{"id":750,"date":"2019-09-09T15:56:40","date_gmt":"2019-09-10T01:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/svbellamarina.com\/?p=750"},"modified":"2019-09-09T16:09:55","modified_gmt":"2019-09-10T02:09:55","slug":"cruising-life-a-european-interlude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/svbellamarina.com\/2019\/09\/09\/cruising-life-a-european-interlude\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruising Life: A European Interlude"},"content":{"rendered":"
Cruising on our sailboat to beautiful, exotic places is a great adventure in itself. For the last year we’ve been in French Polynesia, and we find it more and more enchanting every day. At the same time, it’s one of the most remote places in the world, making it hard for family and friends to visit.<\/p>\n
So this winter we took a ‘grand family and friends tour’ in Europe, the US, and the Caribbean to visit our family and as many friends as possible while our boat was waiting patiently on the hard in Apataki Carenage<\/a>. We were gone for 4 months, which was a bit longer than we expected or wanted, and it was still not enough to see everyone! To our friends in Seattle, SoCal, and Hawaii – we’ll see you next tour! 🤗😘<\/p>\n Traveling between Tahiti, French Polynesia and the US or Europe used to be a very long and extremely expensive adventure, carbon footprint notwithstanding. It’s still a series of long flights and somewhat harder to coordinate than your average international trip, but the prices have gotten more affordable with the introduction of low-cost carriers like French Bee<\/a> and competition from the US with United<\/a> having just introduced flights from San Francisco this year.<\/p>\n It used to be that Air France <\/a>and Air Tahiti Nui <\/a>only ran flights between Papeete and Paris (via Los Angeles) 2-3 days a week, depending on the season. With the new French Bee<\/a> and United<\/a> flights, it’s gotten easier to find options, and flights leave Papeete almost every day now heading to the US or Europe. All flights stop in San Francisco or Los Angeles, and you’ll have to clear immigrations and customs with your luggage before continuing on to Paris, so make sure you get the proper visa waivers in advance if you are not a US citizen or resident (more on that below).<\/p>\nThe logistics<\/h2>\n