Weekend Blitz

After a wonderful few very sunny and warm days in Bordeaux (more on the Bordeaux trip here: Walking Tour of Bordeaux, France), we headed north to the region of Pays de la Loire to visit my sister, Leslie.

BOOKING

We purchased our tickets at the Bordeaux train station, aka Gare de Bordeaux-Saint-Jean, about an hour before departure. We made sure to skip booking way in advance using a USA-specific site such as Rail Europe (read more about the best way to book a French train ticket in advance here: How-to: Booking French Trains (RailEurope vs SNCF)).

We were able to book our tickets for 37.30 euros each (~$46.43 USD); in contrast, the RailEurope version of the [...]

Fresh off of multiple amazing flights (Lufthansa Boeing 747 First Class and Thai Airways A380 Royal First Class), numerous world class lounge experiences (Lufthansa First Class Lounge – New York and Lufthansa First Class Lounge – Frankfurt) and, most recently, a full spa and massage experience at the Bangkok lounge (Thai Airways Royal First Lounge and Royal Orchid Spa – Bangkok), we had been traveling for about 54 hours so far and were getting ready to reach our (first) final destination of Bali, Indonesia. That being said, we weren’t entirely “over it” by this point, but getting pretty close, so, when the time came to board, we were more than ready to embark on our [...]

As I’ve written about before, the Park Hyatt brand is my very favorite hotel group. In addition to celebrating several milestones at Park Hyatts, there’s nothing that makes you feel like a princess if not a stay at the Park Hyatt. Our recent stay at the brand new Park Hyatt New York was nothing short of luxurious and was the perfect home away from home while we celebrated our first anniversary. Just a block from Central Park and overlooking Carnegie Hall, the location – in the center of Midtown – is top notch.

This brand new building houses the Park Hyatt in the first 25 [...]

Our first flight of the trip was Delta flight # 1543 from Charleston-CHS to Atlanta-ATL; Delta Gold Medallion status doesn’t often get me too much, but in this case it did get me an upgrade on the short, 41 minute flight. The only issue is that McCown, for some reason, wasn’t grouped with me for the upgrade pool so I ran over to the gate counter and tried my best to get an additional upgrade. We almost had one of these situations on our hands: Damnit Delta, why are you trying screw me?!

The gate agent was nice enough to add McCown to the list…here’s a note we had jotted down mid-flight:

Well, off to a good start. When leaving Charleston, we both [...]

Our experience with the Thai Royal First Ground Service was short and speedy — just like it’s supposed to be. After touching down from our Frankfurt, Germany to Bangkok, Thailand journey (read more about our flight here: Thai Airways A380 Royal First Class – TG 921 Frankfurt-FRA to Bangkok-BKK) at 6:01am, we were welcomed at the gate by a Thai Airways staff member. Once she gathered us together with one other First Class passenger, she led us to a golf cart and promptly whisked us away through connecting security and masses of other passengers to the First Class lounge. We were inside the lounge (clear across the airport) by 6:25am… that’s what you call first [...]

While most of the touristy parts of Istanbul are on the European side, no trip to the ancient bi-continental city would be complete without popping over to Asia. Part of our journey was curiosity, part was for a “been there, done that” sense of accomplishment but, mostly, we went to sample a restaurant that we heard great things about, Çiya Sofrası.

Trying to figure out how to get there, we had a few options:  either a standard passenger ferry or a tourist boat. We didn’t necessarily have to take the full-on tourist-only tour of the Bosphorus and, after a bit of research, figured that our best bet was just to take the ferry that the locals take across the [...]

As I wrote about last year (How-to: Match Hyatt status to MGM M life status), Hyatt and MGM Resorts have teamed up to give reciprocal benefits to the members of each other’s award programs. At the time, I viewed this as a great promotion and was hoping to get some great value out of it.

Here’s how the statuses translate:

This meant that, with a simple registration, I was able to turn my Hyatt Diamond status (which I obtained very easily by doing a Hyatt Diamond Status Challenge) into M Life Platinum status instantly. If you’re [...]

My sister was studying abroad in Argentina this past semester, so McCown and I planned a trip to go and visit her. We both had a decent stockpile of Delta SkyMiles and, with the impending changes to the 2015 SkyMiles program, I really wanted to burn all of the miles that we had in the event that Delta renders them all but worthless next year.

By using Delta Skymiles, we were able to take advantage of their routing rules to have 1 free stopover and 1 free open-jaw.  It looked like this:

Fresh out of the Lufthansa First Class lounge at Frankfurt’s Terminal B, we headed around the corner to board the flight we’d been looking forward to the most:  Thai Airways Royal First on their new Airbus A380-800.

CHECK-IN

We took the train in from Frankfurt after having spent the night in the city for a ~24 hour layover (read: Bratwursts Galore! Sightseeing around Frankfurt, Germany and Westin Grand Frankfurt Hotel Review – Frankfurt, Germany). The good news is that Frankurt’s airport is a short and very easy 15-20 minute subway ride from the center of town.

Thai Airways actually has 2x daily non-stops to Bangkok: a 9pm/10pm departure on [...]