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After spending some time in Montreal, we tacked on a visit to Québec City to the end of our trip. While not nearly the size of Montreal, it was a great addition to our Montreal trip because it gave us a better taste of Canada. Montreal, while totally worth visiting (it feels like Europe-meets-North America), has more of an international city vibe and doesn’t give you a true Canadian experience. Québec City, although still quite touristy, was much more of a cultural experience than Montreal.
Although the city changed from French rule to British rule in 1763, only a mere 1.5% of the population is considered an Anglophone — 95% of Québec’s population [...]
This post is continued from Etihad A380 First Apartment – Flight EY 460 Abu Dhabi-AUH to Melbourne-MEL – Part 1. Check it out to see the first half of the review.
BATHROOMProving size was really the theme of the experience, even the bathroom was huge:
I took a quick glimpse of the stairs, just to confirm that we were, in fact, on the 2nd floor:
ON-BOARD BARBefore turning in for the night, we walked around the cabin to explore the on-board bar.
The bar is situated on the top deck of the A380 aircraft, in-between First and Business class:
It was completely empty when we made our way [...]
We loved staying right in the center of the Recoleta district of Buenos Aires on our trip to Argentina. While there are many wonderful neighborhoods in BA (all with very different personalities), this area is considered by many to be the most affluent neighborhood in the city, filled with lavish homes and fancy shops and restaurants. The famous Recoleta Cemetery is also located in this area, so there’s plenty to see and do all around.
BOOKINGWe booked with Hyatt Cash+Points for $125 + 10,000 points per night. Cash rates are easily in the $500+ range, so it makes redeeming points a very attractive offer.
We used a Suite Night Award and were booked into a [...]
After spending a very enjoyable and luxurious 3+ hours in the Etihad Airways Flagship First Class Lounge – Abu Dhabi-AUH, it was time for the main event: The Etihad First Apartment!
BOOKINGWe booked this bucket list flight using American Airlines AAdvantage miles for a total of 60,000 miles; this was before a major AAdvantage devaluation and now the flight would cost you 100,000 miles for the one-way route from the “Middle East” region to the “South Pacific” region. Furthermore, since we both have the Barclay AA credit card, we got a 10% rebate, driving the total price down to 54,000 miles + ~$79 in taxes each for the ~$6,300+ flight. We got even more [...]
Aerolíneas Argentinas Flight # AR 1413 Mendoza-MDZ to Buenos Aires-AEP Dept 11:25 am Arrv 1:01 pm
Mendoza is quite a small, mostly domestic, airport. They have a few international flights, but mainly just to Santiago, Chile-SCL, just on the other side of the mountains. Our hotel advised us that arriving appx 1 hour before departure is more than enough time to check-in with bags when traveling to Buenos Aires.
BOOKINGWe booked this segment as part of a larger Delta SkyMiles award ticket. Finding and adding Aerolíneas Argentinas award space to a Delta award reservation can be a bit tricky, so check out our guides here: Booking an Awesome Argentina Itinerary with [...]
After flying in on Singapore Airlines from Jakarta (Singapore Airlines B777-200 First Class Jakarta-CGK to Singapore-SIN (SQ 953)), we were faced with a 10-hour layover in Singapore and, because we’ve never visited the city before, we took advantage of the layover and popped out of the airport (as impressive as it was) to see as much as we could in the short time.
Because Singapore is a hub, they’ve made sightseeing during a layover very easy! The airport offers free two-hour tours but, since we had more time than that, we opted to DIY and head out on the hop-on, hop-off bus. This gave us the freedom to do things on our own time and see more than the 2-hour free [...]
After touching down a bit late from our inbound flight from Charlotte, we scurried from Terminal H to L by taking a short train. We were assigned gate L13 and, fortunately, the Lufthansa Lounge was directly across the hall. This allowed us about 45 mins to get showers and freshen up for the next 7-8 hour flight.
BOOKINGWe booked this flight using United MileagePlus Miles. We spent a total of 90,000 miles each for the Business Class award, including:
Lufthansa Business Class Charlotte-CLT to Munich-MUC Lufthansa Business Class Munich-MUC to Delhi-DEL Air India Business Class Delhi-DEL to Colombo-CMB United Economy Class Charleston-CHS to Newark-EWRWe [...]
A trip to the Etihad Airways First Class Lounge in Abu Dhabi was the warm-up to the main event: flying the Etihad First Apartment from Abu Dhabi to Melbourne. It was essentially the only reason we had chosen to route from the US to Australia via the Middle East. And a visit to the brand new lounge was nearly as exciting as flying the A380 since our trip was just about 3 weeks after the May 30th grand opening–talk about timing!
As a result, we were purposely very, VERY early arriving at the airport for as much lounge-time as possible before heading to our gate. We checked in quickly and were welcomed into the lounge which is located immediately after going through [...]
While in Argentina’s wine country, we wanted to be sure to see some vineyards and see the outskirts of Mendoza… plus try some local wines. Mendoza’s wine regions account for about 70% of all the wine produced in Argentina, so visiting some wineries and tasting some Malbec is a must while staying in Mendoza.
Turns out, though, that planning a day trip to wineries is a little harder than we thought. Mendoza’s wine regions stretch out over more than 350,000 acres and there are three separate regions within Mendoza. So, with just one day set aside for this, we quickly realized we couldn’t see it all. First, we had to pick a region (we went with Maipú) [...]
Even though we were only in Dubai for 3 days before heading to Australia, we were trying to see as much of the city and surrounding area as we could in such little time. Of course, the center of Dubai is pretty impressive, with the world’s tallest building, indoor ski slopes, etc., but we really wanted to see outside the city, too.
Especially after taking the culture tour of Ramadan (here), we learned that Dubai used to be a small fishing village– and, of course, it’s right in the middle of the desert, so we wanted to see a type of terrain that we were unfamiliar with. We’d also just visited Arizona, so we were curious to compare that desert climate [...]
