Category Archives for Trip Reports.
After being unexpectedly walked from Alila Marea Encinitas due to a buyout, my return stay transformed a booking mishap into a lovely experience, complete with an ocean suite upgrade and amazing free breakfast.
I’ve been meaning to visit the Park Hyatt St. Kitts for years. I’ve made bookings in the past but never made the trip happen. So I was excited to finally visit over Presidents’ Day weekend.
I booked a standard room on points and confirmed a suite upgrade. Then I was fortunate to have a further upgrade to a Deluxe Pool Suite.
After flying from Austin to Amsterdam for the last week of holiday break and spending six nights at the Hyatt Regency Amsterdam last month, it was time to head home.
The Hyatt Regency Amsterdam isn’t as flash as the Andaz, and I would normally prefer the Andaz aesthetic, but standard suites at the Regency are larger and staying with my wife and daughter I prefer the extra room so we picked the Hyatt Regency. Both had availability when I booked.
You may not think of the start of the year as the right time to travel to Europe, but I’ve always loved Paris in December and Amsterdam in January is nice as well. The weather may not be, but it’s cold in the States too! People are home from work and the streets aren’t busy. The place isn’t overrun with American teenagers!
And Amsterdam seems like an odd place to go with a five year old, but the city is a lot more than the red light district. There are great museums for kids, there’s great food, and it was something different. Plus there’s a non-stop flight from Austin, and there were three business class saver award seats on our preferred dates. The perfect trip!
The last segment of our trip was a flight home from London Heathrow to Austin on British Airways in business class. They use an Airbus A350 on the route, with no first class but with the airline’s Club Suites – essentially a bespoke version of the current American Airlines seat with doors added. It is a very good but not great seat.
This was the flight I already told one story off of: being refused water as a predeparture beverage, with the crewmember snapping that I already had a bottle at my seat.
I was heading to DC for work and planned to meet my wife and daughter in New York. Our plan changed a bit, and instead of meeting downtown I needed to heat out to Staten Island (gosh, I hadn’t been there since late 2018 or early 2019). So my plan to arrive at New York LaGuardia at 5 p.m. on a 7,000 mile award wasn’t looking so good. Maybe it would take just an hour to get over to Staten Island, but it could easily take two.
So I checked on Amtrak to Metropark in New Jersey. The 2:15 p.m. would get me in at the perfect time to cruise up to dinner at 6 p.m. if everything was on time.
All in all, if I hadn’t flown this aircraft configuration a dozen times and hadn’t flown it just a week before, I’d call it ‘the flight of a lifetime.’ It was honestly perfect, and I still believe that the Etihad First Apartment is the third best hard product in the sky – behind only the Emirates new first class and Singapore Suites.
Abu Dhabi airport has a brand new terminal that opened this month, and a brand new lounge complex. This was my opportunity to experience the first class check-in lounge, premium immigration and security, and Etihad’s new sit down first class dining – and boarding of the Airbus A380 from inside the lounge.
I wouldn’t normally connect flying between Austin and Chicago but for this trip it worked out perfectly.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
