DansDeals.com

Currently updating from Cathay Pacific’s First Class Wing Lounge in Hong Kong

All good things come to an end I suppose. We’re eating some yummy Hermolis meals in the Cathay Pacific First Class lounge waiting for our flight to Toronto and then New York before finally getting home some 22 hours from now.

Sorry for the lack of updates of late and thanks for hanging in there!

Just for kicks, if any of you guys have opened credit cards to get miles and then used them for a trip-post a comment about it here! Let’s hear about which credit cards you opened and where did you go with the miles and points!

Post stickied. Please scroll down for new posts:

We’ve been on the road for 27 days and finally made it to our last destination city on our “amazing race”, Hong Kong.

I’d love to hear any tips from you guys for what we shouldn’t miss while here.  Any sites that we can’t leave without seeing? Know of a great hole-in-the-wall tailor shop or place to buy anything else unique here? Hit the comments!

We fly back home Wednesday, so just bear with me a little bit longer and I’ll be updating the site just like before our Round-The-World trip.

If you’re going to do such a trip, definitely save up the extra miles and do it in First Class.  It makes the air travel part of the fun and experience of the trip as opposed to something you dread.  Qantas even emailed me yesterday before our First Class flight from Melbourne to Hong Kong to ask us when we would like to schedule our complimentary spa/massage treatments before the flight!  And while when paying with cash First class can cost 30 times the coach fare, when paying with miles it’s less than double the miles that you need for coach.  Beware though, once you fly business or first on an international flight it will be very hard to ever go back to steerage again…I just hope that the mileage game will be around forever!

Post stickied. Please scroll down for new posts:

Wow, it’s already been a week since my wife and I left Cleveland on a month-long trip round-the-world!

We were supposed to originally fly in British Airways First Class to Thailand, but Heathrow was closed last Sunday so we rerouted via the Pacific and flew in the too-good-for-words-to-describe 747 First Class on Cathay Pacific to Thailand via S. Francisco and Hong Kong.

We spent a week in Thailand at 2 Starwood hotels and are now spending the night at a Hong Kong airport hotel before heading on down to Australia tomorrow in First Class on Qantas!  We’ll check out Melbourne, Sydney, Tasmania, and the Whitsunday Islands near the Great Barrier Reef while down under over the next  2.5 weeks.  Feel free to post your tips for activities in any of those place or about kosher restaurants in a comment on this post. (Comments are moderated as always so I’ll approve them as internet access permits)

I priced out our round-the-world trip (as it stands now) if we were to pay for it and it was over $45,000 each!  Instead all we needed were the miles from opening a handful of credit cards for the airfare, the Starwood points from the Starwood AMEX, and leftover Hyatt points from their last Faster Free Nights promotion to take a trip around the world for literally next to nothing!

I’ll post a trip report on Thailand soon.  Bear with me as we travel and keep on checking back for updates!

Related Posts:
PRICE MISTAKE!!! AIRFARE AND HOTEL TO SELECT CITIES FOR ABSOLUTELY FREE!
Trip Notes: Cleveland -> Las Vegas -> Los Angeles -> Cleveland (03/23/09)

Airfare: $0
Bellagio: $0
Cirque du Soleil: $0
There are some things you don’t need money to buy…That’s why I founded Dansdeals.com!

Live notes from our free trip to Vegas!  I’ll update this post as time permits!

11/24:
Update 4:
-9:00am: Checked out from the Bellagio. We had moved things around the motion-sensitive minibar to put food in there and then replaced the items before we checked out. I expected to have to have them remove the automated minibar charges but interestingly it was already taken off.
The internet and dinner charges were removed as well, so I got an awesome $0 final invoice!
-9:15am: We walked right across the street to The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in the Miracle Mile mall and picked up some of their parve, pas yisroel, everything bagels at $2 a pop for the trip home. They were actually pretty good! They also had some overpriced parve, pas yisroel, prepackaged sandwiches from LA.
Beware in the Venetian! There are 2 Coffee Bean locations here. The first one we saw had bagels for $3 each. We walked a little further to the food court location and there they were $2 each!
-If you’re looking for affordable blackjack tables the Bellagio always has 2 $5 blackjack tables. One when you enter and one near the back. The dealers here are great and will always tell you what your best move will be so that you can maximize your odds on winning (You can buy a $1 pocked strategy card at souvenir shops on the strip). At $5 a hand playing a game where the odds of winning are as close to 50% as you can get in a casino you can be entertained for hours without ever losing (or winning) more than you’d pay for a night of entertainment at any other venue in the city.  And hey, you drink for free while you play as well!
-9:45am: I put a $4 of gas in the Infiniti right at the airport and bring it back to Avis who brought us straight to the terminal in the car.
-10:00am: So much for the busiest travel day of the year. We’re already at the gate! There was not one person in line at security. Again we just picked a line with a traditional metal detector and never had to worry about the x-ray or pat down on the entire trip.
-There’s no way to go to the awesome Continental Presidents club with its great Strip views (or the rest of the D concourse) in LAS from the USAir gates without going out of security. What a poorly designed airport!
-Couldn’t pull off an upgrade as a Continental Platinum but we got even better row 7 bulkhead seats on the 752. More legroom than Zydrunas Ilgauskas would know what to do with! There wer screens on the plane, but no entertainment played at all.
-The tailwinds were so strong that we made it from Las Vegas to Charlotte in just over 3 hours! The flight attendant said it was the fastest she ever flew for that route.
-We arrived so early that there were 2 flight options back to Pittsburgh before our flight. Now on most airlines they would just let you standby at the connecting airport for an earlier flight for free. But this is USeless we’re talking about. Their official policy is that if there are seats available it would be $50 per person. Rather than spend $100 on a trip that was nearly completely free I went to check out a few of the clubs and again had no problems getting in with my AMEX Plat card.
-The B club was dingy and dark. The TV is apparently owned by CNN so there’s no was to change the channel! The only free alcoholic drink was Bud or Bud light, a far cry from the dozens of varieties of free drinks at a Continental or Delta club. The C club was much brighter and nicer at least.
-USAir agents are by leaps and bounds the worst of any airline I’ve ever flown. The vast majority are extremely bitter and will treat you like garbage even if you approach them with a smile and friendly greeting. Flying them reminds me why I prefer Continental so strongly. It’s uncommon at Continental to run into a really bad agent that will ruin your trip. At USeless Air it seems that nearly all of them take pride in making your trip as uncomfortable as possible. Even the club agents can be downright rude and cold. Their planes are very dirty and poorly maintained. Honestly, avoid them if you can!
Well, that’s all folks. We took the trip, flew for free, parked for free, stayed for free, watched cirque for free, surfed the web for free, and even ate for free at times. That’s the way to do it! Hope you all have a great time as well!

7C is a great US752(v2) seat if you can’t get into Envoy.

Time to update the airline logo maybe?

The airy CLT term. C club.

$1 Mai-Tais on US that will evoke Hawaii memories, just watch out for $7 rum!

11/23:
Update 4:
-10:00am: I booked the Bellagio under 2 separate reservations so that each night would be completely free. Unfortunately they gave away our room to someone else for the 2nd day even though they had told us that it would be OK. After spending nearly an hour sorting things out I was no longer a happy camper.
After a manager agreed to waive my internet fees ($17/day) and to buy us kosher dinners delivered to our room I was quite a happy camper again!
-Definitely try to get a room on floors 29-36 in the Bellagio. These floors are newly renovated and are light-years ahead of the rooms on the lower floors. The new rooms are simply incredible while the older ones are slightly dated.
-1:00pm: I recalled from a previous trip that the soft-serve Ice Cream from Adar Pizza was very good.  The place is ridiculously overpriced, by far the most expensive pizza shop I’ve ever been to and the service comes with an attitude and tip expected.  Last time I was here we were given 2 pitchers of water that had a number of gross floating stuff in them and although they said they’d be happy to give us bottled water they still unapologetically charged us $4 for it! At any rate I called beforehand to confirm what flavors of Ice Cream they had and was told that there was Vanilla and Chocolate.  So we drove over there and lo and behold the Ice Cream machine was broken and hadn’t even been working in some time!  It’s just BAD business practice to lie to a customer just to draw them in and as expected from this establishment, no apology was offered when I asked why they didn’t just say that it was out of order when I called earlier!
-1:30pm: I’ve already been to Panini Cafe (who said that they still honor restaurant.com GC’s as long as you follow the rules on them) where the food is generally quite good so we went to Sababa. Sababa had a falefel special ($6.95 for a felafel and a sode) and a shwarma special ($8.95) going on. The Shwarma was very good and the felafel was delicious and loaded with felafel balls and tons of great salads! Their homemade baba ganoush was very good as well and was great in the sandwiches. The fries were fine, nothing to write home about, and the weird off-brand of ketchup the serve sure could desperately use an upgrade to Heinz!!!
-There’s really no need to pay for shows in Vegas. Just walk down the strip, take in all of the great free outdoor shows offered by many hotels, and check out all of the awesome themed hotels!
-Valet parking is free at the hotel casinos along the strip. It’s definitely worth using them!
-9:30pm: We knew that Haifa restaurant does not have the best reviews, but it was the only place that had steaks and the like and it was recommended by the Bellagio (who paid for the meal after all) as it’s the only kosher meat restaurant on the Strip. It’s shockingly overpriced for barely edible food. Nothing is seasoned at all. The lamb chops ($42) and rib-eye ($35 although their online menu says $32) were way overcooked and completely bland. The chicken shishlik ($22) was equally bland and dry. The best thing may have been the marinara penne pasta which came as a side dish. Delivery took an hour and was $15. Had I paid all that I of my pocket I would have been very disappointed!
- It’s such a shame that Village Steakhouse closed since I was last in Las Vegas…now that place was excellent in every way!
-For now I can recommend Panini Cafe, Sababa, and Big Dragon Chinese for dining out in Vegas. They are all 10-25 minutes from the Strip, depending on the volume of traffic. You will need a rental car to get to these restaurants.
-There are also tons of Coffe Beans And Tea Leaf stores all over the strip. They seem to all have a kosher certificate that everything is kosher dairy, cholov stam. However the bagels and kosher parve and pas yisroel.

Haifa food…not worth it unless you get it comped like I did!

New York, New York

Coke Store!

Bellagio Hallway

Daytime view from our room.

11/22:
Update 3:
5:30pm: My refund just posted to my credit card…this trip is now officially free!
Don’t worry if your refund didn’t post yet. Give it at least a week to process depending on the card you used.
-6:45pm: We are able to trade in our 9:30pm Cirque tickets (for the Beatles version at the Mirage) for the 7pm showing are are upgraded to category 1 seating in the 3rd row!
The show is cool for about 15 minutes, but honestly at about 95 minutes it’s too long. The plot is flimsy and very hard to follow. A few sequences are very cool but most feel like filler.  Be sure to hold onto your respective head coverings during the weird part where a massive sheet covers the entire crowd!  Maybe it’s just not my thing and I’m missing something? I truly felt sorry for the folks seated next to me who had paid $160/ticket for their entire families (complete with bored and kvetchy kids) to attend.
I took a few pictures and they tried to confiscate my camera. We compromised and they just deleted every picture of the show.
At $0 I guess I can’t complain too much though…
-9:15pm: We went to the brand new Big Dragon Chinese restaurant. It is run and owned by a very affable young Asian man and the Chabad mashgiach was on site the entire time. The restaurant is well decorated in a streamlined modern and minimalistic way, in a word: classy.
The egg rolls (2 nice sized ones for $3) and Sesame Chicken ($15.95 for a good portion) were both very good. Rice is extra (.50 for steamed and you have to buy a $9 meal for fried rice).
-11pm: The Bellagio fountain show is simply breathtaking, I can’t get over how beautiful it is! The show runs every 15 minutes at night and changes every time…I could watch it all night long!
The fountains can shoot water as high as our room on the 32nd floor!

View from the room

Update 2:
-11:00am: USAir wouldn’t upgrade us despite my Continental Platinum/Star Alliance Gold status. We did get great bulkhead seats for the PIT-PHX segment and exit-row seats for the PHX-LAS segment.
-Despite the 5 hour flight time from PIT-PHX there was no entertainment whatsoever offered on the flight. That’s what you get for flying USeless!
-2:20pm MST: Never fun arriving 20 minutes late when your connection is only 45 minutes long in the first place! But a little jog from one end of the airport to the other was good enough. A delay on the PHX-LAS flight didn’t hurt either.
-2:45pm: I plugged my phone into my laptop to use it as a modem and the flight attendant came by and demanded that I turn it off immediately. After I stalled for a minute she came back and said she would wait to tell us about the exit-row regulations until it was powered off. After I asked if the aircraft door was closed she got really angry and said that she makes the rules on this flight and I can cooperate or get off.
The aircraft doors wouldn’t close for another 20 minutes due to the delay.
Apparently the FA was afraid of something as she suddenly became all friendly and comped me 2 Stirrings Mai-Tai mixes (OU!) later in the flight…bizarre!
-3:00pm PST: Avis is giving me an Inifiniti G37x for the price of a midsize…nice!
-3:30pm: Valet parking is free at the Bellagio! Gotta love all this free stuff!
-3:45pm: The $20 Vegas Suite upgrade tip (discreetly sandwich a $20 bill between your credit card and drivers license) is alive and well at the Bellagio We have a sick room with a perfect view of the Bellagio fountains, the Eiffel Tower, and the strip!  Seeing the fountain show from your room is just awesome!

Update 1:
-7am EST: Leaving the house for a free trip to Vegas.
-7:10am: Picking up some delicious fresh boiled and baked Jalapeno and Garlic Bagels from The Bagel Shoppe in Cleveland.
-7:15am: Driving to Pittsburgh to catch the flight. Unfortunately flights from Cleveland were too expensive to be free after $300 savings.
-9:05am: Drop off the car in a free parking lot and take a shuttle to the airport.
-9:45am: Just got in the USAir club with my AMEX Platinum card. No ID or boarding pass is required at the USAir club.
They give us free wi-fi passes. While beer and alcoholic beverages are free in most USAir clubs, apparently there’s some PA state law that requires them to charge $1 for a drink here. No matter, it’s too early anyway…
I’ve picked up a few newspapers and an Economist from the club and am ready for the flight!
As a Continental Platinum member I’ll pick up 4,628 Continental miles for the one-way flight!

Trip notes part 4 (05/21-05/24), Continued from:
May 2010 Trip Notes Part 1: Trip Planning + Zurich (05/11-05/12)
May 2010 Trip Notes Part 2: Paris. (05/13-05/17)
May 2010 Trip Notes Part 3: Israel. (05/18-05/20)
Click on the “trip notes” tag at the end of this post to read other past trip notes.

-We flew from Israel to Venice via Brussels. It was the only flight that left Israel after the end of the 2nd day of Shavuos that would get us into Venice Friday morning. It left Israel at 1:20am and arrived in Venice at 8:00am.

-Brussels Airlines business class, even from Tel Aviv, is a joke, just coach seating with an empty middle seat. We did get an awesome Hermolis breakfast on the flight from Brussels to Venice.

-The lounge situation in Brussels was also a joke.  No showers to freshen up, and the wi-fi costs money…why bother with having a lounge???  They did have computers to use, but the Belgian AZERTY keyboard was nearly impossible to master…although looking back at the Dansdeals archives I did manage to make a post a few deals from the lounge on May 21st.

-Venice is INCREDIBLE! It’s like no other place you’ve ever been to before. There are no cars as the streets are made of water. Boats and your own two feet comprise the only modes of transportation. It’s a site that you simply MUST see in your lifetime!  And no, going to the Venetian in Vegas does not count

-The weather in May couldn’t be better.  It was 75 and sunny the entire time.

-Getting from the main airport (VCE/Marco Polo) to the island of Venice can be tricky. There are a few options. The easiest and quickest way (about 45 minutes) is to take a water taxi directly to where you want to go. Expect to pay €100 for that privilege though which may be worth it depending on how many people are traveling with you. Another method is to take a €3, 25 minute bus to Piazzale Roma. From there though you’ll probably still need to take an expensive water taxi to your hotel or take the Vaporetto, which is the local water bus, for €6.50 a person. We chose to take the Alilaguna, which is the airport shuttle boat. It has about 5 different lines that go from the airport to many points in Venice. It costs €13 Euro per person (€25 round-trip) for the regular Alilaguna lines, or €25 Euro per person for the Gold line which goes nonstop to San Marco Square.  We chose the regular €13 line which took about 75 minutes to get to San Marco Square.

-Buy the Alilaguna round-trip ticket in the airport terminal! We bought just the one-way in the terminal and the agent ran through the credit card charge normally. However we bought the return ticket at San Marco Square and the agent ran it through as a cash advance!

-There are 3 Starwood hotels in Venice, all of them very grand, old, and famous hotels.
-The Gritti Palace (Starwood Category 6) is the most famous hotel in Venice and one of its grandest. It is however the farthest Starwood hotel from San Marco Square. You will have to shlep your luggage for a good 10 minutes over at least 3 canal bridges to get there from San Marco.
-The Danieli (Starwood Category 6) is located in San Marco Square, directly in front of the San Zaccaria Vaporetto and Alilaguna stop. Warning: This hotel only has a revolving automatic door, and should therefore be avoided on Shabbos by Sabbath Observers! The staff at this hotel were particularly unpleasant when I went inside to check it out.
-We stayed at the Westin Europa and Regina (Starwood Category 5) which was a great hotel. We were upgraded to a very large suite. It didn’t have a view of the Grand Canal (very few rooms do), but it was an excellent room so I couldn’t complain at all. We arrived at the hotel at about 10am but had to wait until noon before a room was ready. We were so exhausted that we both immediately fell asleep on one the comfortable couches in one of the many side rooms on the lobby floor of the hotel.  It’s about a 6 minute walk over 2 canal bridges to get to the Westin from San Marco Square.

-We had 2 great guidebooks on Venice, Lonely Planet Venice, and Eyewitness Venice. I bring a couple good guidebooks to any city that I visit.  I generally despise being lectured to by a tour guide as I’d rather do things at my own pace, so having a few good books on each place and reading through them before the trip is crucial.  Both of these books also had nice sections on the Jewish Ghetto and its history.

-Beware the concierge in the hotel.  Ours tried to steer us to one of the free boats to the glass-blowing island of Murano that are paid for by an individual glass company.  The guidebooks had warned us against taking these boats as they place you under high-pressure selling tactics and don’t let you go into competitor stores.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the concierge received a kickback from them either…

-Shabbos in Venice is awesome beyond words! First of all the entire island has a recognized eruv due to the canal walls!  As a card carrying Chabadnik I’ve never used a public eruv in my life on Shabbos, but we were able to carry things with us for the first time in Venice on that Shabbos!  I had printed up Google directions and brought a map (that came with the guidebook) to get to the Jewish Ghetto.  However following directions in this city is missing the whole point (besides for being nearly impossible!)   The best part is just to wander around the city and let yourself get lost.  The walk from the Westin to the Ghetto is an easy half hour stroll.

-Chabad in Venice is incredible!  They have a smicha program, a shul, and they run 2 kosher restaurants.  Everyone is invited to Gam Gam, their fleshig restaurants, for free meals on Shabbos.  Of course donations are welcome, but they are not solicited at all. There were about 100 people in town for Shabbos.  On Friday night we ate out on the canal, which was very cool.  The food is very good.  There was plenty of wine for everyone, delicious homemade challah, 7 kinds of dips and salads, salmon, matzah ball soup, meatballs, chicken, kugel and desserts on Friday night.  On Shabbos day we ate indoors at a nice little table for 2 and there was pretty much the same food plus a parve cholent.  The meals are leibidig with dancing and singing in the streets and are very special.  During the peak travel season in mid-summer they say that there can be many shifts of people eating at Chabad, but there was just one shift when we were there.

-We ate at Gam Gam a couple of times.  Food prices are very reasonable, and the food while not gourmet, is very good.  The Schwarma was the best I’ve ever had, and the hummus, which I usually don’t care for, was actually delicious!  The Shnitzel was very good as well.  The Felefel platter comes with lots of delicious dips and is very good. The Mousaka and Meat Lasagna were good, but the portions for those were a little on the small side.  You can eat indoors or have a romantic meal on the canal.  Beware that they do not accept credit cards here, so bring cash or at least an ATM card to withdraw some!

-Gam Gam will also double wrap a meal for you at your request so that you can have it heated up for you on a plane or at your hotel.

-Chabad had also opened up a cholov yisroel pizza shop called Gam Gam treats just the week before we arrived-talk about great timing!  They had an Italian pizza chef making all kinds of great creations.  The prices were excellent, just €10 for a humongous pie of pizza, and there are lots of great topping as well.  However the “treats” section of the pizza shop was what really surprised me!  The Shlucha was busy making some of the best baked goods that I’ve ever tried!  The caramel hamantashen were out of this world, as were the chocolate croissants!!!  Plus they even have other local specialties like Granita Iced Coffee and locally made Gelato Ice Cream bars!  Don’t miss this place if you go!

-Frulala is a fruit juice bar owned by a couple of Israeli guys, Avi and Oded.  It’s directly on the route between the Westin and the Ghetto at the intersection of Via Riccardo Selvatico and Calle Dolfin.  They are closed on Shabbos, and have some of the most amazing fruit juices I’ve ever had.  With fresh tropical fruits like Passion Fruit, Kiwis, and other interesting additions like Mint leaves these are some of the most unique fruit juices you will ever try!

-We went out to Murano via Vaporetto to check out the glass blowing shops.  There is a nonstop Vaporetto from San Marco directly to Murano.  It’s a cute island and we even picked up a few beautiful pairs of glass-blown cufflinks for about €13 each.  There was even a glass shop full of Jewish themed creations, you can see some pictures below, but I don’t think I’ll be posting the graphic bris milah one!  Murano truthfully, is not a “must-do,” but after spending a long Shabbos wandering about and then taking pictures on Sunday morning it was a good way to spend the afternoon.  We didn’t make it to the other islands, like Lido and Burano.

-Gondola rides are extremely expensive and are even more expensive at sunset and after dark.  I’m sure it would’ve been nice, but here’s a little tip that will save you some €100 if you’re trying to be frugal.  You can take a Traghetto, which is the same Gondola boat, across the Grand Canal for less than €1 round-trip! You can even get your picture taken on it with the Gondolier!  Not as romantic, but €99 less!

-There are dozens of people selling knockoff purses and handbags of every brand name out there.  Gucci, Prada, you name it.  They even set up shop right in front of Prada at night telling people to compare their price to retail   They’ll start off asking for €200 but if you’re a sharp negotiator you will be able to get them down below €10, possibly even as low as €5!  And the purses are actually really nice for that price!

-Our flight departed from Venice airport at 7 in the morning, and we were debating if we should take Alilaguna that got us to the airport 1 or 2 hours before departure.  Eventually we decided on 1 hour, and it arrived at the airport 15 minutes ahead of schedule, so we had plenty of time.   The security line at the airport was massive, but if you have elite status just show it to the ticket agent and they will stamp your boarding pass and you will get to skip the entire line!

-We had a 5 hour layover in Frankfurt before our flight in First Class to Newark on Lufthansa, home to the famous First Class Terminal.  It’s not easy to find the First Class Terminal, you have to go outside the airport to get there, but it’s totally worth it!

-This is a lounge like no other!  There are dozens of the rarest and finest scotches and whiskeys, all on the house.  There is a fine dining restaurant (kosher food must be ordered in advance).  Tons of great fruit imported from all corners of the planet were free for the taking. There are private sleeping rooms and private offices.  The bathrooms are like nothing you’ve ever seen before, they even have a great shoe shining machine in them!  The huge private shower rooms have excellent rain showers, better than any hotel that I’ve been at with premium toiletries.  Everything is taken care of  for you.  They even come to get you after the entire plane has boarded to bring you to the plane.

-I davened in my private bedroom, slept for a couple hours, and sampled as many different 21 year old single malt scotches that I could.  Finally they drove us in a Porsche Panamera to the plane. It’s pretty awesome being chauffeured under planes and through runway traffic!

-We flew in First Class on a Lufthansa 747.  The first class is upstairs on the plane.  It’s definitely not as nice as on Swiss, but it’s still amazing.  The seats are lie-flat, but not nearly as private as on Swiss and they don’t make them into a bed like on Swiss.  They only gave us pajama tops, no bottoms (On Swiss they had given us really amazing designer pajamas to keep, the Lufthansa ones were not nearly as nice).  The in-flight entertainment is better on Lufthansa than on Swiss though.  We sat in the exit row (83AC), which meant there was more space then we knew what to do with.  They only had Johnny Walker blue label…none of the really premium scotches like they had in the lounge…hmm I think I was spoiled on this trip if I start looking down at $200/bottle whiskey!

All in all though, it was very nice, and I loved flying in the upper deck of a plane for my first time.  The food was very fancy, much more so than on any other flight on the trip.

Final Tally:

-Cleveland-Chicago-Zurich-Munich-Paris-Frankfurt-Venice-Frankfurt-Newark-Cleveland in First Class: 125,000 USAirways miles.  Wondering how much it would cost to book a paid ticket for the same itinerary? $19,500!  I got better than 15 cents out of each USAir mile redeemed!

-Venice-Zurich-Tel Aviv-Brussels-Venice in Business Class: 37,500 BMI miles

-1 Hyatt Faster Free night at the Park Hyatt Zurich (Normal rate: $800/night)

-4 Hyatt Faster Free night at the Park Hyatt Paris (Normal rate: $1,000/night). (One of the most incredible hotels I’ve ever stayed at, topped off with a free kosher buffet breakfast and a $130 bottle of kosher champagne!)

-3 Starwood cash and points (4,800+$90) nights at Westin Europe and Regina (Normal rate: $400/night)

-We only rented a car in Israel, it was for 3 days at a base rate of just $7/day, plus $15/day in mandatory liability insurance, and the $27 TLV airport tax.  We took public transportation in Zurich, Paris, and Venice and wouldn’t hesitate to do the same again.  Simply not worth driving in any of those cities…

That’s all folks, sorry for the long post!  Hopefully I’ve provided you with some inspiration of the stuff you can do with your miles or at least a few useful travel tips!  Sure some people will burn 25,000 miles for a short trip down to Florida, but I’d rather save up and use my miles on a truly special trip with memories that are sure to last a lifetime…

Pictures: (Click to enlarge.  Yes, I know it’s heavy on the food, I can’t help it…I’m a hopeless foodie!)

Hermolis Breakfast on Brussels Airlines

Beer in the Brussels Lounge…They got the right 5 letters in my last name, but they’re in the wrong order!

Bathroom at Westin Europe & Regina

Luggage Room/Closet at Westin Europe & Regina

Living Room at Westin Europe & Regina

Random Glass Artwork on Murano

Glass Candies on Murano

Jewish Themed Glasswork on Murano

Glass Moses

A Venice “Street”

Gondola Traffic!

Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal

View of the Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge

Live Entertainment At San Marco Square

Vibrant Colored Jewish Artwork in the Ghetto (Where we bought our first piece of art!)

Gam Gam Menu, Page 1

Gam Gam Menu, Page 2

Latkas at Gam Gam

Felafel Plate with Dips at Gam Gam

Mousaka at Gam Gam

Shnitzel with Couscous at Gam Gam

Gam Gam Treats Pizza Shop

Gam Gam Treats Pizza Shop Menu

Gam Gam Treats Pizza Shop

Gam Gam Treats Pizza (Onions, mushrooms, yellow peppers, and extra sauce)

Gam Gam Treats Pizza Shop’s Amazing Baked Goods!

Granita at Gam Gam Treats Pizza Shop

Private Bedroom in the Lufthansa Frankfurt First Class Terminal

Lufthansa Frankfurt First Class Terminal (via Google Images)

Complimentary Bar in the First Class Terminal

Complimentary Bar in the First Class Terminal (Via Google Images)

Scotch/Whiskey Menu (pg.1) in the First Class Terminal

Scotch/Whiskey Menu (pg.2) in the First Class Terminal

Comfy Seats With A View in the First Class Terminal

Office Space in the First Class Terminal (Via Google Images)

Private Bathroom in the First Class Terminal

Private Jacuzzi in the First Class Terminal (Via Google Images)

Complimentary Restaurant in the First Class Terminal

Dimmed lighting in the bedroom of the First Class Terminal

Taking advantage of the bar in the First Class Terminal

The only way to fly!

The only way to fly!

Chauffeured to the 747 in a Porsche Panamera

Stretching out in 83A (The cart was removed after takeoff)

The view from the loo, upstairs in the 747.

Our Lufthansa 747

Before the distribution of the Roses

The many courses of kosher food on Lufthansa First Class

Enjoying the delicious Cholov Yisroel Milk Choclates from Ardely’s in Paris

And the Dark Chocolates from Damyel’s in Paris

Lufthansa HON Circle Luggage Tag

Trip notes part 3 (05/18-05/20), Continued from:
May 2010 Trip Notes Part 1: Trip Planning + Zurich (05/11-05/12)
May 2010 Trip Notes Part 2: Paris. (05/13-05/17)

Random thought from our recent Europe/Israel trip:

-Finding award tickets can be a work of art. We flew from Paris to Israel via Frankfurt, Venice, and Zurich! We had to get to Venice to satisfy USAirways’ 125K First Class Europe ticket without using up a stopover in another city. From Venice I used 30,000 BMI miles to get to Israel and back.  Pay for a airplane ticket? Never!

-I bought an international Sim card from OneSimCard for $30 shipped.  The rates are reasonable ($0.45/minute outgoing from Israel to the US, free incoming) and there were free incoming calls in every country that we went to.  It’s a bit of a pain using the call-back feature, but you get used to it.  Plus they even give you AA miles for using their service!

-Whenever we had an internet connection I used the heavenly combination of Google Voice and Gizmo5 to make free phone calls to anyone in the US and Canada and dirt cheap calls to everywhere else.

-In Israel, I signed up for Sprint’s $2.33 per day ($70/month, prorated over days used) unlimited international data roaming plan which gave me unlimited internet usage there.  I plugged my phone into my laptop and had 3G service that I was even able to make phone calls over for free.  Beware, if you have a grandfathered old unlimited internet plan from Sprint it can be a royal pain trying to get that plan back onto your phone line after switching to the international data plan.

-We arrived in Frankfurt an hour late, leaving us just 30 minutes until our connecting flight. On the flight they told us that we had been rebooked onto a later flight to Venice, which wouldn’t have worked at all because we still had more connecting flights to make. After arriving, we had to wait for the bus to take us to the terminal, which left us with less than 5 minutes to run accross the entire A terminal from A1 to A40.

The best thing we did was make a quick 10 second detour to the Star Alliance Gold lounge to ask them to page the gate and let them know we were running. Even though we arrived a few minutes after boarding should have ended, they were waiting for us and cheering us on like at the end of a race

-The Star Alliance lounge in Venice is basically a dump, although it does have a neat terrace to walk out onto with a great view of the amazing city.

-In Zurich there are no Swiss lounges in the international terminal, there is a “Panarama” lounge though that Star Alliance Gold members can use.

-We finally arrived in Israel at 3:30am. Unfortunately, our bags didn’t make it with us, even though we asked in Zurich and were told that they had made it with us so far. The bags did make it on the next flight which luckily arrived a few hours before Shavuos started, so we were able to drive back to the airport and pick them up (they wouldn’t deliver them until the next day!) When they finally did arrive, 1 of the bags was completely destroyed…not fun!

-At 69 hours, it was by far my shortest trip to Israel, but it was definitely worth going for Shavuos.

-They moved the car rental location at the Tel Aviv airport halfway to Jerusalem.  Well not quite, but it will feel like it!  Luckily, if you have elite status with Avis you can still pick up your car in the terminal, but everyone else must take the very long shuttle ride to the rental car facility.  Also everyone must return the car to the rental car facility.  Dansdeals Forum user “Steve2″ wrote up a nifty shortcut to the facility if you are coming from Jerusalem.

So that’s how we spent our first day in Israel.

-We stayed with relatives in Jerusalem for Shavuos which was very nice to experience after all of the superficial hospitality that hotels offer . It was my first Yom Tov in the holy land and it was just amazing. Seeing the throngs of people at the Kotel is awesome!

And what better way is there to hear the 10 commandments being given over than in a shul in the Old City of Jerusalem?

-After the Sheraton Plaza (now Leonardo Plaza) was booted from the Starwood program for not paying their bills, there were no hotels left near the old city that accept points.  I did have rooms booked at the Crowne Plaza for $30 using the Priority Club points workaround but didn’t wind up using them.  There’s also a Ramada that takes points, but neither of those hotels are close to the old city.

-Last year when we were in Israel we had reservations at the Sheraton, but Starwood moved us to the new Mamilla Hotel which had just opened.  The stay there was a nightmare, but I suppose part of it could be chalked up to the fact that that had opened only a little while before we visited.  There were no refrigerators in the tiny, ultra-modern room and the service was downright lousy.  The toilets in the bathroom were so poorly shaped they actually hurt to sit on!  They charged us $10 when we checked out for when we requested ice that was supposed to be complementary and also charged us for breakfasts that we were told by the breakfast agent would be free.  Dispute resolution is just one of the reasons that I love AMEX though…

-The David Citadel used to be called the Hilton Jerusalem, but that hotel left the Hilton program quite a few years ago.  The good news is that the Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem is finally making some progress, so hopefully that will be open and accepting Hilton points within the next couple years.

-The Cafe Rimon meat restaurant was closed for renovations, which meant this would be my first trip to Israel without devouring their mouth-watering Philly Steak Sandwich!  Don’t miss that if you go to Israel when it reopens.

-On the night after Shavuos (1 day!) we were able to take out my cousin who’s in seminary in Tzfat and eat at the Cafe Rimon milk restaurant which is always great.  The Belgian Waffle covered in Caramel and Chocolate sauces and Ben & Jerry’s Cholov Yisroel Ice Cream is too good to describe!  I’ve had better french onion soup though. My wife absolutely loved her Rimon Summer Salad which had pesto bruschetta, mixed greens, granola, pasta, feta cheese and nectarines in it. Of course we still had room for some delicious froyo afterward from Katzefet right across from Cafe Rimon on Ben Yehuda.

-The day after Shavuos we spent replacing my baggage that had been destroyed.  We also managed to pick up some Israeli goodies like the Original flavor of Smirnoff Ice (I wish this was kosher in the US), Chewy Nature Valley Granola Bars, Kinominim cereal, and the usual junk food like Bugles, Cheetos, Doritos, and all that other good stuff that we can’t get kosher parve back in the US.

-On Thursday we went with my wife’s brother’s family to Papagaio , a new mehadrin Brazilian steakhouse in Jerusalem.  We got the “Brazilian Table,” which is actually called “rodizio” in Portuguese.  For this they give you a red light/green light device that indicates whether you want more food.  They have about 10 different kinds of meats that they roast and keep bringing to the table giving you slices of it anywhere from well done to rare.  There was some debate between the waiters as to the cost of the Brazilian Table.  At first an employee told my brother-in-law that it was only NIS119 (US$30.50) because we had arrived before 6pm.   Then halfway through the meal our waiter told us that there was a mistake and that the cost was NIS169 (US$43.50) and that the 119 price is only if you arrive before 5pm.  When my brother-in-law offered to leave, somehow they managed to correct the mistake back to 119.  They also give you lots of salads and fries included in the price that they hope you fill up on so you eat less meat!  We didn’t have the heart to try to use this 10% coupon though after they gave us the 119 price. My nieces had the choice between the 79NIS kids Brazilian table and NIS43 for a shnitzel with fries and a drink…the shnitzel was actually really good!

It’s definitely a fun and worthwhile experience (especially at NIS119!), but they are just too slow to bring out the meats.  I liked the “original” version that I had at Mehadrin in Sao Paulo that was just $10 back in 2005 when I was last there.  But for Israel this was pretty good.  Don’t bother with the sublime Brazilian Caiparinha drink though, it’s neither good nor authentic.  Get that at Clubhouse Cafe in Times Square, NY instead…

-We stopped by “Mamtakalada” in Geulah in Jerusalem to get out fill of sweets like Milk Chocolate covered nuts (Yum!) and Passion Fruit/Spearmint Mentos (Surprisingly good and refreshing!)

-A few Dansdeals Forum members wanted to meet up, so we spent about an hour and a half talking over different mileage strategies and all that good stuff at the Ramada Jerusalem and had a great time!

-We filled up our gas tank (over $7/gallon…ouch!) and left Jerusalem at 10:30pm to catch our 1:20am flight to Brussels which I thought would be plenty of time…at least our gas tank stayed full when we returned the car!

-We arrived at Avis at 11pm and they started checking over the car with a magnifying glass for scratches!  I’ve never once had any Avis even check over my car before, but here they were unbelievable. (Yes, I know this isn’t a corporate ownded Avis location, it’s just a franchise)  Unfortunately when we arrived at 4am in the morning I was too tired to walk around the car and make them mark any scratches on their “paper,” so I was left holding the bag for some of the tiniest scratches ever seen.  They charged me $120 for it (more than I paid for the entire 3 day rental with their mandatory 3rd party insurance!).  I paid by World Mastercard so hopefully I’ll get it back, but I had to spend 90 minutes on the phone filing the claim for it…

-It took over half an hour until a shuttle came to take us for the long ride back to the terminal.  2 shuttles came in the interim but they had their lights flashing which meant they wouldn’t pick anyone up.  Finally we made it to the terminal with just 50 minutes until flight time.

-Brussels Airlines computers were down when we arrived, we finally boarded the plane just minutes before they closed the doors…and just enough time to run and pick up some last minute ice cream bars!  They weighed our carry-on baggage and only let us have it because we were in business class.  Their business class from Tel Aviv to Brussels isn’t anything special at all, just regular seats with a blocked seat in the middle, although the badatz mehadrin meal was decent and they even gave me my own 2 liter of seltzer…good enough to keep me happy!

Up next: Venice, Italy!

That’s all for now, hope this helps people out on their own trips.  I never got around to typing up trip notes from last year’s trip up to Israel’s amazing Golan region…should I still type them up?  All feedback is appreciated!

Pictures: (Click to enlarge, not all pictures were taken on this trip)

Lufthansa kosher meal, Paris-Frankfurt.

Flying over the Swiss Alps

Advertising like this in Europe and people still smoke wherever you go?

Swiss First Class Lounge Entrace, Zurich.

Swiss efficiency on display…when they say 28 seconds they mean it!

Swiss kosher meal, Zurich-Tel Aviv

More meat!

Caiparinha at Papagaio

Papagaio

Papagaio

Dansdeals Forum Meetup At The Ramada Jerusalem

Brussels Airlines kosher meal, Tel Aviv-Brussels

,

Brussels Airlines kosher meal, Tel Aviv-Brussels

Mamilla Hotel, Jerusalem

Mamilla Hotel Bathroom (A flip of the switch frosts the glass)

Mamilla Hotel Rooftop, Jerusalem

Belgian Waffle at Cafe Rimon, Jerusalem

Ramparts Walk on the Old City walls, Jerusalem

My own lounge at Tel Aviv/Ben Gurion Airport.

And there’s my last name too on the thousand island dressing…

Continued from: Trip Notes Part 1: Trip Planning + Zurich, Switzerland.

Airline notes:

Flying on a Star Alliance award ticket means always traveling through Star Alliance hubs.

In Europe this means traveling through cities such as Frankfurt, Munich, and Zurich.

On an award ticket you are allowed to make a free stopover (or more depending on the airline you are booking with). On a domestic ticket you are only allowed to stay in a connecting city for 4 hours (or the next possible flight) or else it is considered a stopover. On an international itinerary you are allowed to stay in a city for up to 24 hours and it is still considered a connection, not a stopover.

When planning the trip we were originally planning on going straight to Paris, but based on recommendations from members at the Dansdeals Forums, I decided to add a stop in Zurich. I didn’t have a stopover to spare however, so we had to stay less than 24 hours there, which was plenty of time to have a blast, as I wrote about in my last post.

However, there were unfortunately no nonstops available from Zurich to Paris before 11am for award travel, so that meant having to go through Munich to get to Paris. Basically this meant flying Cleveland to Paris with connections in Chicago, Zurich, and Munich. Air Canada only charges 100,000 miles for a First Class US-Europe ticket, but they balked at the number of connections and zigzagging travel that I wanted. USAirways on the other hand charges 125,000 miles, and they let me have all the connections I wanted.

In the US on Tuesday we were given the Zurich and Munich boarding passes, so my wife thought that we were going to spend Shabbos in Munich. The flight from Zurich to Munich on Thursday was on Lufthansa in business class. Business class on intra-Europe flights is an absolute joke. While the Europeans know how to make great business and first class on international flights, the domestic business class is just a standard economy seat with a guaranteed empty middle seat.

Upon arriving in Munich my wife started heading to the baggage claim, but I motioned toward the connecting flights saying I wanted to daven in the lounge first. I wasn’t sure if we would be able to use the First Class lounge as we had flown 1st class into Zurich the day before, but I tried anyway and they let us in without any problem!

The lounge agent asked where we were going and I said that I can’t say because it’s still a secret from my wife! The lounge lady loved that and said it was “the most wonderful thing she’d every heard.” We were actually in economy for the Munich-Paris flight as there was no award space in business, but the excellent lounge agent gave us business class boarding passes for the flight. She told us that she’d send an agent up into the lounge to get us and escort us to the plane when it was time.

The Munich First Class lounge is very nice, there was even a restaurant style dining area with kosher meals. Mind you that they’re airline meals, but still it was a nice touch. There’s a good number of private offices and even jacuzzis and showers.

Unfortunately while we were eating lunch a different agent came up and asked if we were the passengers going to Paris Oh well so much for the surprise.

When we went downstairs the original agent was still under the impression that my wife was in the dark and she even crossed off “Paris” on our boarding passes. We decided to play along…

In Munich you are normally bussed to the airplane. First Class lounge passengers are taken to the plane by Mercedes. As there was no first class on the plane we were the only passengers going to the flight by Mercedes. The chauffeur was also instructed not to tell my wife where we were going. He commented, “You know she’s not blonde…she will figure it out,” and “I hope you packed well for Vladivostok.”

When we got to the plane the chauffeur ran up the plane. I figured out what he had done when they never made any announcement as to where the plane was headed! The entire crew was in on it!

OK, enough about the plane ride…on to the city of lights!

City Notes:

-We took the Roissy bus from Charles de Gaulle to the Opera metro station. It was €9 for the nonstop service and dropped us off just blocks from the Park Hyatt Paris. It was definitely the way to go as a taxi would have been about €90 and the train/subway would cost about the same as the bus but would’ve required transferring with all our luggage. Oh and for French newbies, it’s apparently pronounced “Wa-see” as we got completely blank stares trying to find the “Roy-zee” bus.

-The Euro kept plummeting during our trip…it sure was nice paying $1.25 for each Euro as opposed to $1.50!

-There is a minimum spend amount to use your credit card in Paris at any store, either €10, €15, or €20. We never changed in for Euros in Paris, but it did mean having to forgo any minor purchases, although it is a great way to save money and not spend on little things that you don’t need anyway.

-At first I was unconvinced as to the lure of Paris, especially having just come from spotless and efficient Zurich. It does seem like NYC with the same level of dirtiness and smells. But it does grow on you…Slowly but surely. The architecture is definitely amazing though.

Don’t go without guidebooks! I’d recommend taking Lonely Planet’s (Best of) Paris Encounter, The Rough Guide To Paris, and Streetwise’s Laminated Folded Paris Street Map.

-The metro system is incredible. Very efficient and very cheap. The lines all criss-cross the town and go in all directions so it’s much easier to get to places than with the NYC subway. Plus above every line in every station there is a sign stating when the next 2 trains are coming. When a train is crowded, it’s nice knowing that another is coming in 2 minutes because it’s worth waiting! You are never more than a couple blocks from a metro stop in the entire city. A single ride is €1.60, but if you buy them in books of 10 it’s just €1.10 per ride. We went through 3 books of 10 in 5 days!

-Beware that the metro shuts down just after midnight on weekdays and after 1am on weekends. On Saturday night we got on a metro at 1:20am, but we missed our connecting train and had to take a taxi back to the hotel. It was surprisingly cheap for the taxi, just €6, I had thought it would be much more as the distance looked much further than it would be possible to walk.

-Paris is split up into 20 districts. If something has a zip code of 72012, the last 2 digits tell you that it is in the 12t district. Most guidebooks have an overlay of all the districts as well as a metro map, so if you know the district something is in you can quickly locate where it is and which metro you need to take to get there. The only issue is that the districts circle around the city center in a strange clockwise order that can make things confusing when you’re walking and you go from the 1st straight to the 8th and then to the 17th. You can get some sence of the districts on google maps.

-A Museum pass is €32 per person for 2 days. This gets you into dozens of attractions such as the Louvre, Versailles, the Arc de Triomphe, Musee d’Orsay, etc. The best part about the pass is that you get to skip the queue to purchase tickets which can be up to an hour long in each place! If you stay at the Hyatt buy $100 Hyatt GC’s at Costco for $80 and you can charge the museum pass to your room bill and save some money on the pass by paying with GC’s from Costco!

-Museums close their doors half an hour to an hour before they officially close, so don’t go somewhere close to closing time thinking you’ll get in to just see the Mona Lisa. Not that I would ever do that Well if you do happen to do that be sure to shop around for a nice looking guard and you might just get lucky by trying the different entrances…(illustrated below)

-Versailles was very nice, I’m not sure if it’s the “must-do” that everyone makes it out to be though. The castle is ornate, expansive and impressive and the gardens are beautiful as a whole, although individual gardens were not always as nice when walking through. It does take nearly a whole day to get there by train, wait in massive queues to enter, and walk around. Perhaps I’m spoiled from seeing castles and gardens in Kyoto, Japan. I thought that the gardens in particular were much nicer out in the Far East. Also as we went on Sunday there was a “fountain show” that costs an extra €8 per person (actually €6 with our student ID’s) which is totally not worth it in my opinion, the fountain show at the Grove in LA is far more fascinating. If you go on a day when there is a fountain show you can’t enter the gardens unless you pay, otherwise the gardens are included for free.

-The Eiffel Tower is beautiful, especially at night on the hour when they do the light show. It’s not in the best neighborhood though and the gray-market sellers can be downright scary. Show any interest in their goods and you’ll be hounded for the entire walk from the metro to the tower. Be sure to bring ID if you’re 25 and under as tickets are much cheaper.

Hotel Notes:

-The Park Hyatt Paris is just insanely awesome-And at $1,000+ per night it had better be! The room was absolutely stunning and the service was top-class. It looks nothing like your typical hotel room. The lighting was great and when you put the powered drapes down it is pitch black in the room. The rain shower and jacuzzi in the bathroom are both excellent and the large closet area is great to put luggage. And you gotta love a heated towel rack! The toiletries were created by Blaise Mautin exclusively for the Park Hyatt Paris and have quite the intoxicating aroma about them. It may sound funny, but the hotel was easily our favorite part of Paris!

-As a Hyatt Diamond member we were entitled to a free breakfast. In most hotels this gets us some berries as we only eat kosher food, but not here. These guys went all out and provided bottles of Israeli fruit juice, loaves of bread, milk, jam and fancy cheeses, bags of danishes and pastries (although jeers to the store that gave them a bag of passover pastries for us!), and other goodies. I loved the jelly filled muffins they gave us! All of it mehadrin kosher and cholov yisroel, and all on the house!

-We were given a bottle of kosher Laurent-Perrier champagne (that went for over €100 in the local grocery store) from the Park Hyatt as an amenity!

-The Spa in the hotel is excellent with separate changing rooms and a mixed jacuzzi, sauna, steam room, and relaxation area. Whenever we checked it out it was empty so we had it to ourselves!

-The hotel gives you 2 large bottles of Evian daily and there is more free water in the spa…nice touch!

-There was some banging above us on our last day that woke us up. After calling to enquire about it they said it was emergency repairs and they proactively offered us a refund of the points for the night for the inconvenience. We actually had only used a faster free night for the room, but sure enough we got the whole 18,000 points back for the night!

-On the last day they left us a full sized bottle of the Blaise Mautin room-spray perfume that they use around the entire hotel.

-We took the Roissy Bus on the back which is supposed to come at 15 minute intervals but we waited over half an hour for it to come. Definitely leave extra time on the way back… we only made the flight because I got to skip the huge line with my Star Alliance gold status.

Shabbos Notes:

-We went to Chabad of Champs Elysses for Shabbos which was excellent. The Brazilian-born Rabbi Yona Hasky is very friendly and multi-lingual. The meals have plenty of great food and are a bargain at €10 for children, €15 for students, and €20 for adults. I highly recommend it.

-It is a bit a walk to get there, about 35 minutes from the Park Hyatt, but it’s a very nice one. You can go through the Tuileries garden and then down the regal Champs Elysses with the Arc de Triomphe guiding the way. It’s also walkable (about 30 minutes or so) from the Hyatt Regency, or the Starwood (category 6) Westin. The Chabad House is just a few minutes walk from Starwood’s (category 6) Prince de Galles.

-In the Park Hyatt there’s no stairwell from the room floors into the lobby, all of the staircases go outside the hotel. Which is just as well because there are only electric doors at the front and back of the hotel. The staircase exits at the rear of the hotel onto Rue Volney. There is always a doorman to allow you back up the stairs.

-There is no Eruv in Paris, so be sure to bring what you’ll want in shul before Shabbos.

-As Friday night services at Chabad of Champs Elysses is taken in well before Shabbos starts (as late as 9:40pm in Paris!) the best strategy coming from the Park Hyatt or the Westin is to take the metro 1 line from Tuileries to George V (4 stops) before Shabbos. Be sure to also bring metro tickets with you to leave in the Chabad House to get home after Shabbos. This way you’ll only have to make the walk back and forth 4 times instead of 6.

Food notes:

-Very few restaurants have English menus. If your guidebook has a French chapter in it definitely bring it along. Some kosher restaurants claim to speak hebrew, but my french was better than their hebrew, and considering that my french is just the words that are the same as in Portuguese that ain’t saying much.

-There are over 500 kosher restaurants in Paris, however the vast majority of those are under the Beth Din of Paris which doesn’t require Glatt kosher meat. There are some very good websites dedicated to kosher restaurants like 123cacher.com and kosherinfrance.com

-Tax and tip is already built into the prices on restaurant menus so there’s no need to tip more. If you order items to go you’ll pay less as they subtract the tip. If you eat bakery items in a sit-down table at the bakery you’ll pay more than the quoted price for the tip.

-Il Conte off of Champs Elysses had some of the best spicy focaccia bread in the city, I was full just off the complementary bread…and their garlic oil to dip the bread into is simply too good to describe. The Parmesan cheese on the tables had the most unique of flavors and was very good. The garlic stuffed focaccia bread was great as well. However their Pizza was not very good and the pasta with mushroom and cream sauce was good but not great. This was the only restaurant we went to that had an English menu.

-La Marina in the 19th district was one of those places where they claim to speak Hebrew but don’t. When I asked what Ravioli Epinards was the waiter told me “kitnios” or beans. Doubting that I walked outside and asked at the nextdoor restaurants Tib’s what it was and they said it was eggplant. So I went back to La Marina and asked the waiter if Epinards meant “Chatzilim” or eggplant and he said that it did. Tell that to the subpar Spinach Ravioli that I wound up with… However we got an AMAZING dessert at La Marina that made up for it, the “Farandole.” It was €13 and worth every one of them. It was a plate of a number of small desserts including hot chocolate cake, chocolate mouse, apple pie, chocolate/vanilla layer cake, ice cream, 3 flavors of whipped cream, and dark and white chocolate dipping sauces with strawberries…heaven!

-Right next door to La Marina are 2 chocolatiers. Ardely‘s makes amazing cholov yisroel milk chocolate creations and sells a box of 15 for about €15. A few stores down is Damyel‘s which had the most amazing dark chocolate truffles possibly ever made, a box of 15 was about €13. Damyel’s even offered to let us sample a few delicious pieces in the store. They also sell the French craze, Macarons, which have nothing remotely to do with the simulacra sounding Passover items. They are delicious little meringues cookies with a cream in the middle and they came in dozens of flavors for €1 each.

-In the Pletzel, the old jewish neighborhood in the 4th district, we ate at Pitzman which was some of the best Pizza I’ve ever had. I tried the tropical Pizza with Hearts of Palm, Pineapple, mushrooms, and corn! It was really quite good! And the fluffy crepe with chocolate and bananas was very good as well!

-Also in the Pletzel we went to Korcarz. The Park Hyatt had given us a loaf of their bread that was very good. However the eggplant lasagna in their restaurant was not very good and their Greek Salad didn’t resemble a typical one and not in a good way. The lemon meringue pie we had for dessert though was delicious.

-We saved “Darjeeling” (in the 17th district) for the last night, a glatt kosher Indian restaurant that came highly recommended, but when we went for dinner at 6:30pm they were closed. Turns out they don’t open for dinner until 7:30pm! We were starving so we walked over to Le Shine, a Chinese restaurant. The chicken egg rolls were very unique and good, the caramelized lemon chicken was not bad either. When we were trying to figure out what everything on the menu meant they brought out a jar of Skippy’s for one item because they didn’t know how else to describe peanut butter! And the peanut butter chicken was pretty good too with a nice kick to it.

You need to click on the cut-off thumbnails below in order to view the entire photo!

First Class Lounge Munich

First Class Lounge Munich

First Class Lounge Munich Kosher Meal

First Class Lounge Munich Kosher Meal

Park Hyatt Paris

Park Hyatt Paris Room

Park Hyatt Paris Bathroom

Kosher Champagne from Park Hyatt Paris

il Conte (The garlic oil I raved about can be seen by clicking on the picture)

Garlic filled focaccia at il Conte

pasta with mushroom and cream sauce at il Conte

Pizza at il Conte

Arc de Triomphe

Eiffel Tower

View from Eiffel Tower

Kosher Breakfast at the Park Hyatt Paris

Tropical Pizza at Pitzman

Chocolate Banana Crepe at Pitzman

Pitzman

Neat Pizza Bag From Pitzman

Metro sign with the arrival times of the next 2 trains

Farandole Dessert at La Marina

Chateau de Versailles

Chateau de Versailles

Gardens at Versailles

Gardens at Versailles

Lourve Museum

If you’re running late at the Lourve don’t go to her…

…but he will let you in by kindly turning his head.

Mona Lisa at the Louvre

Chicken Egg Rolls At Le Shine

Spicy Peanut Butter Chicken at Le Shine

Carmelized Lemon Chicken at Le Shine

Park Hyatt Paris Hallway

A parting gift from the Park Hyatt Paris

A parting gift from the Park Hyatt Paris

Another great kosher breakfast at the Park Hyatt Paris

Chocolate/Custard Danish at Korcarz

Lemon Meringue Pie at Korcarz

Eggplant Lasagna at Korcarz

Greek Salad at Korcarz

2 great chocolatiers, conveniently located right next to each other

Open Bar At Star Alliance Gold Lounge in Paris

Star Alliance Gold Lounge in Paris

Hitting up the Big Apple for 2 days…any readers going to the Indians/Yankees game today?

I started planning this trip a couple months ago.  The only part of Europe that I’ve explored until now was London, so it seemed like a logical place to check out.

I’ve been on the Business/First hybrid class offered on airlines like Continental and Delta before and they are very good, especially when you get an aircraft with lie-flat seats.  However as those airlines only offer 2 classes of service it’s not a true First class experience.  This time I wanted to experience the real thing, a true First class.  When you travel this way the plane ride becomes a great part of the experience and you can arrive refreshed and ready instead of jet-lagged and exhausted.

First class is where miles change from being a currency worth a couple of cents each to many times that.  After all a coach ticket to Europe runs about $1,000, business about $5,000, and First about $15,000.  However with miles the difference is far less pronounced.  Using Air Canada miles for example the cost for a US-Europe round-trip ticket is 60,000 in coach, 80,000 in business (or BusinessFirst on carriers like Continental), and 100,000 for First class on planes with 3 classes of service.  Thus each mile is worth 15 cents instead of just 1.7 cents each.  And of course 80,000 Starpoints becomes 100,000 Air Canada miles.

There are a number of carriers that offer true First service between the US and Europe.  Using the Star Alliance the options I was looking into were:
-Lufthansa from multiple cities to Frankfurt on a 747-400 (B744)
-Swiss to Zurich from multiple cities on an A330-300 (A333) or A340 (A343)
-Singapore from JFK to Frankfurt on a 747 (B744)
-Turkish from JFK to Istanbul in a suite on a 777-300ER (B77W)

Searching for Star Alliance award flights online is very convenient thanks to ANA (login required), Continental, and Air Canada’s award search engines.  Between those 3 search engines you should almost always be able to find award availability searching through dozens of partner airlines.

The other nice thing about mileage tickets is that you can make multiple stops for the same rate.  Air Canada for example allows 2 stopovers in addition to the destination city.  Unfortunately Air Canada wouldn’t let me keep backtracking like I wanted to, so I used USAirways miles to book the ticket.  They let me go to 2 cities for as long as I wanted and let me connect in as many cities as I wanted to for up to 24 hours.  Plus with USAirways you can hold a ticket for 3 days and that hold gets automatically extended every time you make a slight change to your held itinerary, even if you change it back again.  The only problem is that some agents make issues with the number of stopovers and connecting cities that you have, but no other airline seems to be as liberal as USAirways when it comes to the amount of connecting cities you can add on.  The main thing is to avoid carriers that charge hefty fuel surcharges and United that blocks out award availability even if it should be available.  That leaves Air Canada, Continental, and USAirways as good airlines to book Star Alliance tickets with.  ANA is good as well if you only want to travel on Continental, United, and USAirways as they have very low mileage rates don’t collect fuel surcharges on those carriers.

Based on recommendations from dansdeals.com/forums members we stopped in Zurich for a sub-24 hour stop which doesn’t count as a stopover as it’s under 24 hours.

My wife still had no clue where we were going until we used the lounge in Chicago.  I specifically avoided the Swiss lounge at first and opted for the SAS Business lounge down the hall.  However upon entering it they asked if we were going to Zurich and the secret came out.  We checked out the Swiss lounge (our 3rd lounge for the trip) and then were escorted onto the flight.

Swiss First is amazing.  There were only 4 passengers flying First and we had our own dedicated flight attendant to attend to our every whim.  The service was second to none.  He took pictures for us and made sure our glasses were never empty.  He even went out of his way to find lots of fresh fruit, berries, and even kosher Swiss jams to accompany our mediocre kosher meals.  You can choose to eat dinner restaurant style, with one passenger sitting in their seat, and the companion and the ottoman.  There is plenty of room for a table to be set up in the middle for both people to eat facing each other.  And then you can even push the ottoman back and forth giving the other diner a fun ride   We also got a very comfortable set of Pajamas and slippers as well as a nice amenity kit.  After doing some damage to their collections of fine 18 year old old single malt scotches he made our bed with duvets, down blankets, and down pillows and I had the best 6 hours of sleep that I’d ever had on a plane.

Upon landing in Zurich there is an arrivals lounge for First Class passengers to take a shower or even a nap, and grab a snack.  We weren’t even asked a single question at customs, they just stamped our passports and waived us through!

I have to give a shout-out here to “Chuchem,” a member of the dansdeals forums who went above and beyond to make our quick stay in Zurich excellent.  He picked us up at the airport, dropped us off at the train station, made us sandwiches for lunch, and kept our luggage safe the whole day.  He also got us special $35 passes that allowed us to use all of the trains, street-cars, and boats in Switzerland for the day.

We headed straight for picturesque Lucerne.  The train system in Zurich is very easy to navigate and figure out, even for non-German speakers.  The only issue we had was that we were sitting in the train cabin marked “1.” When they came around to check our tickets we were told to please move to the “2″ cabin as “1″ denoted First class.  Could’ve fooled me because they seemed exactly the same…if they want to see First Class try flying Swiss!

The main activity in Lucerne is to take a very steep cogwheel train up Mount Pilatus. It was unfortunately very cloudy in Lucerne that day and we confirmed with the tourist desk that there was no view from Pilatus at all (they even showed us the current view via webcam!) Instead we took a very relaxing boat ride down Lake Lucerne which is surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Even the boat had a “1″ class and a “2″ class…quite the class society they have here! There is also the very nice old-city of Lucerne and old-city walls to walk around, as well as centuries-old bridges that span the lake. Bathrooms required payment ($1-$2) but of course there are Starbucks all over, even in the old city, with their clean and free bathrooms. All in all Lucerne was a neat place to see.

We took the train back to Zurich and then took a street-car to our hotel, the Park Hyatt Zurich. The street-cars are very clean and efficient, every stop has a sign with the times of the upcoming cars and a clear map of the system. There was a stop just a block away from our hotel. The hotel is brand new and is stunningly beautiful. Rooms normally go for $700 or more per night, but it’s for these hotels that makes Hyatt’s “Faster Free Nights” so lucrative. The spa is free for all guests and had tons of goodies in it. The room was large and had a rain-shower and jacuzzi.  They awarded us with 2,500 points in lieu of the free breakfast that we couldn’t have because it wasn’t kosher.

Chuchem and his wife had us over for an excellent steak dinner at his house nearby the hotel and he showed us some of the pictures from his recent trip to China. He wrote up a trip report for it on the forums. After seeing the First Class Suites on Turkish that he had I regretted not trying harder to fly via Istanbul!

We caught a street car to the train station in Zurich and then a train to the airport. The whole thing with connection time took just 40 minutes and cost just $6/person. Very easy and convenient. All in all it was neat seeing Switzerland, it’s really a beautiful country and the cleanliness, efficiency, and punctuality of everything is quite the site to see. And hey, it was just a free sub-24 hour stop on our mileage ticket!  I could’ve done without all of the secondhand smoke though, which was completely out of hand. They must have really strict smoking ad laws though as signs always had a nice picture of people smoking and then big letters under them saying “SMOKING KILLS!”

We were connecting from Zurich to Paris via Munich as no direct award flights were available.  Officially you can only enter the First Class lounge in Zurich if you are connecting to or from a First Class ticket that day or if you have HON Circle status which requires flying hundreds of thousands of miles per year in premium classes..  As our connecting flight was in business (there is no First Class on intra-Europe flights) I wasn’t sure they would let us in, but I handed them the boarding pass from Chicago-Zurich from 2 days before and we got in without a problem.  The lounge is very nice, but I’m sure people who don’t keep kosher enjoy it much more.  The private work offices had nice 13″ Vaio laptops to work on.  They escorted us to the very front of the security line a few minutes  before the flight.  My wife had seen the Munich boarding passes that they gave us as the beginning of the trip and was still under the assumption that we were spending shabbos in Munich, little did she know what would happen to us in the Munich airport on our stopover to Paris…to be continued.

Pictures: (Click to enlarge)

SAS Business lounge in Chicago…attempting to perfect our self-timer skills.

Swiss A340 First Class

Swiss A340 First Class

Please stop serving gefilte fish on flights! What’s next…Cholent?

Kosher dinner-main course.

Kosher breakfast.

One of Lucerne’s bridges.

On Lake Lucerne.

Park Hyatt Zurich.

Park Hyatt Zurich.

Park Hyatt Zurich.

Zurich street-car sign. at the Park Hyatt stop.

Swiss Zurich First Class Lounge.

Swiss Zurich First Class Lounge.

This post is stickied to the top, please scroll down for new posts!

Update #4: We’re in Venice for Shabbos!

Update #3: We are in Jerusalem for Shavuos! After that we have one last “secret” stop before heading back home on Monday!

Update #2: We had a blast in Switzerland with major help from local “Chuchem” from Dansdeals.com/forums. More on that in a future trip report.  Thanks for all your suggestions in the comments! Now we’re off to Paris for 4 nights and I’d love to hear your suggestions for what you like to do and where you like to eat in the city of lights! Thanks!

Live Update #1: We’re at the Presidents Club in Cleveland (where I just realized I have 5 ways to access the club!).  We’re flying Cleveland-Chicago on United and Chicago-Zurich on Swiss in First Class for our first leg!  Have any recommendations for Zurich? Hit the comments!

We’re hitting the road for the next 13 days. I’ll keep on updating the site, but updates may be sporadic.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to plan a whirlwind of a trip without your wife finding out which cities you’re going to be in? I’ve got 75 travel books checked out from the library most of which are just decoys I left lying around!

13 flight segments, 13 days, 3 continents, 5 Star Alliance airlines, here we come!

My wife and I together with my parents, 5 brothers, and sister-in-law spent Passover in Palm Springs, CA. Here are some random notes about the trip.

How we do it:

-This was our 5th time going to Palm Springs in the past 7 years. I’m not even sure how exactly the tradition began but we were just looking for someplace where we knew we could count on good weather for the holiday. Traditional Passover programs in hotels can cost as much as $5,000/person, so what we do is a budget getaway where the trip for the entire family can cost less than one person at a full-service program.  Of course you don’t have chefs taking care of your every whim, but that’s the tradeoff!

We start looking for vacation houses for rent on sites like vrbo.com, vacationrentals.com, craigslist.net about 6 months before Passover. The tricky part is trying to find homes for rent that are within walking distance of a Chabad House. After finding a place with sufficient bedrooms and a nice private pool and hot tub it’s just a matter of negotiating a good rate. Orlando and Palm Springs are both communities where there are many houses that people own to vacation in for a few weeks a year and rent out for the remainder so rentals can be very cheap.  We found a house this year with 4 bedrooms, a pool, a hammock, and even a putting green and shuffleboard court.

-We bring all of the cooked food with us, 6 bags loaded with 70 pounds each. With that much frozen food a nonstop flight is critical. Continental flies the only nonstop from Cleveland to Los Angeles which means we are at their mercy as far as pricing. It took until just weeks before the flight for the price finally came down from the $400 level to the $200 level.  Constant vigilance is the method to grabbing a cheap flight.  It’s always good to search for just one traveler and be willing to break up your group into numerous reservations or else you may wind up paying extra for everyone’s tickets by booking together.

-After a quick stop at Avis (I had to use my Chairman status to get them to give my dad a Hummer H3 so he can enjoy the vast amount of off-roading spots around Plam Springs) we split up. My wife and I went into LA to pick up kosher for passover groceries while everyone else went to kasher out our rented house. Dovid Kagan, at Western Kosher made sure to save me a case of those fine super-thin Shatzer whole wheat matzahs and we got just about everything we needed there. We made a quick run over to La Brea Kosher to pick up a few cases of wine (we way overbought, but they were good enough to take back an unopened case!) We had a quick meal at Fish Grill…I don’t even like fish that much, but the Grilled Salmon Angel Food Pasta with a huge order of crisp fries was out of this world! Finally we picked up some mediocre Chinese from Shanghai (gotta’ fill the Chinese fix after Abba’s sadly closed down here in Cleveland) and headed over to Palm Springs.

-Palm Springs is very serene and pretty. It’s just under a 2 hour drive from Los Angeles. The weather is always incredible and the scenery is gorgeous. Mountains loom over you from the South and the West which actually causes sunset (and therefore Shabbos/Yom Tov) to be 25 minutes earlier than it should be when calculated based on the coordinates. There are awesome hikes all around in the mountains and in Joshua Tree National Park. We took a walk up the private Cahuilla Hills Dr with a homeowner’s permission and the view from the park at the top of the trail of the entire Coachealla Valley is just breathtaking. On Thursday evenings from 6pm-10pm is a fun street fair where they close off the hip downtown area and thousands of people descend to the area to shop the local wares for sale. Rabbi Denebeim, the charismatic local Chabad Rabbi, even has a stand there called “Ask The Rabbi” where there is always a nice crowd of people speaking with him.

-We got rocked by the 7.2 earthquake, the largest I have ever been in.  Kind’ve scary to see the rafters shaking and the pool emptying itself of its water…

-We finished off the trip with an excellent dinner at Shiloh’s.  Shiloh’s had been hit or miss for me, but they brought their A game this time!  I had the Black Angus Steak with cracked peppercorn. Each steak is served with 5 dipping sauces.   We shared some delicious key lime pie and bananas foster which were made right in front of us!

Hotels:
Hyatt is running a Faster Free Nights promo and many Hyatt’s have killer government employee rates (my father works for the feds) so we had to hit up some Hyatt’s!  Plus I had already stocked up on Hyatt certs from Costco at a 20% discount.

My wife and I stayed at the Hyatt Grand Champions in Indian Wells, about a 20 minute drive further into the Coachella Valley from Palm Springs.

The Grand Champions is amazing! The grounds are simply fantastic. There are 8 swimming pools and a couple of hot tubs. There was not a soul using any of them at night, completely empty! There is a hefty resort fee, but it includes some neat stuff like free bicycle usage, game rooms, etc. Parking is comped for Diamonds.

I called ahead to use one of my Diamond Suite upgrade certificates but was told that they were out of suites for the night. When I got there I asked again and was given the penthouse suite without even having to use the certificate! The penthouse was very nice with 2 rooms, 2 bathrooms, a very long balcony, a fireplace, and a nice jacuzzi.

The Regency Club had a great breakfast, but our participation in that was limited to bananas and water. The excellent kosher (but not for passover) Swiss jams were just there to tease us.

After Pesach we drove back to LA and spent a night at the Hyatt Andaz in West Hollywood. The Andaz is Hyatt’s answer to Starwood’s W hotels. Very hip and trendy. There are also Andaz locations in NYC, London, and San Diego.

There is no check-in desk. Instead you cozy up on the couch in the futuristic lobby while they offer you something to drink and check you in via netbook. There are no magnetic strips on the keys, everything in the hotel is RFID based. Wave it and you can access the elevator, your room, the pool deck, etc.

I had them add the code ANDAZ5 to my reservation. This gives you $50 of resort credit (very handy to pay off the $28 valet charge) and 5,000 bonus points. Officially this code had to have been added before 03/31, but it can apparently still be added by calling Hyatt or any Andaz for travel through 06/30.  I also had them add G3 (1,500 bonus points) and 1W (1,000 points for diamonds). In the end I got 8,400 points and a faster free night credit from the stay.

The minibar is free at the Andaz and even has some kosher snacks along with a nice amount of drinks. Wi-Fi is free for everyone as well.

The high-rise “view” room has a huge open view to the Sunset Strip, all lit up at night.

The pool is on the roof (the highest rooftop pool in LA) and from there you can see LA sprawl out to the South and the houses in Hollywood Hills in the mountains to the north. In addition to pool chairs, there are these great “beds” on the roof with plenty of space for napping in the shade or the sun.

Airline Stuff (non-airline geeks, please skip right on past this part!) :

-Catch 22: In the Star Alliance I have Silver status with Continental and Gold status with BMI. Continental Silver’s are eligible for upgrades but only get 2 bags of 50 pounds. Star Alliance Golds get 3 bags of 70 pounds each but are not eligible for upgrades.
However there are many quirks with the free bags and free upgrades that make it extremely complicated.

Continental has 2 upgrade methods, EUA and battlefield. The EUA system runs daily and upgrades elites in advance of the flight. The problem with EUA is that if you are the same reservation as non-elites you won’t get upgraded. However in order for your non-elite companions to get the same baggage exemption as you do that need to be on the same reservation.
Officially, if you book yourself together with non-elites and then split the reservation into 2, you are eligible for EUA upgrades and the companions will get the baggage exemption. This does not always work flawlessly.
The other upgrade system, the battlefield upgrade, can be very tough for Silvers as you fall behind even companions of Platinum and Gold members. The nice thing about the battlefield upgrade is that you can check your position on the upgrade list in real-time on your phone at pda.continental.com

-I had my wife, who is Continental Silver, on her own reservation and she received an EUA upgrade in advance from Cleveland to Los Angeles and on the return from LAX to Cleveland.
However I stayed on the reservation with everyone else and thereby forfeited my EUA. I entered in my BMI Gold number before using the online check-in and at online check-in the site correctly allowed everyone on my reservation got 3 bags of 70 pounds each. I was then able to go back into the reservation and re-enter my Continental Silver number to get the miles credited to Continental instead of BMI. However because I checked in with my BMI number I never showed up on the battlefield upgrade list and did not get upgraded.  No Continental agent on the phone or at the airport was able to get me onto the upgrade list.

-My new sister-in-law was impressed at how I have travel down to a science.  The non-elite lines were extremely long and yet we skipped right on up to the the elite check-in counter where we didn’t pay a dime for 17 bags, many of which were 70 pounds each! We skipped right on by the long security line and went into the spacious president’s club where we had breakfast and davened.  We got to board the plane early in order to secure overhead bin space before finally settling into 6 spacious exit row seats that have a whopping 41″ seat pitch for plenty of legroom while my mother enjoyed first class.  I take it all for granted now, but it really does make the entire experience a pleasure rather than a chore.  If you’ve seen “Up In The Air” you know what I mean…but he wasn’t traveling with 9 people bringing along the kitchen sink for Passover!

-On the return flight, I had selected auto-checkin which still had the last number that I used-my Continental number. Even after changing that to my BMI Gold number the system did not automatically allow 3 bags of 70 pounds. At the airport only after pointing out that my boarding pass said “Star Alliance Gold” and the huge sign that said that Star Silvers get 2 bags of 50 pounds and Star Golds get 3 bags of 70 pounds did the agent go around the automated system and give us the overweight bags for free.

-Why is it that they always offer bumps when I can’t take them? From CLE to LAX they were offering $350 and a first class seat for up to 4 passengers to fly on a later flight but we just couldn’t arrive any later than we already were.

-The outbound flight had DirectTV with a monitor by every seat with over 100 live TV channels and a number of movies. The cost is normally $6 in coach but the system wasn’t working properly for every seat so they made it free for the flight. I noticed many people were trying to figure out how to turn off the TV…in case you’re ever wondering you just have to dim the brightness all the way down and it runs off!

-We had Exit row seats both ways, which are free for elites, but Continental now charges $59 for the non-reclining exit row and $69 for the reclining exit row for non-elites.

-All of the rows on the DirecTV plane in the entire “elite section” from the exit row and forward had regular plug outlets which is great!

I think I’ve written up enough worthless info…hope someone enjoys it!

Pictures: (Click on the picture to enlarge)

The matzah box on hold for “Dan’s Deals”

Black Angus Steak at Shiloh’s

Bananas Foster à la check.

Rabbi Denebeim at the Palm Springs Street Fair

Everybody likes Parfait! Grand Champions Balcony.

View from Grand Champions Balcony.

View from Grand Champions Balcony.

Grand Champions Spa.

Hyatt Andaz WeHo Poolside “Bed”

Hyatt Andaz WeHo Lobby.

Hyatt Andaz WeHo Exterior, via Google Images.

Hyatt Andaz WeHo Pool Deck, via Google Images.

Hyatt Andaz WeHo Pool Deck, via Google Images.

Related: Read previous posts filed under “Trip Notes”

-First off, hats off to all of the Montrealers who helped contribute over 70 comments with great tips for my recent trip to Montreal.  Hope I don’t offend too many of you with my trip notes!

-My brother Dovid’s wedding was incredible. All of the guys who came to dance from the local yeshiva really made the place lively and last into the wee hours of the night. Choni Milecki played music at his best. I only hope that my duet with Dovid singing Matisyahu’s One Day doesn’t make it onto Youtube…or you’ll see what too much 18 year old Glenlivet and Johnnie Walker Blue Label will do to people.  Speaking of “One Day”, NBC just used it a few minutes ago as the background music to their Olympics coverage!

-The best tip I got was the comment left by zalman. Yes it really does work to anywhere in the world.  It saved us $$$ and is possibly the craziest thing I’ve ever seen!

-For reason I can’t explain it just seemed colder in Montreal than the reported temperature.  Maybe it’s the constant windiness or something else but it was just bone-chillingly cold.  Definitely should have brought a down coat instead the wool one.

-I have never seen cars caked in salt like in Montreal.  It looked like all the cars on the street had rolled in salt pits or something…it snows in Cleveland a lot but the cars don’t look like they did there, what gives?

-In the city of Montreal most of the signs are in French with no English translation. There are numerous small suburbs though where Arret becomes Stop as the signs magically change from French to English. Does eac suburb get to decide whether to be Francophone or Anglophone or does it have to just do with the makeup of the local population?

-Tip: With the numerous different cities around Boulevard Decarie when using a GPS to find an address just select “Search all cities” in Quebec to find the address. If you type in Montreal it won’t find a match. In general in Canada it’s fun to use the 6 digit Zip Codes in the GPS. When you do that you won’t even have to enter a city or street name for it to find your destination!

-Even with my Starwood AMEX charging over 2% to use the card in Canada it’s still worth using it. $1 Canadian cost me about 97.5 cents which was better than what change places were offering. Plus I still get Starpoints and have buyer protections (chargeback, stolen/broken goods, warranty coverage, etc.) that you won’t have if you pay cash. Even the parking meters take AMEX so I never had to carry any Canadian cash. Some stores don’t take AMEX so I fell back on my Continental Presidential Plus card which gave a similar rate.

-Don’t waste any money to see the city from the tower in Olympic Stadium.  Instead take a look at the city unfold from on top of Mont Royal at night or drive around the bridges to the Montreal Casino at night where you can see the lights of the city and the brightly lit casino shine beautifully over the water.

-We went to check out the snow tubing ($8) on Mont Royal but the tubing hill looked somewhat small and we really didn’t have the proper winter attire so we went ice skating instead ($8 for skate rental).

-We stayed at Priority Club’s Candlewood Suites downtown.  Frankly I don’t like anything about them.  I negotiated rates with them for our group of about 15 rooms for $59/night for a studio and $99/night for a two-bedroom suite with a full kitchen and living/dining room.  Apparently I did too good of a job negotiating as the sales manager sheepishly called back and said that the manager had rejected the rates and that they were raising them by $30 per night.  In the end we settled on free valet parking (normally $12/day) and extra tables in the rooms so that our group could have joint Shabbos services and meals.

What I didn’t realize was that Candlewood does not give any housekeeping, the rooms were in desperate need of renovation, and they give you one lousy bottle of foul-smelling shampoo and make you grovel for more.  No conditioner, moisturizer, etc.  The free internet was ridiculously slow one day and didn’t work at all for the rest of the time.  The room keys would randomly stop working and there is no staff to bring anything up to the room,  you have to go down to the front desk to fix any problems.

The only thing going for the hotel was the location.  I walked the half mile to the picturesque Old Montreal and Old Port of Montreal on Shabbos a couple times.  The only issue was that the Candlewood rooms were on the 11th-14th floors so it was a hike getting back up. Old Montreal has a very European feel with its narrow cobblestone streets and small shops.  Definitely worth a walk around if you can brave the cold.  The hotel was just a 10-15 minute drive from the kosher restaurants on Decarie and 20 minutes from YUL airport.

-The Hyatt Montreal is in need of a renovation as well…the guestrooms looked dated and a suite is just an extra connecting room instead of a real suite upgrade.  Many employees had poor English skills as well.

-Flying out of YUL is frankly a pain.  It’s a nice hike to get from the car rental return to the US check-in and there are no shuttles. Most of the airline agents are outsourced and don’t know all of the correct rules.  The Canadian Air Transport Security agents were downright hostile to us. Whether this was because we weren’t Francophone’s or because we’re Americans is beyond me. They forced us to check all of our wheeled carry-ons due to being oversize, but in the subsequent customs line I saw numerous Canadians with identical bags. The official size limit for carry-ons allowed into the security line is a joke, I could barely fit my laptop bag into the sizer. When an agent questioned my TSA approved laptop bag (the kind where you don’t need to removed the laptop from the case) he told me that “I don’t give a damn if it’s TSA approved, remove it right now or leave it behind.”

-Driving in Montreal is like another planet from Toronto. Whereas Toronto drivers were the most courteous that I’ve ever seen in a big city (Yes most of them really do stop and let you in when you turn on your turn-signal) Montrealers are definitely not.  Also Toronto is a much cleaner city than Montreal.  In spite or perhaps because of that Montreal is far less sterile and “normal” than Toronto, which makes it quite interesting to visit.

-Some of the stuff I saw in grocery stores that are kosher parve in Canada that aren’t in the US:
Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix.
Cereal: Cap’n Crunch, French Toast Crunch, Quaker Corn Squares, Quaker Maple Brown Sugar Oatmeal Squares, All Bran High Fiber Honey Nut Medley.
Chips: Lay’s Old Fashioned BBQ, Ruffles All Dressed.
I also picked up a number VH chinese sauces that were actually on a big sale at Metro this week.
So what did I miss?

Kosher eateries:

Cheskie’s Bakery: Yes, this place mentioned in dozens of comments does live up to the hype on many of the cheese items.
The vast majority of kosher establishments in Montreal are on Decarie, but this is located in the old neighborhood which seemed like it was in between downtown and Decarie. It’s worth the short hike out here from either location.
The cheese muffins had an indescribably great flavor. The flaky cheese danish with confectioners sugar and large cheese florets were equally great. You really can’t go wrong with any of the other cheese baked goods. The cheesecakes were very good, but nothing extraordinary. The chocolate and cinnamon rogelach were fine, but again nothing great. The Chocolate babka was very good, but their cheese goods are what you can’t miss.

Milk & Honey: I went across the street from Cheskie’s as some commenters had recommended but they had no cheesecake and the rest of the cafeteria style items didn’t look all that great.

Pizza Pita: Very cool pizza shop with an impressively diverse menu.
Everyone went crazy over the Pizza wraps ($2.75). They are egg rolls served with duck sauce and loaded with caramelized onions, tomato sauce, and cheese. The frozen Alaska’s (yogurt blended with fruit, $4) and razzles (ice cream blended with toppings, $4) were big hits as well. The felafel plate ($9) was quite good. The Pizza was fine, nothing exceptional.
As for the Poutine ($4.50)…Maybe it’s an acquired taste. I enjoyed trying the spicy fries loaded with cheese and gravy but one person in our party named it butane after what it did to everyone’s stomachs. Definitely worth a bite but I can’t imagine eating much more than that.
Their hours are incredible, until 11pm nightly and until 4am Saturday night! Plus there’s a drive-through!

Chez Benny: Overpriced fast food.
The General Tao plate ($18) had lots of food, but was only mediocre. The Shnitzel plate ($14) was better. Most of the menu is only in French.

Mount Royal Bagels: Incredible wood-oven bagels baked fresh right in front of you.
We got Sesame/Onion, whole wheat, Cinnamon (offered without raisins as we ordered or with raisins), Chocolate chip, and Plain. They were unique, delicious, hot, and crunchy. Their sun-dried tomato, and chive cream cheese was great as well.
A dozen bagels are just $6-$7.
And their Cinnamon Danish was one of the best I’ve ever had-it was divine!!!
Plus all their signs are in English

Ernie and Ellie’s: Oh where to start…
We made reservations for 15 people on Saturday night. We probably should have been prepared by the fact that it took 30 minutes for them to take our orders. The menu pricing seemed bizarre. Chinese meals were about $20 but the all-you-can-eat Chinese tasting menu was just $25. In theory we were told the tasting menu worked like this: Pick a soup, as many appetizers as you want, and 3 main dishes. After that you were free to order more dishes. Again that’s all in theory.
Maybe it’s because we were 15 people, maybe it’s because there was just 1 waitress, although the place was practically empty besides for us.
8:55pm: Arrived.
9:30pm: Took orders.
9:55pm: Appetizers brought out.
10:40pm: Entrees brought out, almost none of them are what people ordered. Nobody got more than 1 out of the 3 meals they ordered, and they made 5 of every meal that they did bring out. By the time we got the wrong meals and wanted to order more food with the “all you can eat” menu (or just the correct meals) or even dessert we were told that the kitchen was closed. So much for all you can eat.
The food that was brought out was excellent for the most part. The won-ton soup, peanut butter dumplings, chicken toast, General Tao Chicken, Orange Beef, and Salt & Pepper Chicken (They ran out of beef halfway through the meals) were all delicious. The service was 100% incompetent though. A 15% gratuity was added automatically onto the bill.
Oh and also lesson learned by some in the group-don’t order Sushi on a Saturday night!

Yakimono Sushi Bar: Incredible sushi and well priced as well.
I’m really not such a big sushi fan and would never touch raw fish with a 10 foot pole. We went here as an afterthought but it was well worth it.
Yakimono is clean and sleek looking restaurant. I got a fried sushi roll (10 pieces for $11) with salmon, mango, and avocado with fried tempura which was amazing. They serve their Sushi with a number of sauces (The sweet sauce was awesome!). The nice portion of fries ($4) were well-spiced and very good.
The only disappointment was the Hot Apple Crumble with Ice Cream ($8) that was overdone and consisted mostly of just dry crumble.

Morty’s Steakhouse: Very good steaks but overpriced.
Morty’s is a very good steakhouse. The hot french bread they serve when you are seated is delicious dipped into the aromatic and very flavorful balsamic vinegar.
I got the small Filet Mignon (8oz. for $39, the large is 12 oz. for $56) done medium which was just perfect and succulent. They even let me switch the vegetable to get 2 potatoes with the steak, Yukon Gold Garlic Mashed Potatoes, and absolutely incredible steak fries. Another diner had theirs done medium well which came out with a strong charred taste. Larger steaks (16 oz.) were about $60.
They even have a 70 ounce rib steak for $99 that if one diner is able to finish they don’t have to pay for it!
The hot chocolate cake with ice cream was OK, nothing compared to the sublime La Marais version of the dessert.

Click on the pictures to enlarge and to view the full non-cutoff picture:

The all you can eat menu at Ernie and Ellie’s

Chinatown

Fries at Yakimono

Fried Sushi Roll at Yakimono

Fake Crab Sushi Roll at Yakimono

Driving up Mont Royal

Babka, Elephant ear, and Rugelach at Cheskie’s

Don’t miss the Cheese Florets, Cheese Muffin, and Flaky Cheese Confectioners Sugar Danish at Cheskie’s

Cheesecakes at Cheskie’s

Agree? Disagree? Sound off in the comments!

Post stickied: I’ll be north of the border through Tuesday, updates may be sporadic until then. Please scroll down for new posts.

I tried a reader suggestion post back in November when I went to Toronto for my brother-in-law’s wedding and got 67 incredibly helpful and detailed responses. I even took it upon myself to try out as many of the food suggestions as humanly possible, who else would try out so many food/bakery joints on a short trip?

Anyway I’m off to Montreal tomorrow for the weekend for my brother’s wedding (seriously Dovid, Montreal in February??? Surely we could’ve arranged something with the Grand Hyatt Kauai…) and am looking for your suggestions once again. Whether it’s an activity or an eatery let’s hear all about it!

Update: 01/03: Picked up 2 $350 china cabinets for $150 each and 4 $80 dressers for $40 each…I’m pleased to report that price adjustments on preemptively purchased sale items work just as well at Ikea’s one day sale as it did at Walmart for Black Friday…

Happy new year to all!

-We flew from Hawaii to NYC last Thursday, flew home to Cleveland late Sunday, and moved to a great new apartment in Cleveland over the past few days. I was even able to pay the mover in miles (Thanks for the help Yossi Shmueli!)

-I can’t even remember the last shabbos that we spent at home and didn’t want to break that streak yet, so we drove into Pittsburgh for the weekend before we fly off to Kansas City for the next week. While in Pittsburgh we’ll try to pick up some of Ikea’s great one-day specials today and tomorrow ($99 cabinet down from $249 and some $39 dressers down from $80).

-It’s always sad on January 1st to see all your elite mileage qualification numbers go back down to 0.  At least I’ll always have Lifetime Platinum on AA to fall back on.

-I’m terrible at writing trip reports up after the trip is over…but one of these days I’ll type up some more installments from my Israel and Hawaii trips.

-Here’s my ridiculously long flight history map from the past 4 months. Most of it was in first class with miles or free upgrades to business class on Airtran which made it totally bearable.  And no, even though I’ve only been home for a few days over the past couple months our apartment does not look like anything like the one in “Up In the Air.”

You too can travel the world for free! Head over to the Dansdeals Forums and start strategizing now! Or just open up your own Starwood AMEX to start earning to the most valuable and flexible travel currency around!  Or open up a Hyatt Visa to earn 2 free nights at the Grand Hyatt Kauai!

Related:
Shaloha Folks!
Hawaii Trip Notes: Part 1, Oahu.

-There are 4 main Islands in the state of Hawaii: Kauai, Maui, Oahu, and the Big Island of Hawaii.  Oahu is by far the most populated with the capital of Honolulu and touristy.  If you are going to Hawaii you need a minimum of 5 days on any Island, but a week is ideal.  In order of importance my opinion would be Kauai, Maui, the Big Island, and finally Oahu.

-We just finished an amazing week on Kauai.  Kauai is just incredible, my favorite Hawaiian island. It’s hard not to gush about it. The air is deliciously fresh with greenery abound. It’s just a stunningly beautiful island without any of the touristy kitsch that permeates Oahu and to a lesser degree Maui. From the depths of Waimea Canyon to the sheer and awe-inspiring cliffs of Na Pali it’s hard to not lose your breath…

-We stocked up on some of our kosher favorites in Whole Foods in Oahu before flying to Kauai. Got some ZenSoy Chocolate/Vanilla pudding ($3.99 vs. $2.99 in Cleveland), Corn and bean salsa ($3.69 vs. $2.99 in Cleveland), Whale Tales corn chips (never seen these in Cleveland), and Fat free soy milk ($5.69 vs. $3.29 in Cleveland)

-Groceries and gas are generally insanely expensive in Hawaii.  Except at Costco.  I confirmed on a number of items that Costco’s prices here are the same as on the mainland.  Even on frozen and refrigerated items like frozen salmon and Tropicana Orange Juice that can be double the price at other stores.

-Also before we left Oahu I picked up some of the great Aloha Hawaiian Kippot from Chabad of Honolulu. If you’ve never seen them they have double sided aloha prints in a myriad of unique designs and colors. They are great to wear around (you’ll get tons of compliments!) or to bring back instead of some tacky wooden gift. They’re $8 and help support the great work of Chabad of Honolulu.

-On our way to Honolulu we flew on Continental which allowed 70 pound bags, but from Honolulu to Kauai on Hawaiian we were only allowed 50 pound bags…which is where Skycaps come in handy

-A convertible is definitely the way to go in Kauai!

-Tabi’s are awesome! I’d never heard of them before reading about them in the Hawaiin guidebooks.  They are a Polynesian hybrid of a beach shoe/boot with felt bottoms that grip onto slippery rocks.  They are perfect for hiking on slippery trails or for the beach.  Walmart in Hawaii sells them for $15-$20.

-This past week we stayed at the Grand Hyatt Kauai down in dry and sunny Poipu. How awesome is Kauai? You have to go through a “tree tunnel” just to get down to Poipu! Anyway the hotel is absolutely incredible. When you walk in the lobby there is an open wall where you can see straight to the Ocean.  There are dozens of pools, hot tubs, and lagoons that never seem to end. Exotic landscaping, talking parrots, and tons of free entertainment. You could literally spend a week here without leaving the hotel and never be bored for a minute…but that would be a crying shame.

-The Grand Hyatt put us in a ground floor suite when we arrived.  It was nice but I didn’t care for it.  There was no balcony, no ocean view, and no cell phone reception.  They let me take a look at a few other suites and I settled on a 1,400 square foot beauty with a separate living room, dining room, bedroom with walk-in closet, a bathroom with a jacuzzi and separate shower room, a 40 foot ocean-view balcony, 3 LCD TV’s, 4 phones…Total cost: $0.

-At 4am on Tuesday morning the Hotel fire alarm system malfunctioned.  It told everyone to evacuate the building.  After we left we were told it was a mistake, but they couldn’t get the alarm turned off for half an hour.  In the morning they sent out an apology letter offering everyone a $50 resort credit.  I don’t think so! I negotiated a more fair response with a manager over the phone, 18,000 Hyatt points (enough points for a free night at any Hyatt) and a $100 resort credit…which bought a nice pair of Naot’s for my wife!

-Wi-fi for 2 computers for the week came out to $200…waived of course for Hyatt elite members.

-The resort fee ($18/day) was waived as it was an award stay. Parking was free.

-The hotel offers a daily Scuba lesson in their expansive saltwater lagoon for free!

-They have these great sized Heinz ketchup packets at the self-service bar by the pool.  You know those regular Heinz packets that you need to open 7 of to cover your burger? Well 1 of these babies and your burger is covered!  Why haven’t I seen these anywhere else???

-We brought some self-heating La Briute meals with us (Cheese Ravioli and Meatballs and Spaghetti). These flavors are actually pretty good, and it’s great to have a nice piping hot meal in middle of a long hike!

-We were able to freeze the food that we needed for Maui upon arrival and get an extra fridge in the room for our food for the week in the hotel.

-Times Supermarket carries a complete line of Jelly Belly products and confections, including some super fresh candy corn! Yum!

-On Wednesday night we went to the “Tiki-Torch” menorah lighting at Chabad of Kauai which was nice. Rabbi Goldman brought down Zvi Bielski, the son of “Defiance” World War 2 hero Zus Bielski. At Chabad I ate the only Latke that I would have all Chanukah long!

-It hit me when we brought in Shabbos at the Hyatt that we were among the last Jews in the world to bring in Shabbos. With Kauai being the westernmost part of populated Hawaii and with sunset at 6pm local time/4am GMT and us being located further west than the local jewish community I think it’s entirely plausible that we were the absolute last people in the world to bring in Shabbos…kind’ve cool!

Some of the activities I’ve done on Kauai on this and past trips (5/5 = must do , 0/5= don’t bother):

-A Helicopter tour of Kauai with Blue Hawaiian (Kauai Revealed, Pg. 134), as recommended by the Kauai Revealed book. This trip is AWESOME!!! They have first class helicopters with comfy seats, 2 way noise canceling headphones, and huge windows for incredible views. The biggest problem with Kauai is that so much of it is inaccessible. With a helicopter tour you can go right up to sights that seem impossible…into the canyon, over Na Pali, and it ends of with Mt. Waialeale, one of the wettest spots on earth with some 500 inches of annual rainfall and dozens of waterfalls gushing down: 5/5

-Kayaked to Fern Grotto and Secret Falls (Kauai Revealed, Pg. 163). Both sites are very impressive! It is a little tricky to dock at Fern Grotto and to actually find the beautiful Secret Falls with its swimmable pool…but well worth it. We started from Hawaiian Village where it’s just a short 5-10 minute kayak to either site. We ran out of time and couldn’t find Secret Falls before they closed, but they let us come back a couple days later and try again for free-and we made it! Bring Off or you will get eaten alive. : 4.5/5

-Polihale Beach (Kauai Revealed, Pg. 88). 13 miles of uninterrupted and deserted beaches in the remote westernmost part of the United States. It’s mostly unswimmable in the winter due to waves up to 25 feet tell. However standing in Queen’s Pond where the massive waves are taken down by the reef just feet in front of you makes for a surreal experience. Watching the sunset over the “forbidden island” of Niihau at Polihale is breathtaking: 4.5/5

-Snorkeling at Poipu Beach (Kauai Revealed, Pg. 112). I snorkeled right on top of a green sea turtle that was bigger than me! Monk seals often park themselves at this beach which is just a few minutes from the Hyatt. 4.5/5

-12 Mile Hike in Waimea Canyon Nualolo/Awaawapuhi loop (Kauai Revealed, Pg. 144). I’m not sure what I was thinking here. This hike included half a mile of altitude change, some very scary cliffs (don’t make a false step or it’s miles till the next one!) and was way too strenuous for my taste. The views of Na Pali were shockingly beautiful (which is why I did the hike in the first place) but I was nice and sore for 2 days after this hike.  If you do this hike don’t forget lots of water-I went through 4 liters myself easily: 2/5

-4WD Miloli Ridge Road (Kauai Revealed, Pg. 196) Stunning view of Na Pali without the 12 mile hike. 4WD car is required though…4/5

-Liko Kauai Cruise of Na Pali. (Kauai Revealed, Pg. 168) These are supposed to be great in the calm summer seas…don’t bother in the winter. It was so nauseating that half the boat was throwing up. There are better ways to see Na Pali than this. 0/5.

If nothing else, just drive around Kauai, there is beauty everywhere. The drive up to the quaint North Shore with its 1 lane bridges and into Waimea Canyon is just awesome.

We’re off to Maui now…catch ‘ya later! Oh, and thanks for all of the comments on the last trip notes posting!

Waimea Canyon

Na Pali, from a helicopter

Sunset at Kekaha Beach

Na Pali, from a helicopter

Hanalei Lookout

Mt. Waialeale, from a helicopter

Grand Hyatt Suite Living Room

Grand Hyatt Suite Dining Room

Grand Hyatt Suite Bathroom

Grand Hyatt Suite Balcony View

Pools At Grand Hyatt Kauai

Menorah on balcony

Grand Hyatt Suite Balcony View

Na Pali, from Waimea Canyon loop hike.

Na Pali, from Waimea Canyon loop hike.

Waimea Canyon loop hike.

Na Pali, from Waimea Canyon loop hike.

Menorah Lighting at Chabad of Kauai

Grand Hyatt Kauai Restaurant

Grand Hyatt Kauai

Pools At Grand Hyatt Kauai

Message left at Polihale

Sunset at Polihale

Sunset at Polihale (Background: Ni’ihau)

Grand Hyatt Suite Balcony View

Wild Peacock

Secret Falls Kayak/Hike

Secret Falls (Partial view)

Monk Seal Tanning At Poipu Beach

Sunset at Polihale

Sunset at Polihale

-Taking a 2 week trip to Hawaii as a religious Jew sure is far from easy. My dear wife spent a good couple days making all of the food for the trip in advance. We then froze the food to get it to be rock hard.

-I did my share as well as well-arranging every trip detail and constantly being on the lookout for Continental First class and BusinessFirst seats to Hawaii (Only fair after my wife slaved over a stove for that long!). It paid off-each of our flights were confirmed in First or BusinessFirst. I locked in the 75K mileage rate before it went up to 80K in October. I love that Continental now gives free date and routing changes on award tickets! It makes planning mileage tickets so much easier!

-Forum member agug was extremely kind and hooked me up with a free room at the Sheraton at the Cleveland airport (Starwood Category 2).  With the mercury clocking in at 10 degrees on Thursday night we were able to leave the food in a suitcase in the car without worry. By staying at the airport we were able to roll out of bed at 5am and get right onto the 6am flight.

-Continental’s BusinessFirst on the Houston-Honolulu leg was great.  It’s not lie-flat (although it will be within a couple years), but it’s probably as good as it gets for flights to Hawaii.  A nice luxuriously wide seat, with plenty of legroom, a footrest, and a personal LCD.  We got a kosher lunch and pre-arrival snack.  Neither were great, although the chocolate mousse dessert was quite good-it was so rich I was able to make it last for hours!  The flight attendants were excellent, some of the best I’ve ever had!

-Anyone even thinking about going to Hawaii must read the “Revealed” series of guidebooks. These are guidebooks like you’ve never seen before.  They are funny, easy to read, detailed, full of great tips, and unbiased straight-talk reviews.  It would be criminal to visit any Hawaiian Island without the appropriate book!  I only wish the author would create more books like this for other places!

-We’re staying at the absolutely gorgeous Westin Moana Surfrider in Honolulu for 2 nights.  One night was with my Platinum free weekend night, the other with a Starwood category 5 free night redemption. They TOTALLY hooked us up! A 17th floor corner suite complete with 2 large oceanfront balconies, a massive living room that has a dining room table, an empty fridge and pantry, a murphy bed in the wall, a couch, chairs for 7, a flat-screen, and a work desk.  The bathroom is all marble and the toilet, um, I’ll let you see it for yourself but I haven’t seen one of those since I was in Japan!  The hotel also sent up a fantastic fruit tray and 4 bottles of water.

-Parking at the hotel is a confiscatory $33/day.  I found $15 parking across the street.  No-brainer there.

-The food arrived in Honolulu frozen solid.  We took out the food we needed until Sunday and sent the rest of the suitcase of food to the hotel freezer.

-While the hotel is great and I’d highly recommend it, it’s far from ideal for sabbath observing Jews. The stairs have sensors that turn on the lights when you enter the stairwell which meant we’d be spending Shabbos in the room.  Mind you, this room was not a bad room to be stuck in!  The air conditioning unit turns off when you open the balcony, but I got an engineer to override that “feature” (he said the sensors for the stairs were not able to be turned off).  The toilet had to unplugged-good thing we noticed it before shabbos or it would’ve been quite unpleasant!

-The Whole Foods in Honolulu has tons of great kosher food, but prices are 10%-50% higher than on the mainland.  Regular grocery store prices can be 25%-80% higher than the mainland, but buying things on sale with a Safeway discount card helps.  Costco’s prices on the other hand are pretty much in line with the mainland and is a great place to stock up.

-My opinion is that Oahu is too overcrowded and touristy.  While there are nice places and fun things to do on the island, the other islands just offer so much more that there is no compelling reason to spend more than a couple days in Oahu.  There’s relatively little of the awesome greenery, hiking, active volcanoes, and serene waterfalls that the other islands offer.

Previously on Oahu I’ve done the following activities (5/5 = must do , 0/5= don’t bother):

-Jet-skied insane waves near the Banzai Pipeline (Now this was exhilarating!): 4/5

-Kayaked to a “sunken island” (So cool to be able to walk in the ocean after kayaking for an hour): 3.5/5

-Walking down the Waikiki Boardwalk, checking out the stores and people (and a lot of them sure are interesting): 3.5/5

-Snorkeled Hanauma Bay (More exciting snorkeling is free on other islands): 3.5/5

-Watch surfers battle 15 foot waves at Banzai (Worth a stop during the winter if you’re at the north shore): 3/5

-Driven the H3 (Some of the best scenery on Oahu): 3/5

-Hiked to Manoa Falls (Pretty falls, nicer ones on other islands that are easier to get to): 2.5/5

-Climbed Diamond Head mountain (Nice view, but not much nicer than a Ocean view room balcony!: 2/5

-Visited Pearl Harbor (I’m pretty sure I was the only non-Japanese person there…weird): 2/5

-Visited the Dole Plantation (Cute store, with great kosher Hawaiian microwavable kettle corn, but not much else worth spending the money on).: 1/5

-Anyway now we’re off to my personal favorite, the Island of Kauai!

The flight attendant even offered to take our pic!

Kosher Lunch (appetizer and dessert)

Kosher Lunch (entrée)

Kosher snack

Partial view of living room

Partial view of bathroom

Toilet controls…

Living room balcony

Hotel fruit tray

Getting ready for Shabbos

View from the balcony

View from the balcony, from left, Sheraton Waikiki (Starwood Cat. 5), Royal Hawaiian (Starwood Cat. 6), and Outrigger Waikiki.

-Agree/Disagree with any of my opinions? Let’s hear it in the comments!

I’m posting from my favorite Presidents Club, the behemoth in Houston’s Terminal E.  3 floors of privacy and showers with clothes pressing closets!  Although the Cleveland club this morning did have a better selection of kosher cereal and fruit (I picked up a nice stash of my new favorite honey nut chex).

The total miles required for Cleveland-Houston-Oahu (Stopover-2 nights)-Kauai (Stopover- 7 nights)-Maui (Stopover-4 nights)-Oahu-Newark (Stopover-2 nights)-Cleveland in international BusinessFirst Class was 85,000 miles.

It’s hard to explain the appeal of Hawaii to someone that’s never seen it, but I fell in love with it back in 2006 during a mistake fare when I went for $85 for airfare with lodging.  It just feels like paradise!  Like a place you always dreamed of but never knew existed…I’ve been back every year since then!

Honolulu and Oahu can be skipped entirely without missing much, but the other islands are just incredible.  Unfortunately arriving some 4 hours before shabbos means a weekend stay in Oahu.

Plus your cell phone works just like from home, and you don’t need to change money or clear customs!

Expect full trip notes with this trip and I’ll keep on posting the deals as well as time permits!

Related: “On A Mileage Run”

Quick thoughts from the trip…

-Total time from take off until landing: 50 hours (16 hours flying, 34 hours in LA) It’s actually kind’ve fun running around town on a quick mini-trip.

-Actual miles flown were 5,216, redeemable miles earned were 8,100, and elite miles earned were 10,500.

-Our Continental elite status is now safe through 02/28/11. Sure I have 2 million miler lifetime platinum status on AA, but they are the only ones to still charge their elites for upgrades…

-Airport Clubs visited: 4. (Continental in Newark and Houston, United in Orange County, USAirways in Pittsburgh)
There’s really nothing quite like taking a nice hot shower in Newark after an overnight transcontinental flight, it’s amazingly refreshing! Don’t forget to ask them for any amenities that you need (Toothpaste, toothbrush, comb, deodorant, etc.)

-Rental cars from Orange County are cheap-just $18/day!

-Thanks G-d the I-405 now has carpool lanes running all the way from Orange County airport to LA…even on Sunday the traffic for the regular lanes was insane!

-LA restaurants hit up: La Gondola (Avacado Eggrolls with cilantro sauce, “Chai” Steak with caramelized onion sauce, molten chocolate/cinnamon cake with ice cream), Milk & Honey (Eggplant Parmesan), and Jeff’s (Steak sandwich and homemade onion rings). And no trip to LA is complete without some cake donuts from Elite Cafe and crumb cheese danishes and caramel cake from Schwartz bakery! Calories don’t count when you travel, right?

-The Grove and its equally nice new sister property in Glendale, The Americana at Brand, have launched a loyalty program. Details were scarce, but apparently you will earn Hilton points among other benefits like free valet parking, based on purchases from stores in those “lifestyle malls.” It’s nice to see malls joining in on loyalty rewards…if only they were partnered with an airline or hotel program whose points were actually worth something!

-”Up In The Air” is being advertised on every other block in LA and has quite the buzz. People who want to know more can read Randy Peterson’s nice review of it from a frequent flyer’s perspective.

Sure George Clooney’s character has top-tier super-secret AA status and is always in first class. But what’s with his weak hotel and car rental status’? Hertz giving him Chryslers? Regular small hotel rooms from Hilton? The man needs to get Avis Chairman’s status and Starwood Platinum or Hyatt Diamond status pronto. If I can get those so can he! Hertz and Hilton overpaid for their product placements here.

-Thanks to Ryan and Anit for the digs in LA for the night!

Posting from the United Red Carpet Club in Orange County, CA…

So my wife and I took off this morning on a last-minute ticket for a mileage run!  Continental had a fare from Pittsburgh to Orange County, CA for just $150 round-trip and we went with it!  Now a traditional mileage run is when you make tons of stops and gain elite status and miles without even leaving the airport.

The only true mileage run that I’ve ever done was a 14 flight marathon in 36 hours back in 2006 during an insane AA promo.

We’re doing a more modified version, staying overnight in LA and making one stop in Houston on the way to Orange County and a stop in Newark on the return.  Total elite miles for the trip will be 10,500 and redeemable miles are 8,300.  Plus we’ll both extend our lowly Silver elite status on Continental through 02/28/11.

Now before you say that I’m insane and that Silver doesn’t get you anywhere near what Gold or Platinum elite status does, it still gets you:

-Bonus miles on every flight

-500 mile minimum flight segment earning

-Reduced award fees

-Priority phone number

-Priority check-in, security, and boarding lines.

-Priority baggage handling.

-Priority standby and reward waitlisting.

- 2 free bags for everyone traveling with you

-Free first class upgrades (after Golds and Plats)

-Much better award ticket availability for saver award tickets and last seat availability for standard award tickets.

Plus besides for the elite benefits the redeemable miles earned from the trip are worth the cost of the trip, so it made sense in my book!

Ever did a mileage run?  Considering one before the 12/31 deadline? Hit the comments!

-Before I start rambling, I have to give credit to the Torontonian Dansdeals readers for their 67 (!) responses to my query about what to do in Toronto. Very impressive!

-I was in Toronto for my brother-in-law’s wedding and got 2 room suites at the Crowne Plaza Toronto Airport for hotel rooms for the entire party flying into Toronto. The web rate for each suite was about $300/night with tax. I was able to book 9 suites for a total of 26 nights for just $780 total with all taxes! They were all booked via Pointbreaks. You can read about booking PointBreaks hotels for $30/night in the 3rd installment of my Israel trip notes. Not surprisingly when I went back to the site the next day the hotel had been pulled from the pointbreaks list…boy they must have been peeved when they saw that many suites booked up for $30/night!

-Some of the hotel rooms were renovated and some were not.  The renovated rooms were very nice with 2 LCD’s and plenty of sitting and working room, see the end of this post for some pics!

-Clearing the Canadian Customs line upon arrival into the Toronto airport was a mess with 30 lines of people all 25 people deep…not fun.  Especially not fun when you get stuck just behind a family that doesn’t speak any English.  You clear US customs when you depart the Toronto airport and it was much more efficient with a single line of people.  Clearly the Americans have studied queueing theory. US: 1, Canada: 0.

-Apparently there’s a new heavy-handed eco-law requiring all retailers to charge a nickel for each bag that you need. It’s incredibly annoying, especially when you already pay for the items by credit card, and then the store remembers that they need to collect the nickel but it needs to be in cash, which means I need to break a US bill to receive Canadian change back…US: 2, Canada: 0.

-In that post with 67 comments of what to do in Toronto there must’ve been 66 of food stuff and 1 activity. And there was no way that I was going to part with $30-$40 to go up the CN tower.
As I’m a hopeless foodie the comments suited me just fine.   Here are some of my thoughts on the Toronto kosher food scene.

-The food at the BAYT for the wedding was indeed quite nice.  The attitude of the staff on the other hand left much to be desired.  They were too quick to take food away, would typically ignore any requests made at the table, and actually physically stopped me from taking a chocolate lemon tart from the dessert cart “too early” and made me put it back on the tray after I had taken it! Shockingly bad service!

Other kosher eatery notes:

-A few commenters mentioned the Sushi “Pizza” at D-lite’s which sure enough turned out to be a crowd pleaser.  Their french onion soup is served in a bread bowl and the soup itself loaded with onions, croutons, and cheese was delicious.  The bread bowl itself was actually still partially frozen though and was disappointing.

-What’s the difference between a kosher Prime Rib steak sandwich ($16.95) and a kosher Philly Steak Sandwich ($14.95)? Absolutely nothing at Miami Grill except the Prime Rib sandwich comes with fries! I got a kick out of that after my sister-in-law and I wound up with the exact same sandwich…it was however a very good steak sandwich!

-The kosher Second Cup location on Clark is not all cholov yisroel but was very proud of having the only cholov yisroel “icepresso” machine in the world (or so they claimed). Little good it did for me as the machine was awaiting repairs when I came to try it out.

-The kosher Sobey’s Supermarket is great-tons of fresh made kosher food and hard to find items-it’s the first time I’ve seen the cholov yisroel Nestle Dibs chocolate covered vanilla flavor! Picked up some stuff that’s only kosher parve in Canada like the original Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix, the all-dressed flavor of Ruffles chips (good recommendation!), and some cereal like French Toast Crunch, and a few flavors of Quaker cereal. I’m sure I missed plenty more though…

-The cholov yisroel location of It’s Not Just Yogurt was fun with lots of flavors and tons of toppings. The Oreo flavor was delicious, the strawberry not so much-it had that fake “Israeli style” strawberry flavoring.

-Chocolate Charm’s cholov yisroel chocolates were excellent, they even give you a cute little guide to remember the flavors of each chocolate. I just wish that they made more flavors! And is it just me, or does their logo and name seem like something that belongs in Hogsmeade?

-One of my favorite places was Omni Java and Jewels which is also all cholov yisroel. It’s a cute place with a jewelry store and restaurant all in one. Their Caramel Cheesecake was absolutely incredible, and the white-chocolate cheesecake was a close second. Also when I asked for a drink recommendation the waitress suggested her personal favorite, an “off-the-menu” cold drink that was some sort of Mocha Frappuchino with Caramel, which was divine!

Bakeries:
So many of the comments mentioned different danishes, so understandably I had to try them all out for my dear readers!

-Richman’s: From the comments, “Richman’s Bakery – double chocolate danish. An absolute must. You really can’t miss it. I have my mother send them to me in Yerushalayim at every opportunity”
With a recommendation like that how could I pass it up? Unfortunately when I went there at 10 in the morning they were already sold out! I settled on a “Chocolate Buffalo.” It was not very good.

-Amazing Donuts: I remember as a kid loving the cake donuts from this place so naturally I had to go back and try one out after a few readers mentioned it. But this place, like many others in Toronto apparently, have gone nut-free which means no cake donuts! What a disappointment! With incredible regular style donuts back home in Cleveland at Unger’s (no regular style donut can touch their cinnamon version!) there didn’t seem to be a need to sample these.

-Grodzinksi: From the comments: “Be sure to go to Grozinsky’s bakery on Bathurst and get a cinnamon danish – they are out of this world!!!”
Perhaps a slight exaggeration, but they were quite good, as was the chocolate danish, but the cheese danish was nothing special. Their cookies are so cute that I couldn’t help but bring back a handful.

-Hermes: From the comments: “Stop at Hermes for their one of a kind chesse danishes!!” They were quite good, but I’m not sure I’d call them one of a kind.

-I never did make it to Mac’s for a slurpee, so did I really miss something there?

-As for the commenter who suggested, “A Farbrengen with Rabbi Wagner at the Yeshiva 3055 Bathurst St.!!!” well I got to attend a sheva brocha at his house, so I think I can count this done as well!

-There were quite a few heated Montreal Vs. Toronto comments, I did find Montreal to be a cooler city to explore, but I was impressed with the extent of the Toronto kosher food scene.

-I still can’t believe the horrible gate area that Continental occupies in Toronto…here’s hoping they move in with their new Star Alliance buddies soon!

Anyway I had to leave Toronto after all that lest I hear one more Canadian accented “Eh”

Cookies from Grodzinksi’s

Clockwise from top left: Chocolate buffalo from Richman’s, Chocolate Danish from Grodzinksi’s, Cinnamon Danish from Grodzinksi’s, Cheese Danish from Hermes, Cheese Danish from Grodzinksi’s.

Chocolate Charm!

Crown Plaza Room Pictures

Related Posts:
4th Anniversary Post Linky
3rd Anniversary Post Linky
2nd Anniversary Post Linky
1st Anniversary Post Linky

It seems hard to believe, but this site is now 5 years old! Seems like just yesterday when I was down in Brazil and decided to stay connected by starting a little blog for friends and family and now some 10,000 people a day come to check it out!

And yes, together with the site’s birthday comes my own…I’ve now been around for quarter of a century!  Best thing about turning 25? Cheaper car rentals!

It’s a been a great year, and a fun challenge to keep the site updated while flying across the world…A month at 4 Hawaiian Islands (I’ve been a hopeless Hawaii addict ever since the $87 inclusive deal of 2006), 2 weeks in Israel, 3 trips to LA, 2 to KC, 6 to NYC, Toronto, a free trip to Vegas at the beautiful Wynn and Encore…wow that’s a lot of miles burned!  I’ve also enjoyed sharing some of my own thoughts on each place via the “Trip Notes” posts.  (I’ll tag the end of this post with “trip notes” so you can click on it and read other trip notes postings.)

People ask me why I like traveling so much…it’s quite simple!  I fly everywhere for free with my miles.  Most of my flights are in First class and trust me, flying in a lie-flat bed to Israel makes you just wish the flight was longer!  When I travel I carry around enough “wallet candy” to make sure that I never have to wait in a line and that I always have access to an airport lounge.  My rental cars are Infiniti’s, Camaro’s and Caddy’s for the price of compact cars.  I get upgraded to fabulous suites that I didn’t pay a cent for.  What could be better?  I hope that by following the site religiously and participating in the dansdeals forums that you too can have as much fun as I have doing this!  It’s really not so hard…just start by churning some credit cards!

Anyway there have been a ton of incredible deals this past year.  My favorites have been the US mint coins (hauling in a quarter million in coins is great exercise!) and all of the Hyatt deals, free top-tier diamond status, a free Hyatt night that came with the diamond status (which also counted towards faster free nights), and then the stay twice at any Hyatt and get 14,000 miles+6,000 points+1 free night in any Hyatt.  Now I just need to figure out what to do with the  350K miles and 22 faster free nights that I got from that promo!

But there were lots of other amazing deals over the past year…let’s hear what your favorite was!

P.S. Stay tuned for the winners of the Dansdeals.com 5th Anniversary promotion…the raffle will take place by 11/30!

So I’m in Toronto (my first time arriving by plane, which makes it my 56th airport that I’ve flown to/from as you can see in our airport competition thread over at the dansdeals forums) until Wednesday.

Any reader tips for what activities are not to be missed or which kosher restaurants/bakeries to hit up?  Which kosher food can be bought here that can’t be had in the states?

Hit the comments and let’s hear about ‘em!

Just grabbing a bite to eat at the Continental President’s Club in LGA (for all its problems it has the best cereal selection of any club I’ve been to) after my 3rd flight leg out of 16 (!) until the end of the year and will be in NYC for the weekend and then in Toronto until Wednesday.  Updates may be sporadic especially while north of the border.

I was the apparently the only elite flyer on the flight who paid for coach as I got the only elite upgrade on the flight and no other elites were on the upgrade standby list and the flight went out with empty first class seats.  Gotta love the transparency that Continental offers via their PDA site! Incidentally (for those of you now checking out my seat assignment on the PDA site) 1B is truly a great first class seat on the 737-500 series. It’s a bulkhead but it has a great cutout for your feet and hand luggage.

Another cool service that I just learned about 3 minutes ago: faxzero.com I’ve always wondered how to print things at the club and this is the answer-fax it for free to the self-service fax machine!

More thoughts/trip notes from 31,000 feet in the sky…thanks for the free wi-fi Airtran and gogo!

-This was my 5th trip to NYC this year of 1 night or less…which is fine because that’s about when my NYC tolerance level runs out.  (My trip back to NYC next week will actually be for a weekend-2 whole nights!)

-I’m flying in business class.  Airtran gave myself, my wife, and my mother comp upgrades due to my elite status!  The business class really is quite nice for an LCC.  Lots of legroom, wide leather seats, tons of great free drinks and even non-alcoholic drinks like Fuze, Smartwater, Vitamin water, etc.  And the flight attendant has already refilled my Fresca three times without asking!   There is also a free snack basket that has T.G.I. Friday salt and cracked pepper chips under OK parve supervision that I’ve never seen sold in any stores.

-Avis hooked me up with a nice Caddy for the trip…at $30/day, market rates for gas, and valet return service it’s hard to go wrong! Gotta love Avis Chairman status!

-Clubhouse Cafe on 46th street in the city is simply awesome.  The fries are crisp to perfection.  The Brazilian drinks are great as well.  Their Caipirinha (pronounced Ca’eye-pa-rinya) is great! My recommendation? An off the menu option that’s popular in Brazil, A Caipirinha de Maracujá, or Caipirinha made with passion fruit.  It might be an acquired taste after a year in Brazil, but it tasted great to me. Plus when I go there I get to brush up on my Portuguese with all of the Brazilian employees…

-I used my free Diamond Hyatt Place night in Secaucus, NJ.  Typical great Hyatt Place!  Every room is a mini-suite with a pull-out couch, semi-room divider, 42″ LCD, emtpy fridge, nice work desk, free wi-fi, and a great free breakfast with Tazo teas, Seattle’s best coffee, Quaker oatmeal, cereal boxes, fruit, etc.  It’s not too far away, and there’s some great shopping nearby.  The rumor mill is that there will soon be some more Hyatt Place properties in Manhattan.

-I was able to use the United Red Carpet Club (RCC) in LGA for the first time thanks to Continental’s switch to the Star Alliance. Here’s a quick comparison.

Pros: It’s much newer and way nicer looking than the dreary Continental President’s Club (PC) in LGA (easily the worst looking PC I’ve ever been in, but then again LGA has some of the worst terminals that I’ve ever been in so it still beats that).  There are also self-service cans of soda available, which is better than having to ask for soda from the bartender at the PC

Cons: The RCC charge $$$ for all alcoholic drinks (Free in PC’s).  They do not allow you to take newspapers/magazines from the club like the PC does. Their is no ice water dispenser like that have in PC’s, you must request water from the bar.  There were no kosher snacks besides for apples. (PC’s will often have granola bars, chips, bananas, apples, and cereal boxes.  They even had matzah and other kosher snacks on Passover!)

So the RCC has much better facilities but worse services…tough choice!

Ding…they want me to turn off my computer, the FA just announced to please put our seats up to the upright and most uncomfortable position…how true it that!  I better just publish this before the wi-fi gets turned off…

Hope you enjoyed this mini-trip report!

-

Some thoughts from 31,000 feet in the sky…

-If GoGo’s plan to give away free wi-fi is to entice people to pay for the service in the future I have to say that it’s working at least on me. Flights have never gone by so fast before!

-I’m posting now aboard Airtran from Akron to LaGuardia for the first of 2 NYC trips within the next 2 weeks.
It’s the first time this year that I wasn’t able to land a complimentary elite business class upgrade as the flight was oversold. I had forgotten just how tight the seat pitch is on Airtran’s B717, a miserly 30 inches!

-Both of the following free wi-fi codes still work like a charm on Airtran:
airtrantrygogo
bosbwi

-Some 30% of the passengers on this flight are Orthodox Jews. The Blue Fringe band is sitting just behind me and I’ve seen more than a dozen people that I know from the local Jewish community. I wonder how long it will be before Airtran starts selling kosher meals on this flight

-It’s incredible how Continental has ceded the Cleveland-NYC market to Airtran. Granted that Akron is a less convenient airport for most people, but this round-trip flight cost just $89. The identical flight on Continental within just a 1 night stay was over $800! Seems like it’s worth the extra 15 minute drive.  Mind you that you can always fly back one way  from NYC to Cleveland on Continental for about $60, but that requires hidden-city ticketing which is officially against the terms of most airlines and you wouldn’t be able to check luggage…

-Yes, the Bose QC15′s really are that much better than the previous generation QC2′s at noise cancellation…Wow!

I didn’t think I would really care to stay connected while flying, but it really is quite nice and a great way to pass the time.

I’m posting from 28,000 feet in the air on an Airtran flight (free upgrade on a $29 coach ticket to business class, of course) from Akron, OH to LaGuardia.

I was able to connect to the Go-Go internet on the ground, but it only started working once the flight passed 10,000 feet.

The speeds are slightly slower than the last Airtran flight that I was on, it’s running at about 1 mbps down and 350 kbps up.

At a regular price of $9.95 I’m not sure who would pay for 45 minutes of slowish wi-fi, but as long as GoGo keeps on giving it out for free then I’ll keep on using it!

The following 2 codes worked for free access:

airtrantrygogo

bosbwi

Codes are specific for the airline you are on, as aatrygogo and deltatrygogo did not work on Airtran, but do work on American and Delta respectively.

Anyway I’m off to my newest (twin!) cousin’s bris and to buy an esrog set for the holidays and and then flying right back home to Cleveland tomorrow night!

Related:
Update #1
Update #2

Thanks to Amigo for being the official sponsor of Dansdeals.com updates while I’m in Israel! I’m using their USB Modem now to update the site. The card runs on Orange’s HSDPA network and the speeds (about 2 Mbps download and 300 Kbps upload) are great for a wireless card. It has worked flawlessly everywhere in Israel where I have tried to use it and it is invaluably useful!

I almost exclusively use my miles for Business or First class tickets. A coach ticket from the US to Israel on continental is 45K miles each way, but can be purchased for about $600 each way, which means that you’re only getting a value of 1.33 cents per mile. A BusinessFirst ticket though can cost $2,500 each way giving you a value of 4.17 cents per mile.

But what to do when there are no BusinessFirst seats for the dates they you need? Well I got our seats into BusinessFirst just days before departure…

Continental’s Plan B for a BusinessFirst award works surprisingly well once you find an agent who knows about it. Credit goes to FT for the details.
It works like this: If there is a saverpass coach award seat you can call up the international reward desk and ask for a BusinessFirst ticket but be seated in coach and placed on a waitlist for a BusinessFirst seat. For EWR-TLV your account will be debited 57,500 miles for each way.
You will either clear the waitlist into BusinessFirst no later than 24 hours before the flight or the waitlist will expire. If at 24 hours before the flight you still don’t have a BusinessFirst seat then at the airport you have to find an International Concierge or other knowlegdable looking agent and tell them that you are a displaced BusinessFirst customer. If they have no idea what you are talking about tell them to look up “gg onestandby” and review lines 85-89 which spell out the details of this reward. (This is reminiscent of “gg checkpoint line 53″ which you have to reference to show agents how to give you a security pass for you and your guests to access post-security Presidents Club’s if you aren’t flying.) If they need to verify that you have a BusinessFirst reward have them call up the reward desk.
Still not able to get a seat in BusinessFirst? Just call up the reward desk after the flight and they’ll give you a refund of the difference between the standard coach award and the standard BusinessFirst award.

At any rate the flight was very nice. When I flew to Israel 2 years ago in BusinessFirst Continental still had the old video system that cycled through a few movies. The new large touch-screen AVOD system allows to choose from hundreds of movies, TV shows, games, and music. You can pause, fast-forward, and rewind as you please.
For dinner the people who ordered kosher meals got:
-An appetizer bowl of nuts, craisins, and sunflower seeds.
-A first course of a roll and a fish salad.
-A choice of your own personal bottle of kosher red wine or Chardonnay (or both!)
-A main course option of fish or chicken with another roll, fruit, and a chocolate fudge cake.
The kosher Breakfast was cheese blintzes, a roll, J&J reduced fat cream cheese, norman fat free fruit yogurt, a fruit bowl, and a cheese plate.

The seats recline at a 170 degree angle which is fine for sleeping. Continental’s new lie-flat BusinessFirst seats are slated to begin being installed in September.

Immigration at TLV was shockingly easy, we weren’t even asked a single question!

I turned down an upgrade at Budget for a Hyundai I3 hatchback in favor of the Mazda 3. I’m not sure how every rental car company is Israel gets away with making Liability insurance mandatory. By having a World Mastercard they let you decline the CDW coverage, but even if your personal car insurance covers liability they still force you to take their own liability coverage at $14/day, which effectively doubled the rate.

Israeli GPS systems are very hard to use on the english settings. There are so many ways to spell a city and street name that it is very hard to find what you need. Zefat, Zfat, Tsfat, Tzfat, Safed…every city and street probably has half a dozen ways to spell it and only one will work in the GPS. Nevertheless once you find the place you want to go they do an amazing job at navigating, probably better then an American GPS.

When I was looking for hotels for a base in the North I was shocked at the pricing. I know it’s high season and all, but the going rate was about $250/night. There are no Hilton or Starwood hotels any more in the North so I found a Holiday Inn in Tiberias which is part of the Priority Club program.
The paid rate was $250/night and it costs 15,000 PC points/night to stay there. Priority Club normally sells its points at 1.15-1.35 cents per point, so buying them directly from Priority Club wouldn’t yield much of savings. AMEX MR points transfer to PC at a 1:1 basis and Diners club points transfer at a 1:1.25 basis but that would still be a lot of points to transfer for a Holiday Inn.

The solution is Priority Club’s new cash and points redemption option. With the option you can redeem 5,000 points + $60 for a hotel room. Unlike with Starwood’s cash and points option though what actually occurs is that the $60 buys you the remaining 10,000 points that you would need for the 15,000 point Holiday Inn award. If you can the room you will therefore get a refund of 15,000 points! In effect you are thus able to purchase PC points at 0.6 cents per point by using the cash and points workaround. 15,000 points at 0.6 cents per point would make the Holiday Inn Tiberias $90/night which I reserved.

When I went back to the Priority Club’s website the next week I saw that the Holiday Inn Tiberias was on a PointBreaks special of just 5,000 points/night. So I canceled my previous reservation and rebooked for 5,000 points, or just $30/night!

The hotel is located about 1 mile south of the downtown midrachov, so it’s in a much quieter area than the former Sheraton Tiberias which was right on the noisy midrachov. Upon check-in I was given the option of staying in the Golan wing or the Kinneret wing. The Golan wing room was tiny with barely enough room the bad and a bathroom. The Kinneret wing room was much nicer and bigger with a nice entry-room, decent sized bathroom, a couch, a desk, and even a balcony! There was a box of delicious (kosher lamehadrin) chocolate chip cookies, 2 small bottles of red wine, and 2 bottles of water waiting in the room for us.

I’m holding a few days after this, but that’s all I have time for now, I’ve still got a lot to talk about like using gizmo5, Amigo’s push to talk service, and a report on the brand new Mamilla Jerusalem hotel.  Feel free to post comments with your own thoughts and anything I can do to make these trip reports most helpful!

I’m posting from a nice comfy couch at the Continental Presidents club in Newark, where it’s T-90 minutes until our flight to Israel.

The main Presidents club in Concourse C here is very nice and roomy, and is 2nd only to the expansive 3 floor lounge in Houston terminal E.

I realized that I may have some issues upon entering the Presidents club when I saw that I had 4 potential ways to enter the club for free: My Amex Plat charge card, my Presidential Plus Mastercard, my lifetime PC membership, and my BusinessFirst boarding passes…

It’s hard to explain the exact appeal of the club to someone who’s never visited one, but it definitely improves the entire travel experience.  This morning I had breakfast (Honey nut chex, bananas, and a granola bar) at the Cleveland lounge and now I’m filling up my water bottles with ice cold water for my flight.  Wi-Fi and Alcoholic drinks are all complementary.

The showers here are nothing spectacular but are very nice to have after a long trip.  The shower attendant will even press your clothes and give you a BusinessFirst amenity kit regardless of whether you are flying or not just for the asking!

For those who were asked from my last trip report, on my Airtran flight Skype and Gizmo5 were not blocked, however after placing a call it was only clear for the first 5 seconds, after that all that was heard was digital musical notes.  Go-Go is definitely using some sort of blocking system so as to not allow VOIP.  In addition the system only works when you get above 10,000 feet, it won’t work at the gate.

Here’s my trip outline:

-Renting a Mazda 3 from Budget for 2 weeks for $240 with a corporate rate.

08/24: Continental 84 EWR-TLV: BusinessFirst class.

08/25-08/28: Holiday Inn Tiberias (Normally $250/night, paid $30 a night-more on that in the next report1)

08/28-08/30: TBD. (Kfar Chabad or Jerusalem)

08/30-09/01: Mamilla Hotel, Jerusalem (Normally $300/night, paid 5,000 SPG/night)

09/01-09/07: King Solomon, Jerusalem

09/07: Delta 153 TLV-ATL: BusinessElite class lie-flat seats on the new 777-LR aircraft.

Yikes-Time to head to the gate for the secondary TLV screening…catch ya from the holy land!

Note: As this site has always been about travel and deals I’m going to try and incorporate both aspects as I post trip reports from the road.  Regular deals will still be posted so if you don’t like the trip reports-just skip ‘em!

I’d like to thank Amigo-US for making possible and being the official sponsor of the updating of Dansdeals.com while I’ll be in Israel!

Right now I’m posting from 30,000 feet in the air aboard Airtran flight #201 from Akron, OH to LaGuardia.

Airtran has GoGo wi-fi on all of their planes and it’s free through 08/31 with code: 159FLT3161

You have to first create an account and then select the $9.95 flight access in order to be able to enter in the code for free access.

Speeds are decent, about 2 Mbps download and 350 Kbps upload.  I can’t say that I would ever spend $10 for internet access on a 1 hour flight, but I’ll sure use it when it’s free!

With my Airtran Elite status my wife Mimi and I both received complementary battlefield upgrades to business class at 20 minutes prior to departure due to some no-shows.  There were half a dozen folks that requested to purchase upgrades after I had requested my elite upgrades, so kudos to the gate agent for not selling them out from under my feet! In the upgrade world a battlefield upgrade is any upgrade that does not clear in advance, and has to be cleared by a gate agent.

XM radio is free on all Airtran flights, but there’s nothing that I really want to listed to at this time of the morning.  It would be nice to have though when flying during a ballgame! There is a nice selection of free premium drinks (non-alcoholic and alcoholic) in business class and there even a few kosher parve snacks like kettle chips and granola bars that are most appreciated.

We leave to Israel on Continental flight 84 next Sunday! It’s been 2 years since I was last there, so I can’t wait!

Know any great activities anywhere in Israel that you’d like to share?  Have something you’d like me to write about from Israel? Post ‘em here in a comment!

Our very own dansdeals.com forum administrator (Eli) and moderator (Levi), went on an incredible trip to Hong Kong, Macau, Beijing, Tokyo, Oahu, and Maui.

Eli has graciously typed up an incredibly detailed report of the entire trip with great advice and ideas and posted it on the trip reports board of the Dansdeals forums.

He was even able to use the free wi-fi on AA deal to submit the report from 35,000 feet!

They used one of my favorite awards, the AA OneWorld award, to book the trip in business class.

With that award, instead of using miles to fly to a single place for a set amount of miles (for example a business class ticket to Israel would be 135K miles) you book multiple flights and add up the total flown miles to determine the zone and its cost.  You could fly to Israel using a Zone 5 OneWorld award for just 115,000 miles in business class.

There are a few catches with OneWorld awards:
-You must fly on at least 2 OneWorld carriers (and AA can not count as one of the 2)
-You can’t have more than 16 flight segments.
-You can only have a stopover once in each city.
-You can only connect in the same city twice.
-You can’t stopover or connect in the city where travel originated.

With just under 20,000 flown miles, they were able to squeeze into a Zone 6 award which costs 130,000 miles in Business class.  Nicely done!


Want to make your own OneWorld award? Churn the Citi AA card or Get a Starwood AMEX and start spending! 20,000 Starwood Points becomes 25,000 AA Miles with Starwood’s 25% airline transfer bonus.

I spent the day today with my dear wife at the Cavs-Pistons game at the Palace of Auburn Hills where the Cavs finished their 1st round playoff sweep of the Detroit Pistons. (12 more wins to go for Cleveland’s first championship in 45 years!)

The coolest part?

The place was packed full of excited Cavs fans! Cavs’ play by play announcer Joe Tait even said that in his 39 years of calling basketball that he had never seen an opponent’s arena so full of fans of the visiting team! The “Lets Go Cavs” and “MVP” cheers easily drowned out any “Lets go Dee-troit” attempts… According to ESPN Joe Tait even joked that “It’s great to be in Cleveland” and the Pistons’ Antonio McDyess said about the Cavs turnout and chants that “It was just embarrassing.” How awesome is that???

The mood after the game all around the arena was breathtakingly celebratory, it’s truly hard to describe the scene, but it was basically a road game with ecstatic Cleveland fans and Ohio license plates everywhere you looked.

It was well worth the 3 hour weekend drive to experience.

Even Sarah’s Deli, a sweet little Detroit kosher restaurant, had at least 4 tables full of Cavs fans by the time I got there. If you find yourself there, ask for a Bubba Burger with Pastrami (A burger with 3 slices of hamburger buns and excellent breaded onions with bbq sauce) together with their famous ranch dressing, it’s truly outstanding.

I’ll be back in Cleveland tomorrow evening, but do any readers have any good Detroit tips for the daytime? Any good kosher groceries to pick up in Canada in case we take the bridge to Windsor? Post ‘em now!

Related posts:
-Up For Grabs: Panoramic View Suite At The Encore Resort By Wynn In Las Vegas!
-On The Road: The Upgrade Dilemma Edition…
-SIZZLING FOR AMEX PLATINUM CARDHOLDERS!!!!!! 2 FREE NIGHTS AT THE WYNN AND ENCORE HOTELS IN LAS VEGAS!!! (Still Alive!)
-Starwood AMEX Linky
-Platinum AMEX Linky

Here is a collection of random thoughts and advice from my recent trip. I’d appreciate feedback in the comments to see if this type of report is worthwhile or not...

Departure: Sunday, 03/15 on Continental flight 757 leaving Cleveland at 8:50pm, arriving in Las Vegas at 10:30pm.

-This may have been the latest east-west coast flight that I’ve ever been on. It’s kind of nice to have a whole day to do stuff before the trip, but when you arrive at your destination you are totally wiped out.

-The sold-out flight was surprisingly light on elites. As of Saturday night Continental had not sold a single first class seat, so all 9 elite members who had tickets on the flight were given complimentary upgrades, leaving 7 open first class seats.

-On Sunday I noticed that Continental had blocked seats in the first class cabin, indicating that coach was oversold and Continental was going to have an op-up situation. An op-up occurs when the airline needs to “bump” people from their coach seat into first class due to too many seats in coach being sold and not enough no-shows in coach. Anticipating this I was waiting at the gate 70 minutes prior to boarding. At 60 minutes when the gate agent arrived I was able to easily land an op-up for my wife just for the asking.

Invaluable tools used: pda.continental.com, seatguru.com and flyaow.com/classamex.htm

-Just as we were about to board the flight the lead flight attendant was knocked unconscious by the errant luggage of a passenger. We were deboarded while 2 ambulances came to take her to the hospital. Continental quickly scrambled for a new flight attendant and the flight took off only 40 minutes late and landed only a few minutes behind schedule.

-The brand new Continental Presidents Club is the nicest non-hub lounge that I’ve ever seen. It is expansive and has a beautiful view of the Vegas skyline.

-I brought along the lonely planet guide for Vegas as well as the lonely planet guide for the incredible looking Zion and Bryce Canyon just in case…

-Renting a one-way car from Avis the airport: $280 with tax.
Renting a one-way car from Avis on the Las Vegas strip: $170 with tax.
Only problem: The strip location wouldn’t open until Monday morning, which meant finding my own way to the hotel on Sunday night.
You definitely want to rent a car in Vegas as there is an abundance of free parking at every hotel, and the good kosher restaurants are over 7 miles away from the Strip, or about an $80 taxi ride round trip!
We wound up with a fully-loaded Saturn Aura with leather seats, which turned out to be a nice mid-size car, perfect considering the amount of miles (over 600!) we put on it in such a short time.

-Supposedly there is some law that the strip hotels can’t provide shuttle service to/from the airport. So that left me with the taxi vs. shuttle debate. The hotel said that a taxi should run about $15, so with the shuttles costing $6.50 per person it seemed like a no-brainer to take a taxi…Until I saw the impossibly long line for the taxi.
I had read in the lonely planet guide that the airport porters have access to skip the taxi line and one even offered his services when we doubled back inside the airport after seeing the taxi line. For a simple $2 tip for our solitary suitcase we skipped the entire taxi line.

-The lonely planet guide warned about taxis fare-gouging by using the airport connector tunnel to the interstate for a longer route. Instead it suggested to tell the taxi to take paradise road. Good luck with that though-our taxi driver refused! At 11:30pm, which was 2:30am as far as my body was concerned. I was too tired to argue with the steadfast taxi driver. The fare wound up being $27.50, and incredibly the guy had the nerve to scream at me for not tipping! How about following directions next time buddy?

-It’s hard to express just how nice the Wynn and Encore resorts are. To get an idea, they cost over $5 Billion (yes, with a B) to to develop. The Wynn opened in 2005 and the Encore just opened a few months ago. They are true masterpieces. The 2 buildings are attached via an ultra-high end shopping mall.

-The Wynn and Encore hotel checkin areas appear to be chronically understaffed at nearly all times. Surprising for such a luxury hotel…

-We started off the trip with 2 nights at the Wynn. The nights were absolutely free! No tax, no nonsense, no nothing!
At check-in I was given a personalized letter thanking me for coming and offering $120 of breakfast credit, $90 of lunch credit, and a 4pm late checkout. I explained that as a religious jew I wouldn’t be able to partake in the food offerings and asked just to trade it for free wi-fi (normally $14/day), which was immediately granted.
As part of the AMEX package we were upgraded to a panoramic view room on the 58th floor, which was quite spectacular!
The room had it all, an amazing view, a coach and workspace, a widescreen HDTV, etc. The bathroom was huge and had 2 sinks, a jacuzzi, a separate shower, and a separate room for the toilet. The robes provided were splendidly luxurious.

-We had no problem checking out of the Wynn and immediately checking in to the Encore. Same deal, except this time I was turned down for the free wi-fi. We were upgraded in the Encore as well to a panoramic view suite on the 55th floor.

-The Encore is brand new and we both preferred the look and decor of the Encore. Also the room layout, with a split bedroom and workspace was nicer at the Encore as well.
I also loved the power panel at the Encore next to the bed. From it you could control the shear drapes, the main drapes, all of the lights in the room, and you could even turn on a privacy light so you aren’t disturbed by housekeeping in the morning. Another nice thing at the Encore was the number of available outlets-at the Wynn those were hard to find!

-There is so much to do (Visit Paris, Venice, NYC, Cairo, and French Polonesia) and free shows (Volcanoes erupting, pirates fighting, fountains dancing, circus acts, Carinival, etc.) to go to in Vegas to keep you occupied for days without betting a dime. And that’s all besides for other sites and side trips like the nearby Red Rock Canyon, Hoover Dam, or even the Grand Canyon and Zion/Bryce.

-If you look around you will find promo offers at every hotel for signing up for their frequent players card. For example we got $20 of free play at the Excalibur just for showing them our Wynn room keys!

-Tix4tonight offers up to half off on dozens of shows. They have multiple locations throughout the strip and it’s definitely worth stopping by before paying retail.

-If you are into gambling it’s worth investing the $0.97 to buy a card like the blackjack basic strategy card, which limits the house advantage to under one half of a percent. The casinos allow you to refer to the card while playing. (If you’re mathematically inclined it is also totally legal and fairly straightforward to count the cards in play to actually give yourself an advantage over the house. Just do it discreetly as it is frowned upon…)

-Kosher restaurants that we went to:
Adar Pizza: Great location, but breathtakingly overpriced. $15 for a calzone? $7 for fries or refried onion rings? $6 for an ice cream?
The kicker? After returning 2 pitchers of water with highly suspicious objects in them we were offered bottled water-and then charged $4 for it!
Once and done.

Panini Grill: About 8 miles from the strip, the food was very good but the service was entirely incompetent.
My wife’s greek salad ($10 was quite good, but I decided on a eggplant parmigiana ($12). What came was literally half of an eggplant, skin attached, with cheese on top. When I asked the waitress where exactly the sauce was, she apologized and brought it back to the kitchen. When they remade the meal the eggplant was still frozen in the middle. At this point they asked if I would just like another meal so I chose one of the ravioli dishes. What came out was entirely different…a plate of spaghetti!
Aurghhh!
Finally they got me the ravioli, which was actually quite nice, and comped us a delicious piece of cake (normally $8). They were friendly and quite apologetic throughout, so I did actually leave a nice tip…

Village Steakhouse: Now this place is a gem!
Service was outstanding, and everything we ordered was made to perfection! One night I got the green peppercorn prime reserve steak and the next night I ordered the orange bbq ribs. Both were absolutely incredible and well worth their ~$40 price tags. The side dishes were even more impressive. The sweet potato fries with maple aioli were out of this world. Best of all a generous portion of them was just $5. The menu was different both of the times we went (both of the entrees I ordered only appeared on one night) which was neat as well. The complimentary bread and dips also changed between the two times that we went. Equally impressive (especially for those who have been to restaurants with me) is that I never reached the bottom of my water glass!
This is also located about 8 miles from the strip.

-On Wednesday I hid the room key to my Encore room in the parking garage in anticipation of giving the room away for that night. Joshua F. was the first confirmed respondent and he had the privilege of playing detective trying to find the hidden room key! Congrats on getting the free night!

-We decided to drive from Las Vegas to Irvine, CA where my wife was to attend a wedding. People there seemed shocked that I would drive. Honestly I can’t understand why. It took about 3:45 to drive the 260 miles at an average speed of about 70mph. In order to fly it would take well more than that to return the car, clear security, fly to LAX/LGB/SNA, rent another car, and drive to Irvine.

-Those Virgin America creative floks weren’t making up the “somewhere over Zzyzx, CA” place in their promo video. We passed by the sign for it on the drive! Double miles if you can pronounce that correctly!

-I took the liberty of slipping out of the wedding in order to go learn with my brother JJ in his yeshiva for an hour before treating him to a “gourmet” meal at Jeff’s gourmet. Mmm now those are good homemade onion rings!

-We stayed in the category 2 Westin LAX for 4,000 Starpoints. The paid rate would have been over $200+tax!
I was upgraded to a terrace suite with 2 rooms and a nice balcony with just clear skies above it. A decent hotel, but it can definitely use better soundproofing!

-We flew back on the red-eye, Continental 634 from LAX-CLE which was a completely sold-out flight. Luckily we were seated in row 14, in which you probably have more leg room than first class, and have the added bonus of being able to recline while the row in front of it has no ability to recline on you!

-Poor timing: With an 11:20pm PDT red-eye return flight, I was on one of the last Continental flights to not qualify for the double elite miles promo ;(

Pictures (Click on thumbnail to expand in a new tab/window):

Wynn Bathroom 1

Wynn Bathroom 2

Wynn Bedroom

Wynn Phone (personalized)

Wynn Room Key (personalized)

Wynn Hotel

Wynn Hallway

View of Encore From Wynn Room

Encore Bathroom

Encore Bedroom 1

Encore Bedroom 2

Encore Entryway

Encore Living Room

Encore Hallway

Sweet Potato Fries At Village Steakhouse