in October.
I'd fly to Paris and down to Perpignan if I was doing this and drive across westbound via Carcassonne. Then at the end back the same way.
Doing it that way on Air France means in integrated ticket with the change in Paris and the return trip can be done in one long day. But yes I guess you'd need a separate ticket to get to a hub that AF flies from.
AF does very good open-jaw pricing. In fact, same price as a return trip from the same point. So I'd start/end in either Toulouse and fly back from Barcelone, not sure which direction to travel but those would be the start and end points. I can pick up a 1 way flight for 40-70 € on Vueling between San Sebastián and BCN. Travel by car only between Biarritz and Toulouse with a detour into the Pyrénées. I love staying in those little bed-and-breakfast places and doing outdoor activities; hopefully the weather cooperates. But I would hope mid Oct is not a washout.......
*Frequent-flyer talk below.....skip if you're not interested*
For those that wonder why I do separate tickets, this is because the cost is higher to fly from my local airport. The stretch from AVL to either CLT or ATL (AA and DL hubs) is extremely expensive and generally adds 300+ $US to any flight because leisure travellers usually drive to CLT.
I am not a "travel at cheapest cost" flyer; the hard and soft product needs to be at a certain level even if flying in Y. In such case, AF and Iberia are my only choices- I haven't flown the latter though.
The 777 that AF uses isn't good though; with 17" seat width and 10 abreast, it's avoided if possible. Alas, they use this on their ATL-CDG route. So between the higher cost and aircraft, I could fly CLT-JFK separately and get on the A380 (which is good, flown 3x on this aircraft) and
still save money.
Since US Airways/AA went to OneWorld the Europe connection from CLT is not great. AA has a direct to CDG but no viable connection to Toulouse or Barcelone that works schedule-wise. I could fly LH and connect via München but that seems counter-intuitive from a directional standpoint, and their soft and hard product are "meh".
As for multiple languages, I don't know if all of you would understand if I simply typed "pays basque". I think/live in three official languages so naturally anything in far western Europe and Canada calls under the French umbrella as a basis- as in, what comes to mind first.
d'accord?
