And we’re off!

Well, it’s almost 2:30a in San Jose, California and I’m in the middle of pulling an all-nighter to help prepare for our upcoming arrival in Switzerland’s UTC+2 time zone, which I recently found out is called, amongst other names, Central European Summer Time. Sounds like a good time zone to be in.

My last trip-related post was about Texas back in mid-July. We’re now in the third week of August after having gone from Mexico City, to Nuevo Vallarta, to Los Angeles, to San Jose (CA), to Columbia (MD), to New York City, to Poughkeepsie (NY), and back to San Jose. Before we started our summer travels, I kept telling people I was aiming to make a post a day once we got going since I’d have “all the time in the world” to write. What a joke. I didn’t even come remotely close. To be fair, I knew it was hugely optimistic and I really just wanted to say it out loud to force myself to at least try and keep to it. Obviously, that didn’t help at all. All I can say is that I’m gonna try to be better. Not just for anyone that happens to want to follow along, but also to at least document all of this for myself. I think I’ll eventually go back and write about that part of the summer, but for now, I think I’ll focus on the international part of the journey in an effort to write with fresh memories.

So, on to the present and future. We take off from San Francisco International Airport at 8:00a, stopping in Dallas and London before ending up in Zurich at 3:00p tomorrow. Here’s the itinerary/plan with some flight and lounge details:

  • Hang out in the Admiral’s Club lounge at SFO and probably give their showers a try.
  • Fly to Dallas/Ft. Worth in first class on an American Airlines A321. Just big seats, but I’ll take it over coach.
  • We have quite the layover in Dallas – just under 6h. We’ll probably start out by getting a room at the Minute Suites, which gives you a free hour in a private suite that has a desk, a TV, and a sofa-daybed type of thing. Each extra hour is $28. However, since we each have a Citi Prestige card, we each have a Priority Pass membership, which means we should be able to double-up and get 2 hours free. T also has a Chase Sapphire Reserve, which comes with a Priority Pass, so we may even be able to squeeze in a 3rd free hour.
  • While American turns their Admiral’s Club in Terminal D into a Flagship Lounge, they put up a temporary “Premium Lounge”, which we’ll probably hop into for a bit. It’s not an Admiral’s Club and only those flying on international flights in premium cabins or with high enough elite status (AA Platinum/OneWorld Sapphire or better) can get in. Hopefully, that means it won’t be packed when we’re there.
  • Fly to London Heathrow in business class on a 777-300ER. This will be our first time flying in business with American, so I’m looking forward to it.
  • We only have a 1h45m layover at LHR, so our choice of lounge will depend on how on-time our arrival is. If we arrive earlier, we may be able to wander a little further from our departure gate.
  • Finally, we fly to Zurich in Club Europe on a British Airways A319. This will also be my first time in “European Business”, which is essentially coach with the middle seat blocked out. Looking forward to it just for the experience, but I know it won’t be anything special.

Well, time to get ready to head to the airport. In the next article, I’ll break down why we’re on such a non-direct route and how this entire first/business class routing only cost 56,250 AA miles and $26 in taxes per person.

Wish me luck on this whole writing-lots-of-articles thing.

2 thoughts on “And we’re off!”

  1. In Dallas for a layover and didn’t call us? We would have driven to DFW airport to visit for a couple of hours.

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