At the time we started pushing the idea around she had just started a new job and I was in the middle of grad school, so finances were not exactly on our side. But, JD came to the rescue and introduced me to the points and miles game...and put the idea of a mostly free trip to London in my mind! Not only that....but I wanted to go big on this trip.
So after tooling around for a bit and looking at the options I started to formulate a plan for a 7 day/6 night trip to London and a brief stopover in Amsterdam.
I wanted to fly on United to London and then out of Amsterdam to avoid the huge surcharges out of Heathrow, while also getting to visit Amsterdam for a couple of days. I knew that if we wanted to go in Business Class we had to have at least 100,000 miles each at the "Saver" level.
I had recently applied for, and been approved for, the United Mileage Plus Visa as well as the Chase Sapphire Preferred card (Side note: my absolute favorite card) and would have 50,000 United miles and 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points after completing my required spends.
But the GF only had the Chase Sapphire Preferred card and would only have 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points along with 30,000 United miles already in her account.
At this point....I was stuck....
My plan then moved to trying to go for Business Class on the outbound and Economy on the return and then worry about paying for hotels out of pocket. But for some reason I just could not wrap my head around this idea...I knew that there was a way to get this done. So, I turned to one of the new blogs that I had been reading for a bit and asked for advice. I turned to the awesome Travel By Points (if you are not reading his site...you need to be!) to ask what he would do in my situation, and he turned it into a blog post with his ideas and asked others for ideas as well.
After thinking it over for a bit the GF and I settled on this plan of action:
She has a great credit score and needed to boost her United miles so she applied for, and received, the United Mileage Plus Visa to get a total of 50,000 more United miles.
For hotels we were able to take advantage of the awesome Club Carlson promotion that netted 50,000 and 40,000 respectively for two mattress runs to close hotels to DC. The 90,000 points plus the bonuses from the actual stays put us over 100,000 points each which was good enough for two nights at 5-star Club Carlson properties in both London and Amsterdam. For the remaining two nights we were able to pay a cheap rate at the Hilton London Bridge for one night and will be taking a night ferry from England to the Netherlands which comes to about 48 pounds per person with a sleeping berth.
Everything was going brilliantly until we went to book the actual tickets. We were booking our tickets together and I think the GF grabbed the last seat at the "Saver" level for our return trip and, instead of being put on the same flights as Kelsey, I was put on the same flight from Amsterdam to Chicago but a different flight from Chicago to DC. Worst of all, I was stuck in Economy from Chicago to DC while paying for Business Class.
I called United to see if there was any way to move me to the other flight, or see if they could find another flight in Business Class for me. The agent insisted that she could not help me and I asked to speak to a supervisor to just see one last time if something could be done. The supervisor sang the same tune and so I just decided not to worry about it and go on.
Down the road a bit I noticed that I could fly Lufthansa from Amsterdam to Frankfurt and then Frankfurt back to Washington Dulles (at the time I hoped on the 747-800), so I called United and managed to change our tickets without a problem. Even though it turned out that the plane flying the Frankfurt to Dulles route is the 747-400, I am beyond excited to sit in the nose of the 747 in Business on Lufthansa.
In the end, this is how it all is shaping up:
Airfare:
United: Dulles to London
Lufthansa: Amsterdam to Frankfurt
Frankfurt to Dulles (Still hoping for that equipment change to the 747-8)
Total Cost: 100,00 United Miles, 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points and $89.55 in taxes/fees
Hotels:
2 Nights at the Radisson Blu Edwardian Mercer Street Hotel
2 Nights at the Radisson Blu Hotel Amsterdam
Total Cost: 100,000 Club Carlson Points
1 Night at the Hilton London Bridge
Cost: $200
1 Overnight Ferry Ride with Sleeping Berth
Cost: $140
In the end the total out of pocket cost for our trip for flights and hotels will only be $429.55
I can't wait to go on this trip!!! It can't come soon enough.
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