Now that I’m home and unwinded, it’s time to recount my two-week journey to Germany for Christmas and New Years. I’ve already detailed bits and pieces, but this trip report will highlight our remarkable family trip.
Our Christmas Trip To Germany
When a trio of award seats opened in Lufthansa First Class from San Francisco to Frankfurt, I decided to use the opportunity to treat my family to something very special, a product that I love but generally only enjoy alone or with a friend.
For 100,000 points each, I booked three tickets from San Francisco to Frankfurt to Basel. My one-year-old daughter flew as a lap infant for an extra 2,500 miles. That left a gap…getting from Southern California to San Francisco. United had plenty of award space, but adding it to the same ticket would have bumped up the per-person price to 120,000 points each (Aeroplan uses a distance- and zone-based chart to calculate award pricing).
Instead, I booked three one-way tickets on United from Burbank (BUR) to San Francisco (SFO) for $69 each, utilizing credit we had from our cancelled trip to Spain a year prior. I won’t review that flight, but must lament how lazy SkyWest flight attendants have become. I’ve flown between BUR-SFO on SkyWest for 15 years and the pandemic has now resulted in a familiar refrain, “Due to the short duration of your flight, we are unable to offer a beverage service.” (this may deserve its own post…).
In San Francisco, we would be faced with a familiar dilemma…had United learned their lesson and would they let us into the United Club even though we did not have our actual boarding passes?
I already provided my first impressions of the Lufthansa flight (and my egregious error of leaving the passports onboard), but I look forward to providing a detailed review with particular emphasis on the dynamic of family travel in Lufthansa First Class.
I’m not going to say much about our time on the ground in Germany, since we spent most of the two weeks with my wife’s family. We did take a brief road trip to Mainz and then Dusseldorf to ring in the new year.
Finally, I’ll review our trip home from Zurich to Los Angeles in SWISS business class, which proved very convenient for us, though sleep always eludes me on that flight.
- United Club San Francisco (SFO – G Gates)
- Lufthansa 747-8 First Class San Francisco To Frankfurt
- Lufthansa Cityline CRJ-900 Business Class Frankfurt To Basel
- Lost Luggage On Lufthansa
- Treated Like Family At Hyatt Regency Mainz
- The Wellem Dusseldorf (Hyatt Unbound Collection)
- SWISS 777-300ER Business Class Zurich To Los Angeles
Ideally, I’ll have this trip report finished by the end of next week because there are so many additional trip reports that I cannot wait to share with you.
Thanks for reading!
looking forward to it all! cheers!
Sounds exciting Matthew. Thanks for writing it up. Happy New Year!
Hi Matthew.
On a recent Jet Blue flight in coach from JFK to BOS, the flight attendants managed a complimentary drinks followed by complimentary snack service.
Fast forward to the return in Delta First, followed by the same announcement that you describe in this post.
No drinks, no snacks, no nothing.
Interesting contrast……
Yes indeed!
Typos continue:
“and my egregious error of leaving the passports board”
Do you ever proof read your posts? I mean you write for a living, right?
“egregious” appears to have been spelled correctly. HOWEVER, he said sleep “alludes” him on the flight when I think he may have meant “eludes” but that wording choice may have been intentional.
In Matt’s defense, in the old days, writers were not supposed to perfectly proofread their copy. They had editors and proofreaders who did that for them because they were creating content. It’s much easier to critique someone else rather than create.
For example, he probably didn’t make a typo even if you thought he had misspelled the word. A typo is technically when someone’s finger slips onto the wrong key. He (sometimes) makes blatant errors which, is human. And I’m ok with that.
Was actually referring to the bit about “passports board”
Yes, in the “old days” in addition to an editor and proofreader, there were many other roles as well such as photographer, typesetter, etc. While many of the roles in the “new world” have been collapsed to just one person, it does not mean that you shouldn’t re-read at least once the piece that was written.
It isn’t like this was breaking news that it had to be rushed out.
I can’t speak for Matt, but my guess is that he “pounds” out a lot of these articles on the plane (that’s why he pays for onboard internet) and he’s usually having fun both enjoying the onboard amenities and expressing himself.
For all we know, he DOES re-read it once and miss “typos” (wink). Happens to me all the time. I’ll re-read something and still miss obvious mistakes.
To re-iterate my point: Some people just are great at spotting detail but not CREATING it. There’s even a term for them: “armchair quarterbacks”. My wife watched her first football game and was screaming at the screen “Why does he run the ball over and over again? Why doesn’t he just pass it?” I suggested she get the coach’s mobile phone number and call him to give him that advice, I’m sure he’d appreciate it.
Sometimes we’re having too much fun, darnit, and we miss a detail here and there. For those who are good at critiquing the work of others, it must be frustrating that content creators sometimes don’t possess good self-editing skills.
I was going to suggest perhaps his wife or someone else proofread his posts but I don’t know how practical that is. Can he save something in “draft” state and then have her complete it?
But perhaps he just doesn’t care. After all, you continue to read his articles so these minor annoyances aren’t necessarily costing him much.
Egregious really what you ment to say.
Outstanding for undesirable qualities; remarkably bad; flagrant.
An egregious error.
Conspicuously bad or offensive.
The definition of egregious is extraordinary, but in a negative way.
An example of egregious is a person who is a fantastic liar.
adjective
Outrageously bad; shocking.
adjective
Exceptional, conspicuous, outstanding, most usually in a negative fashion.
The flight attendants are lazy? The don’t make up the rules. They just follow them, dum dum.
Dum, dum? They have discretion on shorter flights and I’ve noticed that their “discretion” lately has been to avoid drink service when this was never prevalent in the past. Don’t blame the “rules” for this one…
Could you add a bit about your experience with Germany / Switzerland Covid entry requirements and practices for flights and on the ground? And pre-USA departure testing in Switzerland. Thanks.