Sorry for the long absence - almost a month. Well, Nadia and me have been traveling - and when we are underway we don't have time to update blogs or anything else for that matter. Our 2 weeks in Spain/Portugal and Poland/Austria were very relaxing, albeit our travel arrangements didn't work out in many instances.
The vacation was great - the flying was not. Delays, missed flights, technical problems...etc....
Resulted in a lot of sweaty running down airport terminals and begging at ticket counters. Both things we don't want to ever repeat.
On the upside - we had a great time in Spain and got to see lots of Lisbon in our short 10hour time period on the ground there. Our feet still hurt from all the marathon walking we did.
Food in Spain was the highlight (hmmmm helateria, tapas, churros y chocolate, jamon iberico, yummy!) so were the sights (Cordoba, sevilla, Cadiz, Gibraltar and of course Madrid)
We should have kept our itineary simpler and should have just focused on Spain but alas, hindsight is 20/20.
All this mayhem and slight discomfort is lifted this week by the nice haul of miles I made in my absence. You might remember the 50000 miles for first use United VISA credit card deal....I was very worried I wouldn't qualify since I currently own another United credit card and most likely had this one before but, tada....50000 miles posted while we were away...puts me at 125K United Mileage Plus miles. NICE
In addition, my full attack on Continental miles, opning 2 checking accounts (25000 miles each bonus) and a continental credit card (25000 miles) has provided me with 75K of Continental miles. Now I just have to wait and sit on all of that and wait until the two systems get integrated and I will have a cool 200K United Mileage account balance...almost enough to go to Europe twice for both of us.
In other news I am working hard to increase our Virgin America balance since we will need points for flights this fall. I am buying large amounts of coins from the US Mint. Don't let anyone tell you it's over...it still works just fine.
As far as I can tell there aren't many deals currently on the books but I will make a comprehensive update ni a few days, pooling any deals I might have missed while away.
Just one take-home message from the recent trip - when you missed your flight or there are delays which make you miss a connecting flight - go to the ticket counter and REMAIN CALM. We only got a ticket for the next day because the ticket agent rewarded me for being so calm and collected. If you scream, call people names, pace up and down and in general make their life hard - they will make your life hard.
Happy travels! :)
