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International Travel Travel

Taiwan, the long way

For our final 2014 trip we booked a near-round-the-world ticket to Taipei, Taiwan, with stops in Europe in both directions. As with most of our longer trips we used miles, in this case US Air miles, and by booking in early 2014 they still had access to their former Star Alliance partners. This meant we would fly a range of new-to-us airlines for 90k miles per person.  Thankfully, everything was in business class!

Stats for this trip:

  • 11 days
  • Four countries
  • Eight flights on five airlines  (Brussels, Austrian, EVA, Thai, Lufthansa)
  • a total of ~22,000 airline miles
  • lots of trains, buses, taxis and Uber!

ChristmasTrip14

 JFK-BRU-VIE-BKK-TPE-BKK-FRA-BRU-JFK

Flights:

Our favorite carrier was Brussels Airlines, with a nice combination of comfortable lay-flat seats, good food and drink, and pleasant cabin crew. After our overnight flight to Europe we each received a box of tasty waffle cookies as a parting gift. Transferring in Brussels involved more walking than we expected; the airport is quite large and under construction. Thankfully, the Brussels lounge was well positioned for our next flight, with a nice array of breakfast items, and the shower rooms helped us reset after the overnight flight.

We also flew Brussels Air on Dec 23rd to return to the US, and this time we each received an entire box of Neuhaus chocolates… merci! The one downside of Brussels Airlines was the relatively small selection of movies, but we always travel with our own so it didn’t bother us.

 brussels chocolates
our business class seats and a delicious box of Belgian chocolate!

Lufthansa and Austrian were both intra-Europe business class, so the seat size is no different than coach (just with the middle seat blocked off). Both were short flights, and we did get breakfast which was reasonably good. The Austrian lounge in Vienna was surprisingly small prior to our EVA flight and not particularly memorable; the Lufthansa lounge in Frankfurt was large, with quite a few breakfast options (including sour cherry jam) for our early morning regional flight.

lufthansabrekkie
cold meats and cheese plate for our second breakfast + flat Santa

EVA Air was a mixed bag – they had an interesting choice of movies, and the food we pre-ordered was pretty good. (Leandra’s Note: On two of the three legs, my special order was ‘missing’ but thankfully the normal meals were fine.) They also had a nice amenity kit, perhaps the nicest of all our flights, and we’ve become fans of the Bvlgari lotion. However, the Premium Laurel seats on Vienna-BKK-Taipei route are lumpy and uncomfortable, something we discovered after the tickets were booked, and confirmed on the flight. Better than coach, but we would likely choose a different route or carrier for such a long future flight. We did get a chance to try the new seats (Royal Laurel) for four hours on our return and they were much nicer. Strangely, we never received a landing card for Taipei while in flight, so we had to hastily fill one out while in line for immigration.

eva-1 eva-2 eva-drinks
Premium Laurel seats (meh), Royal Laurel seats (nice), champagne (always a plus)

Thai Airlines was our least favorite of the flights, with older seats and food that was just not good, especially surprising given we flew from their hub in Thailand. We had a really tight connection, so were were escorted through the airport at a hurried speed by an EVA airline employee. This also meant we didn’t have time to check out their lounge which is widely known to be better than the actual in-flight experience.

thaiairlines

Related posts:

  1. Taiwan the long way: where we stayed
  2. Thanksgiving in Europe 2013: Intro
  3. Asian adventure 2011: First class on Cathay Pacific
  4. Scandinavian summer weekend: overview and flights


« 2014 Travel Overview
Taiwan the long way: a day in Vienna »

2022 Trips

Florida (Feb)
NC Mountains (Apr)
Valencia, Spain (May)
Pacific NW (Jun)
Long Island (Jul)

2021 Trips

Florida (Apr)
Outer Banks, NC (May)
Long Island (Jul)
NC Mountains (Aug)
Dundee, OR (Sept)
New England (Oct)
Florida (Dec)
Chicago, IL (Dec)

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tlkativ

Wordpress designer/developer + mini schnauzer mama who travels the world. Chicago born, living in Durham, NC. Photos: my Pixel

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1 second everyday: April 2022 1 second everyday: April 2022
Our week in the NC/TN mountains, one second at a t Our week in the NC/TN mountains, one second at a time.
1 second everyday: March 2022 1 second everyday: March 2022
1 second everyday: February 2022 1 second everyday: February 2022
1 second everyday: January 2022 1 second everyday: January 2022
Christmas Day was good. Homemade cinnamon rolls, a Christmas Day was good. Homemade cinnamon rolls, a walk at the NCMA, family FaceTimes and Christmas cookies. Merry Christmas to all! 🎄🥂
Southwest cancelled our flight on Tuesday and inst Southwest cancelled our flight on Tuesday and instead of scrapping our trip we decided to drive to New Hampshire. 800 miles and 13 hours (over two days) to get here and so far it has been absolutely worth it.
Watching the @littlegermanband (and dancers!) was Watching the @littlegermanband (and dancers!) 
was a great way to enjoy some awesome weather this afternoon. @laurabcowan
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