We're gonna ski like it's 1999.
First time Europe. Looking for insight.
- Thread starter jnelly
- Start date
Which dates are you there? Arriving in GVA, right?
Today's update from Weather to Ski:
Snow cover is very thin across some southern parts of the Alps, notably in the southern French Alps and southwestern Italian Alps, where it looks more like mid-April than late February. The situation is better elsewhere though, with generally near normal snow cover across the northern half of the Alps.
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Excellent, I land that morning at 8:30/will be skiing by noon. Don't forget to post reports!
That was a huge year in the Alps, 150+% across most of the northern Alps including several destructive avalanches. 1999 was also memorable in North America, with 10 areas having record high snowfall, topped by Mt. Baker's world record 1,096 inches November - April.
jnelly
Member
I know there’s a general sentiment that there will be plenty of places to stay last minute now that it’s moving into off peak. That said, there is NOTHING available in Morzine / Les Gets and most of Grand Massif area (that doesn’t have a bunk bed and under rich guy cost) . I’m eyeing this for the second leg of the trip but Orbitz and Booking.com is a comedy show with “sold out” tags at entire regions.
What am I missing?
What am I missing?
I was referring above to the Prince song, about enjoying yourself one last time as the apocalypse approaches (as @jnelly mentioned, the possibility of being vaporized in the upcoming days/weeks). Better while skiing in the Alps than here in the NYC region, which would certainly be a prime target.
This week is not off peak, particularly since Mardi Gras is today. There are a fair number of places in Europe that have a school holiday during Mardi Gras week.
I believe he was talking about the second half of next week.
Fraser mentioned back-channel that it’s probably a combination of:
- There is so much pent-up demand and short breaks are particularly popular this winter following the pandemic.
- Early March is the highest season for short breaks in the Alps in any year.
- Many countries/regions are in in their main holiday week with hotels therefore preferring to stick to Saturday to Saturday.
- The snow is vastly better on the northern side of the Alps, which further increases demand.
I thought that the option suggested in my FTO e-mail -- staying in a B&B a short drive from the Portes du Soleil -- was pretty solid.
It may not interest you people from the US but Singapore Air no longer requires a covid test for transit. I'm about 10 days from departure and my destination of France no longer requires a negative test for arrival. That saves some minor cost and hassles. I'm hoping Australia removes the requirement for a negative test for arrivals between now and the end of March.
All of the Alps countries have done away with enforced negative tests for arrivals. I wonder which countries other than the US, Canada, and Australia are still requiring them?
Singapore does (although not for transit). New Zealand does - along with 14 days quarantine.
It's covid theatre really.
This reminded me of my inaugural European travel experience. During the 1986 summer break after a semester at the University of Nice, I finagled a student loophole to purchase a one-month Interrail pass so I could visit classmates in their home countries. As noted in the current intro video, Interrail is available to Europeans and UKers younger than 26, and back then was priced at approx. half of a Eurail pass.
No smartphones in the mid-80s so you entered the itinerary by hand into the booklet ("do not use a pencil!") and got it stamped. I don't recall reservation requirements or surcharges for any trains except the French TGV so it was easy to hop on and off without excessive planning. If you didn't know anyone in a specific city, the time-honored move was to take an overnight train to avoid paying for lodging.
I got a ride from Nice to Rome and activated the pass there:
1. Rome to Florence
2. Florence to Nice
3. Nice to Regensburg (Bavaria)
4. Regensburg to Copenhagen
5. Copenhagen to Düsseldorf
6. Düsseldorf to Brussels
7. Brussels to Hamburg
8. Hamburg to West Berlin
9. I got a ride from Berlin to Regensburg
10. Regensburg to Graz, Austria
11. Graz back to Nice to pick up my belongings
One last photo op in Nice (cosplaying with a prop cigarette):
A tearful goodbye with my GF and a roommate:
12. Nice to Milan
13. Milan to Brussels
At Brussels Airport after more than 5,000 train miles, where I took lovely People Express to Newark and onward to Denver/Boulder:
That's how it was done.
Hell, no internet at all.
Remember phone cards, cashing travelers cheques, bucket shops (boy, those could be great), essential bulletin boards in key hostels or cafes for exchange of information between travelers, picking up mail at American Express Offices, hostel touts, a new currency in every country, free meals from the hare krishnas, traveling for several days with a stranger, Lonely Planet Guides so specific they sometimes advised you to talk to a particular person behind the desk of a particular business to meet some travel need, etc.? Those were the days!
In 93, over five months, I made it overland all the way from Cairo to Berlin (oversea from the Sinai to Aqaba) before I had to spend more than $7 for a place to sleep. Eventually flew home to JFK on a super-cheap bucket-shop airfare purchased in Amsterdam that required me to get to Brussels in 36 hours. The kids these days don't know what they're missing.
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Odd, I'd never heard that expression. Here's what the internet says:
- Purpose: Bucket shops emerged to sell last-minute, unsold seats at a discount to fill empty seats on a plane.
- Mechanism: Airlines would sell a block of these unsold seats to a bucket shop at a reduced rate.
- Current status: The traditional role of physical bucket shops has largely disappeared due to the rise of online travel agencies and a shift in airline sales strategies.
We used to buy cheap flight tickets through "consolidators." The most well-known place to find them was in the Village Voice classified ads.
An airfare consolidator is a wholesaler that buys airline tickets in bulk from airlines at a discount and resells them to travel agents, who then sell them to the public. These fares are often lower than standard published fares and can provide travel agents with a competitive edge, higher commission potential, and the ability to offer more flexible options to clients.
- Bulk purchase: Consolidators purchase large blocks of seats directly from airlines at a reduced price.
- Resale: They then make these discounted tickets available to registered travel agents.
- Agent markup: Agents can add their own markup to the ticket price, allowing them to still be competitive while earning a commission.
- Customer-facing: Travel agents use these tickets to serve their clients, often for international travel where consolidator fares are more common.
Yes. I purchased tickets from consolidators (fares to destinations advertised in the back of of the Voice, if memory serves) when in the U.S. to travel abroad.
Once overseas, if you didn't have a RT ticket, bucket shops could be found in many countries. They were quite useful in the days before online dynamic pricing. In Amsterdam for example, I simply walked into the shop, scanned a huge blackboard of offered fares for last-minute(ish) flights from Schipol and several airports in adjoining countries to destinations all over the world, chose my flight from Brussels to JFK, paid, and walked out the door with a paper ticket. How cool was that?
Consolidators also used to advertise and sell cheap, flexible, round-the-world tickets with multiple stops and options to travel overland between points of arriving and departing flights. I never took that kind of trip, but know several people who did.