On my recent trip to Oahu, my friends and I explored a number of areas and tried a variety of activities. I'll be summarizing them as possible day trips around Oahu.

On a Friday morning, my friends and I rose early in Kailua in search of a hike. My sister recommended Maunawili Falls, which I had never hiked.

Award travel reservations can usually be made up to eleven months in advance. Often, but not always, eleven months out has the best availability. Eleven Months Out is my new series looking at what you can book today for travel in eleven months.

Thanksgiving is in less than 11 months. Turkey, pie, potatoes, family, and giving thanks may be your highlights, but travel doesn't have to be a lowlight.

Singapore has recently entered a codesharing partnership with Virgin America to allow more passengers to connect to Singapore flights leaving Los Angeles and San Francisco.

To celebrate the partnership, you can earn both Singapore miles and Virgin America points for the codeshared flights from now until February 28, 2013.

To earn the double dip, you must register your flights in advance here.

There's a very good JetBlue sale going on today and tomorrow: The Fly-Somewhere-New Sale.

I've been in New Zealand for two days now. The first two days in Auckland were pretty uneventful. I was just getting my bearings and planning the rest of the trip. Except for that one thing...

While in Auckland, I booked Jetstar flights from Auckland to Wellington and Wellington to Queenstown. Jetstar is a low-cost subsidiary of Qantas, a member of oneworld.

Jetstar flights that are also marketed by Qantas with a Qantas flight number can be purchased with American miles and Avios.

I started this series of posts about booking your trip to Europe for summer 2013 with a post about booking business class. This post will focus on booking an economy class award.

If you want to fly economy class this summer, I recommend getting some American Airlines miles. There are two main reasons:

All the legacy carriers--American, Delta, United, US Airways--charge 60k miles roundtrip to Europe in economy class. But I've outlined a trick that I'll repeat here to get your AA award for 50k miles.

Happy New Year to everyone except a few Hawaiians, who are almost there. I'm 35,000 feet up in a Global First bed en route from LAX to Sydney then onto Auckland for the start of three weeks in Australia and New Zealand.

This trip is the culmination of 16 months of planning. In late 2011, I got in on the 150,000 American Airlines miles bonanza for opening up a Citi AA Visa and Citi AA AMEX. My brother has been talking for years about going to the Australian Open, even running a blog annually during the fortnight.

Happy New Year to everyone except a few Hawaiians, who are almost there. I'm 35,000 feet up in a Global First bed en route from LAX to Sydney then onto Auckland for the start of three weeks in Australia and New Zealand.

This trip is the culmination of 16 months of planning. In late 2011, I got in on the 150,000 American Airlines miles bonanza for opening up a Citi AA Visa and Citi AA AMEX. My brother has been talking for years about going to the Australian Open, even running a blog annually during the fortnight.

I'll be saying goodbye to 2012 35,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean in United Global First. (You can join me. Seats in business (4+) and first (1) opened up on the flight today for the first time since February.)

It has been quite an eventful year that saw the founding of this blog, and trips purchased to all six inhabited continents, though I bailed on South America.

Want to book a dream summer vacation to Europe? The time is now. Award space is still very good on a number of great routes on great products and will deteriorate in the coming months.

Here's how I would go about booking my dream award. Step one is the miles--more on getting those at the end of the post.