Weekend Blitz

Ever since US Airways and American Airlines announced their merger, I’ve been excited about the prospect of having many more options of using British Airways Avios for award flights within the US. This thought became reality on March 31, 2014 when US Airways offically joined the Oneworld Alliance and thus, overnight, travelers in the US had many more options to maximize Avios redemptions.

This opens up lots of opportunities for maximizing short, non-stop flights out of or to American Airlines’ and US Airways’ hub cities:

Help! You’re planning the trip of a lifetime to Southeast Asia but are completely stuck and don’t know what to where. It can be a bit intimidating: there’s a dress code for visiting temples (no bare shoulders or knees) but the humidity is absolutely gut-wrenching. So, there’s that.

On our trip to Thailand (my first foray into Southeast Asia), I packed adhering to the pretty strict temple dress code. I was quickly shocked to find out that a) yikes, even cotton pants don’t breathe like they should! and b) every other woman tourist there had not seemed to pack according to the dress code at all! And, what’s more, outside of each temple where [...]

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 [...]

Note: These are bookable now.

Don’t miss out on Flying Blue’s summer promo, which allows you to book Air France/KLM awards for 25-50% less than normal in January and February 2015:

Award bookings on Air France/KLM routes have been reduced by 25-50% for travel between January 1 – February 28, 2015.

For those of us sitting in ‘Merica, we’ll be most interested in:

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 [...]

Don’t miss out on Hilton’s Winter 2014/2015 promo “Double Up“:

The Deal

Hilton is offering double points on all (eligible) nights at (participating) properties from November 1, 2014 through January 31, 2015.

The normal base rate for Hilton HHonors points is 10x points/$ spent (Home2 Suites by Hilton is only 5x), so, with this promo, you’ll be getting 20x points/$ spent.

How to Get It

Once we arrived in Santiago, we took a cab from the airport straight to our hotel — the W Santiago in the Las Condes area. Like all W hotels, the best word to describe the hotel was “glamorous.” Like, it seems like Kim K is going to be staying in the suite next door to yours. All W’s, although decorated differently with their own motif, all share the same party atmosphere and glam decor. The W even has a signature scent… to go along with their signature house music. When you’re at the W, you know you’re not going to sleep before 4am.

CHECK-IN

We arrived at the hotel after one 10-hour, nearly sleepless flight [...]