Trip Details: Miles and Points Success Story

I'm just wrapping up a month-long trip; I'm already in my final city Kharkiv, Ukraine. I'll be home on Wednesday in time for a big softball game and the dodgeball playoffs if all my flights are on schedule.

€35 vs. $35 vs. £35

€35 for one of the twelve beds in this room and a shared bathroom down the hall (St. Christopher's Inn, Paris):

$35 for this room, bathroom, welcome chocolates, and drink voucher (Holiday Inn, Krakow):

How did I get a room for $35? I bought the points from Priority Club for 0.7 cents each and exploited their PointBreaks List of steeply discounted award nights.

Points and know-how are getting me a three-day reprieve from hostels at hostel prices. Now if only the Holiday Inn had as fun of a bar as St.

Tampa to London in British Airways Club World (Business)

Anatomy of an Award: Booking this Trip

AA First Class: Los Angeles to Tampa

BA Business Class: Tampa to London (LGW)

A Day in London: Gatwick to London to Heathrow to Paris

When booking an award with AA miles, you cannot select your seats on BA planes until 24 hours before departure. About 21 hours before departure, I logged into BA.com and gave my six digit confirmation code. Almost all the seats had been selected, but I still had some choice.

I checked the seatguru map for the plane I was flying, a 3-class Boeing 777.

Los Angeles to Tampa in American Airlines First Class

Anatomy of an Award: Booking this Trip

AA First Class: Los Angeles to Tampa

BA Business Class: Tampa to London (LGW)

A Day in London: Gatwick to London to Heathrow to Paris

A few weeks ago, as part of my Anatomy of an Award series, I wrote about booking the award I'm flying right now: Los Angles to Paris with a stopover in Tampa. In this post, I'll talk about my domestic first class trip from LAX to Dallas to Tampa.

I traveled to the airport in my usual way, a limo from the casino.