point fu

Just enough time for a full dinner and a couple rounds of mahjong and you're there PROS vast, if a bit crowded, lounge with a full dining setup turn-left boarding wi-fi personal air vents take-what-you-need amenity basket cuts down on waste small cabin feels quiet and private Toto Washlet toilets onboard!  Hakushu whisky! CONS departs when the airport is at its busiest (6pm) no pre-departure beverages HOW I DID IT 14,500 Amex points + $57 for a flight that was retailing for $1900 – not too shabby!   Airport and Lounge We took the Keisei Skyliner to Narita (when we arrived in Japan we'd purchased the round-trip + 24-hour Tokyo Metro pass ticket package I talked about in this post ). The schlep to Ueno from Ebisu on the Yamanote line was a little irritating with all of our bags, but it wasn't rush hour so it wasn't too bad. And it was definitely better than paying US$250 for a taxi. For international flights I find it tedious to do online...

Since our extended-remix trip there last year , we've been yearning to go back to Japan . It's tough accruing much paid time off (PTO) given that we literally went into a PTO-hole to make last year's trip happen. First we thought we'd chain together the "free" Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years work holidays with PTO and a bit of remote working to pull off another 3 month visit. But it's been a rough year for us and we ultimately decided we didn't want to spend all of the winter holidays away from our friends and family. So we're shooting for a 3 week trip in October instead . The dream, of course, would be to repeat our ANA First experience but using the Virgin Atlantic "trick" to do it for way fewer miles. Unfortunately the big travel bloggers have been flogging this option for the past few months and availability is basically zero now . 😠 What we ended up doing Used the "Combine Points" option on Chase.com to mo...

(UPDATE May 2024) We had a long layover in Taipei on our first trip and we got to try a whirlwind 72 hours of recommendations from friends who'd been before. We loved that visit so much we actually went back again in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2023, and 2024! Here's a few of our Taipei tips: First off, the airport is quite far from the city and traffic can be horrendous. The subway to the airport opened in Spring 2017 and you can get a deal online for airport rail fare + 48 or 72 hour Taipei Metro pass. We've also taken the bullet train into the city just for fun. Download and  watch  Anthony Bourdain's video  about Taipei on the flight there (ca 2013). He's always good for a laugh and a tip or two.  Subways and bullet trains are cheap . If you're going to be there for more than a couple days, get an Easy Card from the staffed window at the subway station. You can also use it to pay at most convenience stores. If you're not, single-...