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TRIP REPORT: Europe: Start voting now! To Eurovision 2018 (Lisbon) with Brussels Airlines, Comboios de Portugal and Ryanair

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Europe: Start voting now! To Eurovision 2018, Lisbon with Brussels Airlines, Comboios de Portugal and Ryanair

Eurovision Lisbon Header Image

In this musical spectacular…

Editors intro: And here we are again. From the wonders of the USA and Germany, and now more of Europe. Let’s go around Europe to Lisbon, and the wonder that is the Eurovision Song Contest. Something very different with high cost airlines, low cost airlines, some trains..

Who wants to go to Eurovision? (or Making your mind up)

I’ll admit it. I LOVE THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST (as if you can’t tell). I love the music, the bad outfits and the political block voting.

Especially the political block voting. But in all my years – I’ve never seen it live.

There are a few people who go regularly, and Adam and the world traveller that is @jonk had made their intent clear – they were going. I was asked if I wanted to go as well.

It took all of 5 seconds to agree.

In terms of ticketing, this years ticketing service was a omnishambles of massive proportions. The queuing system didn’t exactly work in any sense of the word, and it was by sheer luck that one of us could get tickets for the song contest.

But amazingly – one of us did. And got the tickets for the three of us.

With a ticket in hand – comes the fun part – getting to Lisbon  and back. And somewhere to stay.

And this is where the fun really began.

Pricing to Lisbon… I’ll be honest… was awful. With normal tickets in the many hundreds, and redemption tickets non-existent… I needed a new plan to get to Lisbon.

So I decided to split my journey down to multiple segments

Firstly, getting to Lisbon. With the time limits I had in-situ, I decided to depart from Birmingham Airport. This gave me two options:

  • Air France to Paris CDG and Joon to Lisbon
  • Brussels Airlines to Brussels National and Lisbon

As much as I wanted to fly the RoofTop bar, seat assignment costs were sky-high (and in addition… Air France was being typically… Air France – yes. More than a few strikes). I therefore plumped for Brussels Airlines, who charged £110 for the two segments. I’d also get some Loops in for the privilege (as I’ve pretty much given up on Miles and More as a Frequent flyer programme.. And these flights earn squat outside Lufthansa Group/Loops).

Getting out of Lisbon would be a lot trickier. Pretty much every plane is jammed solid out of the city – so I decided to think laterally – and would try to pick up a service at Porto instead (3 hours away by train). Whilst this is good – it also lined me up for a direct service back to Birmingham.

With Ryanair.

I’m long of the opinion that if you can play by the Ryanair rules, it isn’t that bad. And considering the way some legacy carriers are swapping to tighter non-reclining seats, the only difference most of the time is the sales patter on the plane.

I can live with that. I also have headphones, which help matters a lot.

For me, I selected a seat and the ability to carry my bags with Priority Boarding. It’d avoid any pain and no gate checking.

Well, that’s the plan.

That came in for a grand total of €51.35 (43.85 fare, 2.50 for a reserved seat and €5 for priority boarding.

Finally – hotels were… troublesome. With redemption availability near enough solid, I looked and looked. And decided to try a hostel for once as hotels were pricing stupidly.

And it took hunting this thing did. I found the Tuk Tuk Hostel.

At least I’d have my own room in the hostel – which is pretty much a requirement for me. Peace and quiet and my own place to snore is required.

Or in other words – I had made my mind up how I was going to this trip Cue the tenuous Eurovision link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVvz7NA28CM

So, here’s the map. Get the comedy out.

Eurovision trip map
Map generated by the Great Circle Mapper – copyright © Karl L. Swartz

So, some flights to Europe, some trains and time with friends.. And yes, there’s going to be a lot of good and bad Eurovision Music through this.

NEXT: Where did my wallet go…? Off to Birmingham Airport

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Comments

  1. George says

    Oh my gawd!
    A travel blogger + Eurovision? Can it get any better than this? Lol

    So what did you think about going to Eurovision? The show itself? Did you manage to watch both the semifinals and finals? Was it enjoyable? I tried to get the tickets, but it was – like you said – a pretty terrible experience. So I did not manage to go, unfortunately. But I went to the final Melodifestivalen show in Stockholm in February and I also went to the Eurovision In Concert in Amsterdam. Both were definitely enjoyable experiences.

    Was Netta your favourite to win?

    Did you check the prices from the TAP shuttle between LIS and OPO? They have pretty reasonable prices and “everyone get a pastel de nata”, lol. Filomena would be happy. 😛
    But the Comboios de Portugal are also a great option. 🙂

    I really enjoyed reading your experience. 🙂

    And any thoughts on Scooch – Flying the Flag? I think British Airways could have used it back in 2000 and something lol.

    • Kevincm says

      When I mix in the Smurfs… it gets a lot better 😉

      I caught the semi’s on the telly (time off was a major consideration). It’s certainly an experiance and a half (I’ll go into detail around… next week sometime).

      I had a few I liked – Netta was one of them, but I had a very soft spot for Estonia… and an equally soft spot for the Moldovan entry.

      I did check the shuttle prices – sadly, when travelling back it seemed they were spiking very hard. A shame, but I’d live with it.

      And trust me – I’m going to work Scooch into a trip report segement somewhere along the line. Sooner than you think. 😉

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