Europe Without Air

If you cannot fly across the ocean and you cannot find a return Transatlantic crossing to suit your time frame, I can't see how any amount of creativity from this board can assist you. My only contribution would be to say you must increase your time abroad to fit in with sailing schedules between NY and Southampton.

To add to what I said above, I just checked the QM2 Transatlantic sailings.

October 9 from NY, arrives S'hampton Oct. 15 (#M932)
November 11 from S'hampton arrives NY Nov.16 (#M937)

This type of schedule would give you just over 3 weeks in Europe and would require you to be away for close to 6 weeks. By the way, flights from Canada's east coast do not take 10 hours to London, more like 6.

It may be that given your constraints, you simply can't vacation in Europe until you have more time at your disposal.

Try to break up the flight into shorter legs. Last I checked, Icelandic air flew out of Boston to Reykjavik. If they still do, you could fly to Reykjavik, spend a night there, then fly to Kopenhagen or Amsterdam.

Without us getting too personal, what is the longest you could sit on a plane...if at all?

As Lee mentioned, flying from Boston to Iceland takes 5 hours (5 1/2 on the return). Flying from Iceland to London is three hours. From there you can take a train to everyhwere.

So, you could fly, Trenton/Philadelphia/Newark to Boston (or take Amtrak), Fly to Iceland, layover there, fly to London, train to your final destination...and then reverse it home.

I flew on Icelandair from BWI to Frankfurt with a connection in Reykjavik when the airline still served Baltimore. The flight times noted above are accurate, and the connection allowed for a nice break. At the time, you could extend your trip on the front or back-end and stay in Iceland for something like up to 7 extra days with no additional fee or fare…we stayed for a couple on the trip home. They’re probably still offering this benefit to boost tourism there. I really can’t think of a better option to break a long flight into two nice legs.

I agree that your options are probably limited to either a ship (makes it a loooong trip), or flying via Iceland (which is actually a pretty interesting place to visit). Two things to keep in mind about the Iceland plan....

1. Just because the flight duration is listed as 5 hours is no guarantee that it won't be longer. Weather, maintenance issues, etc. can force plans to change, of course. The odds of that happening on the outbound flight to Iceland are probably low; inbound to the US east coast is more of a crap-shoot.

2. I don't know if they do this any more, but in my (admittedly very limited and not recent) experience with Icelandair, there could be a surprise: on my first trip to Europe (late 1980s) I got the cheapest flight I could find: JFK to Luxembourg, via Reykjavik. We departed JFK, and the pilot announced we would be making an unscheduled stop in Baltimore to pick up more passengers(!). We did just that, then headed for Reykjavik. It made the total time from NY to Reykjavik quite a bit longer than expected. With a couple hour stop in Reykjavik, I think it took us almost 21 hours to get to Luxembourg.

I doubt they do such things these days, but my point is that there's no guarantee that your time on the plane will be what you think it will be. If you really can not survive 10 hours (or maybe more) on the plane, flying probably is not an option for you.

I may be jumping ahead, but is it a fear of flying? If so, there are very good resources available and management strategies you can pursue. Fear of flying is quite common…even frequent fliers can experience this. Just thought I would ask.

There are cargo ships that have tourist accommodations, roughly the same cost as a cruise ship, or a little less. The NY Times did a great article on it about 2 weeks ago (I'd post a link, but can't get the Times site to come up right now.)

If you can manage shorter flights, I'd go the Iceland Air to Reykjavik - they allow free stopovers, then London, then your final destination.

Those multi-stop jaunts to Luxembourg are long gone. Icelandair doesn't even fly there anymore.

A cargo ship would take a good deal longer to get to Europe than the 6 days a passenger liner takes from NY to the UK. The OP seems to have 3 weeks max. for her trip to Europe, that is, to spend in Europe not to get there and back. Maybe she will return here and explain her flying difficulties. If not, we are all wasting our time.

marjorie,

As the others have said, the QM2 is about your best option, but with such a short time frame you'd be using a lot of your travel time on the trans-atlantic crossing. It would also be considerably more expensive!

It would help to have a bit more information on your situation.

Good luck!

So, whaddaya think, ladies and gentlemen? Was marjorie asking a serious question or was she asking "How long is a piece of string?"

I guess we won't know, unless marjorie reappears on the thread. I think she was just bored.

I never understood the question. In the US, "air" usually means air conditioning. I don't know what kind of air marjorie needs. If she doesn't clarify her question, I suggest we drop the subject.