My Travels

So my brief stay last time in San Francisco compelled me back to the Bay area for the weekend. Okay, not really but it sounded nice to say that. I grabbed a last minute fare up to San Francisco Airport on United Airlines and joined my siblings. I came too early for them to properly wake up and check out of the Holiday Inn San Mateo hotel. So I napped a bit before heading up to the city. I can't recall if I've ever stayed at one but it seemed a nice enough location/facility. At least the suite was spacious and comfortable. On a side note, there are several Holiday Inns around SFO so be sure you are looking for the right location before jumping onto the shuttle. Ready for some donut noshing! Rustled up part of the group and left the hotel to downtown San Francisco. On the way to downtown, stopped at Dynamo Donut in Mission. The group tried the maple bacon, coconut, strawberry earl grey, and fleur de sel doughnuts. All the flavors were represented w...

So I haven't been to Sin City in awhile. The strip is now all proprietary hotels, there isn't much of an incentive for me to go being the every loyal hotel chain brand person that I am. The Hilton Las Vegas offered such great rates and was an easy place to stay but the hotel has fallen on hard times and is now the Las Vegas Hotel & Casino . I wonder if the name change will confuse people or not. It seems Hilton's new strategy is timeshare hotels on the strip with the other Hilton branded hotels around the strip. On this trip, I flew out on JetBlue for this quick weekend trip. I haven't flown the airline for some years. I have to admit, I was not that much of a fan even though I know some die hards. I think it was mostly because Long Beach Airport is under such a construction mess that it was difficult to think of it as a real airport. Also, the $19 per day parking didn't sit well with me. At least with other airport locations, there are alternatives to the on...

Summer fares to China have been rough this year. An economy fare this year was the same price as business fare last year. I don't think United Airlines feels that the Chinese market is retracting. In fact, it seems that business is booming. I opted to do a combination buy a one way fare and use miles for the other one way. Ironically, saver awards were plenty on the one way so I booked a first class ticket and used an upgrade certificate on the purchased segment. United First Class Lounge at LAX The last time I flew first class to Shanghai was last summer. Nothing changed much this year except the toiletry bag was a bit more robust after the United/Continental merger. On this particular trip, I was able to check out the First Class lounge in the United terminal at LAX. I've always seen the signs leading up and wondered why there was a need for two lounges in the same terminal. As expected, it was pretty empty in the lounge. The food offerings had more options than the Uni...