“How was your flight?” It’s a pretty standard question that you get asked after arriving at your destination. But in this case, I wasn’t really sure how to answer it. Forthis particular trip from San Francisco to New York, I decided to take the scenic route. Well that’s probably a huge understatement, since I literally flew halfway across the world on my 40-hour journey.
By late morning we were already on the road for the 3-hour road trip from Zurich to Milan. Apparently we had arrived along with the first snowstorm of the season, and driving along the lakes and snow-capped mountains was simply intoxicating. Between the natural landscape and the fun we had observing the differences in architecture of the buildings as we headed south into Italy, we had enough entertainment to make the time fly by.
With under 24 total hours in Zurich spread across two separate visits, we had our work cut out for us if we were going to take full advantage of being in the land of cheese. In fact, I was traveling with two people who’s favorite food is cheese, and they couldn’t stop drooling at the prospect of stuffing their faces with some of Switzerland’s finest.
Within the luxury bespoke tour industry, it appears the the latest offerings from hotel groups like Four Seasons and Aman Resorts are picking up steam, evidenced by the fact that they are consistently selling out. Four Seasons just released its three 2017 itineraries and one of them in particular, the “Culinary Discoveries” tour, caught my attention. This particular tour was put together in conjunction with Noma, consistently ranked as one of the top restaurants in the world, and pretty much includes everything I could ever want in a trip. In other words, this would be my ultimate dream foodie vacation.
Even though we’d be flying in and out of Zurich, we actually weren’t planning to spend much time there. So really we just needed an economical place to crash the night that we arrived, and the night prior to our return, and for both of those nights we settled on the Zurich Marriott.
It seems like Korean Air’s SKYPASS frequent flyer program continues to fly under-the-radar, despite the fact that it is a transfer partner of the Chase Ultimate Rewards program, and a new transfer option for Starwood Preferred Guest points. They’ve also recently addressed one of the major negatives about the program, which was how cumbersome and painful it was to book award tickets. The website has improved dramatically, bringing it closer to the standards that most of us are accustomed to with domestic airlines.
Consider paying your taxes with a points-earning credit card, and don’t wait till the last minute! With one month to go, this is a great time to start thinking about how to maximize your benefits in the process, and hopefully lessen the pain of paying taxes a little.
It’s been a rather crazy first few months of the year at work so I was actually thinking of taking a couple days off for a stay-cation and some much needed “me time”. At the same time, I have a ton of miles burning a hole in my pocket, and am getting the travel itch since we don’t have any international trips planned until October. Then the idea dawned on me, why not do something that satisfies both desires? In other words, why I don’t I do a stay-cation where I’m traveling, but at the same time not really traveling.
The world of credit cards and travel hacking has a lot of low-hanging fruits, where handfuls of points and miles can be had for low or no cost. Like stocks and careers, though, sometimes the bigger rewards require larger, riskier investments. 2015 was a year when I learned about – and participated in – some of these opportunities. From extreme couponing to free points hoarding, I had a lot of fun with them. Three of my fondest memories are recounted below.
Between the negative reviews of British Airways’ Business Class product on Flyertalk and the fact that they made me pay to select seats in advance, I didn’t have high expectations for my flights to Zurich. The final verdict after my round-trip? I really, really liked my flights, and it was all because of the seat, which was so comfortable that I was able to sleep like a baby for 7-8 hours each way. That simply does not happen for a light-sleeping insomniac like myself.