We had one dinner off-property. With the suggestion of some on Flyertalk, we sought out the most acclaimed restaurant in Bali … Mozaic. It’s in Ubud, and nearly an hour and a half’s drive each way from our hotel, but was a nice experience. On the whole a lovely dinner, with wonderful service (though in a very practiced, memorized Balinese way). An advance booking is pretty much required, and then the restaurant requires same-day confirmation (and they also maintain a waitlist) so we had the club lounge staff ring them up the morning of our reservation. And then rather than taking a cab up to Ubud we had a hotel car drive us there, wait, and drive us back. It’s just so impossibly inexpensive (even with the current value of the dollar, and even at…
Trip Reports
Category Archives for Trip Reports.
Bali – Central Mountain Tour
Bali Central Mountains Tour: On the advice of several Flyertalkers, we booked a tour with Wayan Sueta (who has a very nice website). We had him take us up to the Central Mountain region, saw a coffee plantation up in Munduk, and naturally some temples. Here was another glitch in our trip. We had booked him for March 21, we were supposed to meet him in the hotel lobby (and I had re-confirmed just days before). He didn’t show. I called him on his cell and it seems that he had gotten confused. He knew I had booked the 21st, but wrote it in his calendar for the 22nd. Since he lives up in Ubud it was really too late to get started for the day. Not a huge deal, we just rescheduled a spa…
Intercontinental Bali Resort & Spa – Jimbaran Bay
We landed just after 9:30 pm, and I expected the hotel to meet us on the walk from the plane to immigration, apply for our visa on arrival, escort us to their lounge, take our passport and luggage tags, and collect our bags. But there was no one waiting. Now, the above service is a published benefit of a club booking at the Intercontinental in Jimbaran Bay. And there really shouldn’t have been any confusion. Back on January 17th – right after I made the booking — I emailed my flight arrival information to the hotel. On January 18th the hotel confirmed Quote: we have updated your flight details in our system. The transfer from and to the airport will be included as a Club InterContinental guest and you will be greeted by our club…
Lufthansa’s First Class Terminal in Frankfurt
First Class Terminal For those who haven’t been, or might be visiting for the first time, the First Class Terminal is on the upper, departure level in a separate building, just west of Terminal 1. The building has a large “First Class Terminal” sign. There’s a pretty sharp turn-off, though, as you approach, which can be easy to miss. (It’s also walkable back from the Terminal 1 arrivals level where the hotel vans pickup and dropoff.) Our car pulled up and a personal assistant met us out front. She asked for our passports, and I handed them over along with our boarding passes. She asked about luggage to check and I noted that our bags were already checked. She took our bag tags in order to check on them. We were quickly through a perfectly…
A Complimentary Day Room at Frankfurt
Tuesday, March 18, 2008Kempinski Hotel Gravenbruch Frankfurt Lufthansa First Class passengers are entitled to a complimentary day room at the Kempinski hotel. I found the details on the Lufthansa website. I emailed the hotel when making arrangements for the trip, mentioned I was a Lufthansa first class passenger (but didn’t mention the free room benefit) and they replied with a discount rate of 79 euros. Well, if I was going to pay for the room I’d just book the airport Sheraton! A quick email back with a link to the LH website, and they replied with apologies – yes you are right.We are very sorry about that fault. We do not remember about that possibility, because we don not had this very often. We send you a confirmation for the requested day use room free…
Lufthansa First Class: Washington-Dulles to Frankfurt
This is the second post of my trip report, since the posts start from the beginning of the trip you’ll need to scroll down and read posts in reverse order. Or just take the post-modern approach and just dive into the middle! Monday, March 17, 2008Washington, DC (IAD) to Frankfurt, Germany (FRA) 7:00pm Lufthansa 0419, Boeing 747, First Class, Seats 81A, 81C Scheduled flight time: 7h 40mI took the metro to work today with my bags loaded into my wife’s Acura. She came by the office to pick me up around 4pm. We were at Dulles just after 4:30pm, waited about 5 minutes behind just a single customer at First Class check-in, and were told we’d have to pick up onward boarding passes at Frankfurt… except our boarding passes all the way to Denpasar spit right…
New Year’s at the Westin Diplomat, or Learning About the Beauty of Shoulder Season the Hard Way
Regular readers of this blog will know that I absolutely adore the Westin Diplomat outside Fort Lauderdale. It’s without a doubt the best Starwood property for Platinum recognition. They have about 86 suites in the upgrade pool for platinums, many being corner suites with wraparound balconies looking out at both the Atlantic Ocean and Intracoastal Waterway. Additionally, they have an absolutely lovely club lounge on the 33rd floor with both indoor and outdoor seating, also looking out both at the ocean and waterway. The club offers three food presentations daily, nice flatscreen televisions, and a bountiful selection of newspapers (I can even grab my Sunday New York Times there without much difficulty).It’s a big property to be sure, but they’ve always managed their size well. In the past the valet has been quick to grab…
Flying the St. Croix First Class Mistake Fare on USAirways
Jan
21
2007
Back in August I posted about a first class fare glitch to St. Croix and I took the trip earlier this month. The deal was Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to St. Croix, so I drove up the night before (could easily have done it same day, but the newly converted Wyndham is a Sheraton at just 3,000 points a night and they give breakfast in the restaurant to Platinums when the club lounge is closed on weekends). Satellite parking for the week ran $35. Shuttles very frequent in both directions. This is such a great airport, it’s almost laughable… huge, new, expansive, but only a handful of flights and gates. The old terminal still stands and there’s a banner encouraging people to suggest uses for it. Flights were standard domestic service. Harrisburg-Charlotte was booked as an Airbus,…
First Class – Harrisburg, PA to St. Croix – $156+tax
Aug
16
2006
This has already gone out over Fare Alert so not sure how long this will last. As discussed on Flyertalk, there’s a $156+tax first class fare from Harrisburg, PA (just a few hours drive from DC) to St. Croix on USAirways. Go to Travelocity (or the USAirways site), enter MDT and STX as your origin and destination, and select discounted first class for your fare type. (Or don’t specify fare type, it will still pull up this fare as it’s the cheapest fare in the market even for coach.) Service is only on Saturdays — and only from Aug 12 to Sep 2 and starting again November 4 — so you either fly in and out same day (just under an hour in the airport!) or stay for a full week. It’s an A fare…
Returning Home
Jun
23
2005
Wednesday, June 15 10:25 am Departure Melbourne (MEL) Qantas Flight 93, MEL-LAX First Class Seats 2E, 2F We arrived without further incident about 8:20am and walked right up to the 2 dedicated Qantas checkin counters for First Class on MEL-LAX. No wait. Bags were tagged to Seattle and boarding passes were issued all the way there – even though LAX-SEA was on a separate e-ticket purchased from Alaska directly. I simply showed my itinerary to the CSR and she didn’t have any difficulties. There was a short line for passport control, and then we walked through duty free. Would they let me bring in Aussie beef jerky into the states? It was on sale at duty free, but when I arrived at SYD there was a sign specifically saying that beef jerky was prohibited. I…
