Deja Vu

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Alyce

Yep, we are on the road again……or in the air, whatever. It really seems like yesterday that we were heading out on our grand adventure. Actually, it was less than a year ago that we were taking this same flight to Hong Kong and would return to the US about 12 weeks later. I was reminiscing recently about my emotions before leaving for that trip. I was about as anxious as I have ever been. Justin was about to explode with excitement.

I vividly remember sitting by the terminal in the New Orleans airport waiting to take our first flight of the trip. An airline employee walked up to us and started asking us something about our bags. To this day, I don’t know what the man was trying to ask/tell us. I think that they were afraid that there wouldn’t be enough overhead storage, and he wanted to know if he could check our carry ons.

Sidenote: I have serious issues about my luggage. I am constantly in a panic that my bags are going to get lost. Why? I have no idea. Our luggage has always been at our destination without any problems.

Anyway, this man dared to ask me to part with my carry on bag. Not only did I truly not comprehend what he was saying (through my state of heightened anxiety), but I gave him a look so severe and intense that he just walked away without pushing the issue any more. I just asked Justin how he would describe “the look.” He referred to it as “the bitchiest look in the world.” Followed by ” the look of wishing death and torture on another person times infinity.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. And that is how the trip began. We can laugh about this now, but the memories are still very fresh. Luckily (for Justin), I am in much better spirits this time around. 12 nights? It will go by in the blink of an eye. Easy.

Aside from some tears (ok, ALOT of tears) about having to send my Moose baby to the kennel, I am really looking forward to this trip. So, we are going to Europe, but we are taking the long way……the really long way. No big deal. The 16 hour first class flight is one of the things that we are looking forward to the most! Right now, we are sitting in the British Airways First Class Lounge hanging out before our flight.

Justin has had some Champagne and a few glasses of wine. I had some peppermint tea and a sparkling water. Anyway, we will take lots of pictures of the flight and all of our fancy flights of the trip.

Justin has warned me that this “first class gravy train” may be drying up soon. So, I’m going to enjoy every minute! But, I am truly spoiled rotten. One year ago, I had never taken a first class or business class flight. Honestly, I never expected to. But now that I have……I don’t want to ever go back!

He created a monster! We will check in from Hong Kong.

I hope everyone has a very happy New Year.

Love you all XOXOXO

RTW/Europe Winter 2014

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Justin

Our first international trip since returning home from our previous trip almost a year ago. In fact, I started planning this tip almost immediately upon returning home, which was later than I’d ideally start. As such, I was a little more limited in award space than usual.

I first looked at maybe going back to Australia, but that was just not doable. I also considered South America or South Africa, but there were not too many options for that either. Plus, the idea of planning/figuring out a new destination at the time was just not appealing after all the planning that went in to our RTW 2013 trip.

So looking for something more relaxing, we settled on a return to the Maldives – for 8 nights this time. That was easy, required little planning and had great flights available (Cathay Pacific First Class, Etihad First Class). We’d even get to spend a couple days in Kuala Lumpur on the way there and 4 nights in Paris on the way home. And the trip was set…or so we thought.

Between now and then, we got a pleasant surprise and learned that Alyce was pregnant. She would be unable to Scuba dive in the Maldives, plus we would be a flight away from any sort of decent medical services in the unlikely event that there was a probem.

We considered just abandoning the trip altogether, but we came up with an alternative plan that would let us spend some more time in Europe and still be able to put to use some of the flights already booked. Basically, we’re going to Europe the long way – heading West.

We fly to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific and spend one night there then connect to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and spend a night there. From Malaysia, we connect through Singapore to London and stay for 4 nights. We’ll catch a quick flight from London to Paris and finish up with 5 nights there. We’ll return on the normal route from Europe – crossing the Atlantic.

But don’t feel too sorry for us with all that flying…It will all be in First Class on some really nice airlines. We’ll also mix in some nice hotels. For anyone who is interested in that, here is our final flight/hotel itinerary:

Flights

MSY-ORD (New Orleans – Chicago) on American Airlines First Class

ORD-HKG (Chicago – Hong Kong) in Cathay Pacific First Class

HKG-KUL (Hong Kong – Kuala Lumpur) in Malaysia Air First Class (A380)

KUL-SIN (Kuala Lumpur – Singapore) in Singapore Airlines regional First

SIN-LHR (Singapore – London) in Singapore Airlines Suites Class (A380)

LHR-CDG (London – Paris) in British Airways Economy

CDG-???-MSY – I’m still waiting out for a Lufthansa First Class flight to open up on this, but I have a United business class flight booked as a backup.

Hotels

Hong Kong – Hyatt Regency Tsim Sha Tsui

Kuala Lumpur – Grand Hyatt Kuala Lumpur

London – Hyatt Regency Churchill

Paris – Park Hyatt Vendome

Nights

Travel – 1

Hong Kong – 1

Kuala Lumpur – 1

London – 4

Paris – 5

So it will be a much shorter trip than the last one, but it’s still plenty to do and see. This will be our first time to Europe, so we are very excited about that.

We’re going to try to stay on top of blog posts this trip, but I don’t know that we’ll do as good of a job as the last one.

Seattle August 2013

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Justin

Seattle 2013. My first extended trip without my better half. What happened? We were in a huge fight and…Not really. I had a work conference. I’ve been travelling more for work related reasons lately and that trend looks to continue increasing.

The COPRI Ports 2013 Conference was located in Seattle this year. It only happens once every three years, and the next one will be located in New Orleans. So no fun work related travel courtesy of the Ports Conference until 2019. But work agreed to send me and my coworker/supervisor to this conference, and I was in.

The conference itself was fine. It was kind of surprising in that some of the things I thought would be interesting were not…and some of the things I was least interested in ended up being the best topics.

Other than the conference, I tried to experience as much of Seattle as possible, but it was still very different than my ordinary vacation. There were conference things during most days and semi-work related stuff at night. Still here is my initial take on Seattle:

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Napa – October 2013

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Justin

Back to Napa for trip #3…Our first trip since returning home from our big trip.

This was – as is the usual for our domestic trips – a quick long weekend vacation. We left on Thursday—at 5:00 a.m. I was not even aware that flights left New Orleans that early, but they do. The good thing about heading out that early is that we got nearly a full day in on that day, as opposed to losing a day to travel.

We flew United with a stop in Houston on the way over, and it was pretty uneventful. One thing of note is that flight was the last one we’ll take that we had to power down our phones/ipads…at least domestically.

And because there is no other better place to mention it, I’ll do so now. We detoured to Muir Woods before making our way to Napa. This is a redwood forest with some walking paths and trails. Having never been to such a place, we enjoyed the stop and considered it well worth the 45-60 additional minutes of driving.

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An Example Trip: Using Credit Cards to Get to the Maldives

Posted on August 23, 2013 by Justin

The Maldives are probably the place we went that draws the most questions from people. That’s probably for several reasons. One, it is almost literally on the other side of the planet – or the antipode of us.

A little fun sidebar…Here are two sites that show the antipode of specific locations. So the next time someone comments that they are digging a hole to China at the beach, you can be the asshole that points out that you’d actually be digging a hole to the middle of the Indian Ocean…Everyone loves that guy.

http://www.antipodr.com/?addr=70124&x=208&y=11

http://www.freemaptools.com/tunnel-to-other-side-of-the-earth.htm

Anyway – back to what I was saying. The Maldives are far away. It took us nearly 20 hours to get to our hotel from Singapore. People were also fascinated with it because people love beaches, and the Maldives may be the most beautiful tropical location on the planet.

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Elite Status Basics

Posted on August 22, 2013 by Justin

Ever notice signs at first class checkin at airports welcoming some sort of special airline person to go check in there? Or how about an upgrade list for the flight? Who’s rear do you have to kiss to get on that?

Those are all perks of airline elite status, among many others. How do you get status? Typically by flying a whole lot and spending a lot of time in hotels. That said, there are several ways of getting status through credit cards – mainly hotel status. Though for airlines, you can get several of the more meaningful benefits from credit card perks.

Frequent Flyer Status

I’m not going to cover the benefits of status in too much detail for a couple reasons. First, if you are actually in a position to earn elite status on airlines (say flying for business), you most likely are already familiar with it…far more so than I could explain in a single blog post aimed at an audience who is vaguely familiar with the idea of frequent flyer status. If you don’t fly that much, you really have no need to know about it other than to make yourself envious.

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Hotel Booking Tips and Hotel Points

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Justin

Hotel bookings are kind of the opposite of flights, i.e. award bookings are really simple and revenue bookings are where you can really take advantage of things.

Award Bookings

For the most part this is pretty simple…Pretty much every chain has moved to a system whereby if a base level room is available, you can book it for the required amount of points. That’s it. And you can book these right on the hotel chain’s website. Yawn.

I will offer a couple tips…Cash and points awards are generally the way to go when they are available, but it is pretty rare to find them. Several chains offer a stay X nights on points and get the [X+1] night free. That is something to be aware of. Another one is a points and miles combo redemption.

Basically, read the hotel award rules of whatever points you have. It is really pretty simple.

Starpoints are my favorite hotel points, but I avoid actually redeeming them at hotels in most circumstances (I save them for airline transfers). I also really like Hyatt points and have redeemed a bunch of them (transferred through Ultimate Rewards). I used to like Hilton, but they just did unspeakable things to their award chart – making the best redemptions up to 3 times more expensive than they were a couple months ago.

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Flight Booking and Frequent Flyer Mile Tips

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Justin

Let me start off with this – unfortunately, there aren’t any major tricks to booking airfare. I’ve read this book – Decoding Airfare. And while it was an informative book, it hasn’t been too useful for my type of travel; and I guess the same would apply to most reading this.

That said, there are some tips to help you get the best airfare possible.

I use the ITA Matrix Search to find airfares. This is what all other aggregator sites use, so you will definitely find as good of a price anywhere on ITA Matrix. Plus it has a ton of search options.

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