Talking about destination, Namibia and Costa Rica were recommended to me, as I wanted an adventurous holiday in solo. With the time and money I can afford on this trip, I focused on Costa Rica, for 10 days (23APR-04MAY). One of the reason was the possibility to use the 300 USD voucher I got earlier with American Airlines.
The outcome of the first searches were clear: this time of the year is not the best time to take a flight from Nice Airport. With the Cannes Film Festival, the legacy carriers (BA, AF, LH, LX, IB) have the possibility to keep prices high without loosing on load factor.
Using some tricks learned on Holiday Pirates or by myself (open jaw can be way cheaper than round trip), I've started to search flights from MXP (Milan Malpensa) going back to BCN (Barcelona). There are some buses (Eurolines) doing Nice to Milan for about 40 EUR, and I've the chance to see 2 LCCs (Vueling and Easyjet) competing on the the NCE-BCN route, making OW fares from ~40 EUR without bag.
The long haul results were interesting as American Ailrines was among the cheapest. I wanted to combine a stopover on the way in Washington, and on the way out in Miami:
the dream
With the voucher, this became the cheapest option, but despite Matrix showed me plenty of similar flights, I couldn't find them on OLTA (Online Travel Agency) websites.
I took my phone to ring the AA Call center, where the lady told me it was not possible to select 3 connection points in their system... I've tried to book using brick and mortar: same results. I've finally taken the time to look into Amadeus GDS and the results were not different: once you select the MXP-JFK-DCA-MIA in the PNR, the class I wanted on the MIA-SJO (which is well opened if searching for RT US<>Costa Rica) becomes closed :(
Well, If I don't have the possibility to do fancy stuff to get there, let's go for the cheapest option: AF operated by Delta (490EUR) for the transatlantic sectors, with Vueling to BCN (48EUR) and Easyjet on the way out (50EUR).
the reality
After the round the world, yes it was a bit weird to think about another trip that would "only" be a round trip, but I wanted it to be what could holidays in solo (and not a sprint between airports) look like.
