[tdf-discuss] Question/Request for Zaragoza team: more travel details please (how to get to Zaragoza)

Hi *,

I was approached with a plea to bring up the travel topic to the list,
so straight to the point:

* It would be nice if Zaragoza's team could elaborate more on how to
get to Zaragoza (by plane)

It should not be a huge problem, given that it already held some
international conferences, but nevertheless there are a couple of
pitfalls:

the usual "find me a cheap flight to XY" portals and other
travel-planning portals cannot be used, as ryanair is not included in
those portals (probably because of their "you have to pay a extra fee
for stuff that is included with other airlines" policy), and it
doesn't use the main airports, but the lesser frequented ones, thus
you always have to commute from $big_airport/$train_station to
$ryanair_airport. That complicates things quite a bit. (and it doesn't
help that you cannot see a schedule on ryanair's website, and it
appears that all flights are not available - there are available seats
in march, but when you go to the future, all you get is the "not
available icon". (Oct/Nov is out of the schedule already, so no hits
at all, probably also making people believe there is no connection)...

After being contacted, I also tried to find a way from Munich to
Zaragoza, so let me describe the problems by example. Feel free to
stop reading here, or jump to the next ######################

Tried the various portals as outlined above, for example swoodoo,
expedia and a couple of others - none of them could find a connection
from Munich to Zaragoza, and not even from Paris to Zaragoza (I knew
from the proposal that ryanair serves this route (again not Paris CDG,
but Beauvais, 80-90km outside Paris)

Thus no direct way, and even if there was a route from MUC to Paris, I
would have to commute between airports, so went to ryanair website and
looked for flights - problem see above. No schedule (or I'm too dumb
to find it), and the booking system to check for flights basically is
useless, as unless you look in the next months, you won't get any
results. (and it uses captcha, that you have to keep filling out after
X requests). On the plus side, the flights really are quite cheap,
even if you add the additional fees for your luggage and not paying
with ryanair's own payment-card/system. (You can get it starting at
about 60 € (with one piece of luggage with max. 15kg)).

So next step - get to Paris - that's an easy one and surprisingly
cheap as well - Deutsche Bahn has "Europa Spezial" tickets that cost
39€ from Munich to Paris (with TGV a little more than 6 hours) - but
you can book that 92 days in advance only and availability is
limited...  On the plus side, that connection runs multiple times a
day...

So I need to connect the two - I know French & English, so that was no
real problem for me, but it took quite some time nevertheless, as the
private shuttle services did a good job with google... Unless you're
traveling in a large group, you pay more than 100€ one way. (if you
start looking for info at the correct places, you'll have that info
much quicker of course).
Here only the short version:
* Beauvais airport has a shuttle service to the city, but not to any
of the other airports, and not to any of the main stations, but to a
rather random metro station (at least to me it is random to me - Porte
Maillot) it's 15€ per trip, about 90 minutes but depending on traffic
conditions)
* Porte Maillot and Gare de l'est requires changing trains once (at
Palais Royal/Louvre) and metro is cheap (1,70€ per trip, around 30
minutes)

So in theory I got a connection, but it took quite a while to figure it out...

#############################
so essence of the above:

* you won't find ryanair flights in the common travel portals/meta search sites.
* Ryanair doesn't serve the main airports, but uses smaller ones, so
you almost certainly have to commute from airport to airport or from
train station to airport.

Example:
Paris → Zaragoza:
It is from Beauvais airport (BVA), 80/90km north of Paris
There is a bus-shuttle between Porte Maillot (a Metro station) & the
airport, organized by the airport (15€ per trip, around 90 minutes)
shuttle

This info probably should be enough to get the idea, and probably is
enough to help out the person who contacted me - but maybe you could
line it out/point to the info from previous conferences.

ciao
Christian

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