When embarking on a long-haul destination, we have so little and perversely so much choice – there are no direct flights from Tenerife beyond Europe, except oddly at certain times one can flight direct to Newark, the third airport of New York, so otherwise we have to change somewhere.
With no requirement to fly via UK, we just choose the best value we can find, which this time is using a consortium centred around Lufthansa, it’s subsidiaries and affiliates. The first leg is actually on Austrian Airlines, so we fly to Vienna, enjoying a very relaxed atmosphere with impeccably behaved Austrians – no pushing in or bad behaviour here.
The only other time on Austrian, we were so impressed that a chef was onboard to cook our steaks exactly as we like them! Twenty years on and that’s not going to happen, but the food is still excellent.
We walk across the taxi rank right to the NH hotel just two minutes away. Another blast from the past when we check in, they have an address on file from the time we stayed in Vienna in 2003 for our fifth anniversary, the old West Park building we moved out of in 2010! Easily fixed, and we find ourselves in a gorgeous wood-panelled room, with loads of space we don’t need, as our bags are checked through to Tokyo.
