point fu

 ...but only for four hours. Talk about the ultimate tease 😭 I was searching on United.com for points flights to Sydney from New York in August and sorta inadvertently spotted a really good deal in late May flying on one of their Star Alliance partners. Considering that we already have a trip planned for mid-June to meet up in LA from our respective hometowns of NYC and Sydney, I thought, "What if I went out to Sydney early and then flew with Tim on his already-scheduled flight to LA?"  The problem is that I don't have many United points. Nor do I have many Chase Sapphire points to transfer to United. I do, however, have quite a few Amex points, but they're not a transfer partner for United. The flight is actually operated by Amex partner  ANA , but ANA doesn't let you do one-way points redemptions directly . I had some points "marooned" over at Air Canada, so I figured my best bet would be to top off that account with Amex points and book there.  So I

A morning-to-morning flight in a comfortable lie-flat seat with reasonable food and 3 good lounge options in Sydney.  Pros Comfortable lie-flat seat Proper bedding and pajamas Cabin wasn't too hot Decent food 3 lounges to choose from This SFO flight has a lot more Business Class seats than the LAX flight, so your chance of scoring an upgrade is higher Cons Expensive - the round trip version of this is going for US$10,000 right now It's United, so there's no partner airlines if you're starting elsewhere in Australia and connecting. Someday that will change via their upcoming Virgin Australia partnership Connecting onward to NYC via SFO means there's a near-zero chance your upgrade will clear on that leg (there were 17 people with 1k AND Million Miler status on my flight!) Also, many of the planes on that route don't have a separate Premium Economy cabin, so I was in the waaay back of the plane for that leg. How I did it Paid $2310 for Premium Economy and used 30

( updated Aug 2024 ) Since the Australian border  reopened, we've had a dozen visits to Sydney and have eaten a lot of tasty things in that time. Overall the food scene felt a lot like San Francisco – great Asian food, lots of emphasis on local and seasonal ingredients, some old holdovers from our Anglo-European colonizers, along with some fresh imports.  You can get yum cha (dim sum) for breakfast, a delicious pork roll  (banh mi) for lunch, have salt and pepper squid ( the national dish of Australia ) with a pint at the pub after work, then hit the birria truck for dinner, have sticky toffee pudding for dessert, go clubbing and then scarf down a halal snack pack as your booze mop before going to bed. And then you'd be as fat as I am :) When I say 'great Asian food', I mean better than New York. Better than San Francisco. Better than Los Angeles. Until I can go on a random Tuesday and get me a salty dou jiang, a hu jiao bing, and a Shanghai-style meat moon cake in Flu