I woke up Friday morning with a bunch of Whatsapp texts. “Did you book yet, Did you book yet, Did you book yet.” WTH were they talking about it. Quickly enough, I go to my computer and see there is a huge Aeroplan glitch. All tickets are pricing to the amount of your first stopover, regardless of the final destination. I could have possibly come up with something nice originating in Asia, but I wanted to ticket this ASAP for a flight with a week or two, since it would be the best chance of it getting honored. With last minute thinking and needing a suitable place for Shabbos for my one and half year old daughter, I quickly thought of HKG. I’ve been to Hong Kong once before, and I knew the Shabbos accommodations would work out very well with a baby. I knew I was going to be going to LA, since I wanted to fly Asiana’s new A380 (I already had a ticket booked in May with them and canceled it). JFK-LAX would be the hardest part since they are terrible with releasing business class TransCon space, and your only option is very last minute. So after a couple minutes I found my routing. JFK-LAX-ICN-HKG-TPE-JFK (United business, Asiana first, Asiana business and Eva Airways business). A night stop over in LA and six days in Hong Kong. Total cost was 70k AC miles + $285 P/P and $125 for the infant. Since I didn’t know if they would honor the ticket, I didn’t book hotels until after Shabbos. Right after Shabbos, I try to check in for my Sunday morning United flight, and low and behold, it worked. Yay!!!! I’m going to Hong Kong. I originally booked the Intercontinental grand Stanford under an Ambassador account with a corporate rate for 3 night untill Shabbos; and when we would get to Hong Kong I would see which hotel we would stay in for Shabbos, but that quickly changed as I will explain later.
Sunday Morning, we took the JFK-LAX flight. Flight was very nice and United beds were very comfortable for a 5 hour flight. When we got to LA, I rented a mid-sized car, from National, for $35 for a day, and took a Chrysler 300 from the Executive Aisle. I had a bunch of options, but I took the 300, since it has a huge trunk, and is very easy to drive. We stayed at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel near the Airport. We went to see some relatives, and got some food for the trip. Afterwards, we went out to eat with a good friend of mine at La Gondola and had an awesome time. My friend and I both had the Chai Steak with Caramelized Steak Sauce. It really hit the spot.
The next morning, we checked in at LAX. The lines for security must have been an hour, or so, wait, and they weren’t opening their First class security line until later in the day. We got someone from the First class checkin to assist us through security, which took about 20 minutes. We checked out the star alliance first class lounge, which was very nice, but small. The business class lounge has an outside terrace, which we lounged in for a bit. It was nice to get some fresh air. Thirty minutes before the flight, an agent came to escort us to the plane, (which we requested when we originally came to the lounge).
To be continued.