TRIP REPORT: Birthday Adventures to Geneva – with EasyJet

And now for something different
Birthday Adventures to Geneva – with EasyJet

• Where the heck do I want to go?
• Off to Elmdom International Airport
• EasyJet EZS1498 Birmingham Airport to Geneva Airport
• Into Switzerland and Geneva
• Crowne Plaza Geneva
• A Morning Walk Around a Quiet City
• Back to Geneva Airport
• EasyJet EZS1493 Geneva Airport to Birmingham Airport
• Through to the coffee shop…or not…
• To New and Old Adventures

Editors Introduction

Welcome to the end-of-year trip where I truly roll the dice and work out where in the world I want to go.

This one is a little more down to earth than usual – with a new (to me) airline to boot. It’s a chance to see how the Low-Cost Carriers are doing, as well as a feeble excuse for a day out. Because I like a day or two out.

There’s also the chance for hotels and maybe a few other things on the way.

I’m not going to insert the line about grammar – you all know the rules by now. Give me a small festive break, please. 

Where the heck do I want to go?

After the Chicago trip, I was busy in the office. And I mean busy. With a mixture of user onboarding, project work, repairing Microsoft Surface laptops, trying to help with a reimaging thing, as well as the business-as-usual life that seems to fill my time, I was seeking to use my stress relief valve a lot sooner than usual.

Thankfully, December is normally a good shout as it’s 1) my birthday and 2) that provides the flimsiest excuse for me to jump on a plane and go somewhere.

Past adventures have taken me to Denver, Hong Kong, Tallinn, Zurich, Brussels and Barcelona.

With a four-day weekend in the offing, that opens up North America, Asia (to a point) as well as the doorstep of Europe.

So I fired up Google Flights and prepared to do battle. One of the features I love about google flights is the mapping feature – which gives you distances at a glance, as well as possible options and prices.

For convenience, I also ran searches from Dublin Airport and Birmingham Airport – factoring in the cheap fares to shuttle between them.

With Dublin’s lower taxes it opens up transatlantic options – with Play and Aer Lingus competitive fares to the east coast, opening up the East Coast, as well as Chicago and San Francisco.

These ended up kiboshed, however, thanks to the cost of an overnight stay in Dublin, as well as the possibility of snow – which could wreak havoc on such a short trip like this, where time is precious.

And that possibility crystallised over that weekend.

I could have overnighted at Dubin the night before the adventure – I’m normally happy to camp out at a Travelodge, but when the crappy Travelodge is over €100 a night… No. It destroys the value and makes London attractive – even on a hand baggage fare. And we all know if I got to the USA, I’m not going to be coming back with hand baggage – thus bumping up the overall cost.

A disappointment. I could have almost made an excuse to head to Micro Center after I landed and made it a business trip.

So we turn to Europe. And the prices were climbing faster than someone pointing at GameStop and saying “STONKS”, with Berlin originally being in contention

One of my coworkers suggested I might end up in Skegness. It was fast heading that way.

However, when fiddling with the dates, something popped out from Google Flights – Geneva. For a suspiciously low £87 or so.

Colour me interested. Diving in, it seemed it would be easyJet was offering the flights as it kicks off its winter season, primarily picking up the skiing traffic.

Well, this would be a first. Flying easyJet. Even by pricing the Standard Plus add-in, the price had jumped to a grand total of £125 – all that for seats and two items of hand luggage.

For the hotel, I selected the Crowne Plaza – well, what’s the point of being a temporary IHG Diamond if you don’t use the status once?

As for getting to the airport, providing the trains are working, the train it will be (that’s a bigger issue than it needs to be thanks to the rail strikes we’ve been having on and off for some months now).

In that case – a new city and a new airline to fly on. Let us see what easyJet is all about…

Next: Off to Elmdon International Airport (Birmingham Airport).