International Travel Archives - Page 16 of 19

Lufthansa First Class Terminal – Good for Toddlers?

Jul 11 2014

Bavarian Summer: Lufthansa First Class with a Toddler

I’ve just woken up from sleeping for sixteen hours straight, give or take. You’d think that would indicate that our transatlantic flight with Little M was a disaster, but really it was quite the opposite. I think I’m just exhausted from the time change and life in general – so was M by the way I think she slept for 15 hours last night (and she’s sleeping next to me as I type this so she’s about to catch up).

Air Canada Business Class Regional Flight — Air Canada Regional Flight

Our day started with a short business class regional flight on Air Canada to Toronto. I wasn’t planning on writing about it (flight was smooth, we preoccupied M by feeding her lunch, and the cabin had extra space so she got her own seat for half the flight), but there were two things of note besides that long parenthetical.

Air Canada IFE — On demand IFE for a one hour flight – not bad

First of all, security at Boston Logan for Air Canada amuses me. I mean it’s totally up to regular TSA standards so it’s not unsafe or anything, but Air Canada has three gates and its own little wing, so security is just like one checkpoint. The funny thing was, I was selected for TSA Precheck, but had just assumed that I wasn’t going to get any of the benefits. It turns out at that gate they give you a little slip of paper that says TSA Pre on it and you hand it to the guy on the other side of the metal detector without having to take off your shoes. But I still had to take my laptop out and all that so…thanks?

Secondly, it’s always interesting to me how airlines from different countries deal with lap infants. The one universal rule we’ve encountered thus far is no infants in carriers (bjorns, becos, k’tans, whatever). Other than that, everyone has their own policy. On US Airlines, keep them on your lap facing forward for takeoff and landing. On Air Canada we were told to hold M in a burping position (which they called the brace position) for takeoff/landing/turbulence, and on the European carriers we’ve flown we always get that extra seatbelt attachment (her least favorite).

Air Canada lounge Toronto — Jess and M in the Air Canada lounge, Toronto

Anyhoo. We landed in Toronto and spent some time in the Air Canada lounge in the international wing. There is also an American Express lounge in Toronto but I didn’t get to check it out because I was on daddy duty, which was composed of walking around the terminal pushing M for an hour and half to squeeze out fifteen minutes of naptime. Airports = overstimulation. They at least had the World Cup semifinal game on so I was paying attention to that.

Boarding was smooth and my hopes and dreams were realized – it was a Cheung-only first class cabin. My parents, my wife, my daughter, and me. SWEET! The first class attendant introduced herself (Katherine I think) and gave us the run of the cabin. It was a great relief not to have to worry about disturbing others, though it wouldn’t have been an issue in the end.

Lufthansa first class cabin — The entire cabin was ours!

The great thing about being in first class with a toddler is the SPACE. We spent 45 minutes on the ground but I didn’t even notice because M was running around exploring everything from the ottoman to the buttons to the remote control – and that’s before the flight attendant gave her some toys and coloring books to play with. Jess and I managed to sneak in two glasses of (excellent) champagne in during all the commotion, M didn’t even notice except when she wanted to do “cheers” with us. Oh it was at this point our Dutch captain began informing us of the score in the game – unfortunately 30 minutes into the flight he told us that his Dutch team had lost – poor guy.

Sippin' that Grand Sicele — Sippin’ that Grand Sicele

M wasn’t a huge fan of the aforementioned baby belt and was squirmy during take-off, but that wasn’t a major issue. We then decided to take dinner separately so one person could watch M at a time. I ate first, starting with some caviar (which generally is lost on me), then a trio of appetizers (ginger prawns, pork tenderloin, and salad), and culminating in my beef tenderloin entree. I’ve heard complaints about Lufthansa catering but this was my third first class flight with them and I’ve always enjoyed the food. In the meantime, Jess tried to feed M the food that we had brought with mixed success. She also ate some pretzel bread but turned down most of the airplane food.

Jess and M came to visit me during my meal

Once I was done, I asked the flight attendant to hold off on dessert so Jess and I could eat that together and I took over M duty. The four of us were all on the right side of the cabin (so we shared access to the same aisle), Jess moved over to the left side to eat while I put M to bed. In first class this was so straightforward it almost seemed like a joke.

It was pretty straightforward putting her to sleep on the first class "bed" — It was pretty straightforward putting her to sleep on the first class “bed”

As always in Lufthansa first, the flight attendants make your bed when you ask so I asked them to make Jess’ seat into a bed for M. After that, I just laid down with her for a little while, read a book, hummed some tunes and patted her until she was down. At that point I moved back to my seat and ate dessert with Jess while finishing CAPTAIN AMERICA THE WINTER SOLDIER which is the movie I had been hoping was available on the plane. Yes!

Dessert was excellent, I had a strawberry gazpacho with sorbet, Jess had the cheese plate, and we each got a chocolate cake with ice cream. That’s about all I have to say about that! At that point Jess got her bed made and went to sleep while I finished my movie. I went to sleep with about four hours left in the flight, but M started crying half an hour later.

Dessert. Yum. Um, sorry, I half ate one before I took the picture... — Dessert. Yum. Um, sorry, I half ate one before I took the picture…

She likely would have settled herself like she does at home, but just in case she was disturbing anyone in the cabin behind us, I moved over to her bed and she settled down pretty quickly. She had another little “sleep adjustment” two hours later, but other than that she slept very soundly for about five hours on the flight.

The one negative thing about the flight is that it was incredibly dry, not that Lufthansa really had any control over that. That really exacerbated M’s cough and she was coughing/wheezing in my ear all night. So lying next to her my ability to sleep was greatly impeded and I only caught about an hour of solid rest.

When breakfast service started M woke herself up so the three of us ate together, though I was exhausted at this point. Before we knew it we were on the ground in Munich. M pretty much held it together even though we were walking through the terminal (with her awake) at around 1 AM home time. I needed some rest before picking up the car so we spent half an hour in Munich’s Lufthansa First Class lounge, where we also had our passports processed (a nice perk).

We didn't need to give M her first "present" until an hour before landing — We didn’t need to give M her first “present” until an hour before landing

After a two hour drive to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, we checked into our huge house, grabbed a quick lunch, and then I don’t know what happened because I fell asleep for sixteen hours straight – ten of those next to M. We decided to sleep with her to help her with the jetlag and also to monitor her cough. I thought she was over jetlag because she woke up normal time but since she’s passed out again I’m not so sure. I guess we’ll find out.

Looks like we’re in for five straight days of rain – yikes. Hopefully we find something to do!

Final Thoughts

Our Lufthansa first class flight with M went better than expected. She enjoyed all the space and having such a small cabin really allowed the flight attendants to give us the help we needed. Having a lie flat bed for her to sleep on made a huge difference as well. Best of all, Jess and I even got to enjoy ourselves a little bit. Hopefully M gets over her illness and starts enjoying Germany soon!

P.S. – We ended up ditching the “drag car seat through terminal” contraption and putting the car seat in this $15 carrying bag we got. We threw some extra clothes and supplies into the bag and checked it in. Worked out great!

Other Posts in this Series

Lufthansa First Class Terminal – Good for Toddlers?

Jul 09 2014

Bavarian Summer: Introduction

After spending what felt like an eternity writing my Bora Bora trip report, I’ve decided to go more “running diary” for my trips. We’ll see how it works out. Anyway when this posts hopefully we’ll be over the Atlantic in Lufthansa first for our summer trip to Germany and Austria! Also, today marks a big milestone for the blog – I am upgrading Baby M to Little M – this girl ain’t a baby anymore. Why did she have to learn the word “no” three weeks before we left!?

Little M's "presents" for distractions: ready to go! Thanks, Jess! — Little M’s “presents” for distractions: ready to go! Thanks, Jess!

Now, full disclosure, we would probably be taking a trip this summer without points and miles – it’s just something we as a family believe in and value. Before I got into this madness, we would take trips every summer but it would either a) cost more than we spend now or b) cost the same but be less comfortable. So I just wanted to lay out some of the strategies we used to book this trip and how it saved us some money.

Flights

Most of you know by now, but United completely hacked their award chart when it comes to partner airline premium cabins. When they announced this, I thought I would never get to fly Lufthansa First Class again (Jess and I flew it for two legs when she was pregnant BOS-MUC-PEK). I couldn’t justify shelling out 110,000 miles each way (the current price), and Lufthansa typically only releases first class space 7-10 days out and with a kid we’re just not that flexible anymore (for the record, there seems to be some space available in LH F for the next two weeks from Boston to Frankfurt). So I had given up the dream.

Lufthansa new first class cabin — Jess in Lufthansa first class in 2012

But sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Last fall, Lufthansa for some reason opened up a bunch of first class space on their new Toronto to Munich route – before the United devaluation. This was a brass ring opportunity, I didn’t hesitate. It pays to be decisive in this game. I not only booked Jess and myself in LH F for today’s flight, but my parents as well (with their own miles). Jess and I are returning in LH F on our own since my parents are leaving earlier, but to get LH F roundtrip was a real coup.

So in the end, Jess and I spent 270,000 United miles (mostly from Chase Ultimate Rewards) and about $250. Little M’s infant ticket cost $269.10 due to the best United agent in the world (IMO). So it cost us $500 out of pocket plus the value of the miles. I don’t have time to do any serious math, so I’ll keep it simple – if we take into consideration the fact that I can convert Ultimate Rewards points to cash back for 1 cent per point, one could say that these flights cost us about $3200. Though Airfare Watchdog has been posting some pretty sweet $700 RT Europe deals, all of those have been last minute deals for summer – deals we can’t wait for when making plans. If we weren’t using miles, I would have budgeted about $1300 each for airfare, plus M’s infant ticket which would have been around $130 (10% of adult fare).

The current roundtrip cost of a first class ticket to Germany is around $14,000, but it’s stupid to say I saved $12,000 per person. Here’s a more accurate breakdown of the cost.

Current first class prices for our dates (click to enlarge)

So, our estimated cost for the flights we booked are $3200, we would have spent around $2700 to get to Germany anyway. I think of it at worst as a $500 upgrade from economy to first class. So we didn’t necessarily save money here, but it’s worth it to me. Hopefully it’s worth it to Jess too, she’s the one who likes caviar. Also, as of this writing, the other four seats in our cabin are empty which means it could just be Jess, my parents, M, and me in the cabin. That’d be pretty sweet.

OH! I didn’t even count the cost of the FREE PAJAMAS we get! So yeah – maximum savings!

Check out those free pajamas from 2012, yo. Still wearing them. Not joking.

Hotels

So in the past, I’ve budgeted around 80 Euros a night for lodging. Now that we have M, I’ve kinda upped that to 100-120 Euros/night because a lot of rooms in Europe are double occupancy only and they are sticklers for that.

Here’s where we are staying:

Airbnb in Garmisch-Partenkirchen at 110 Euro/night (per family)

Hilton Munich City at 109 Euro/night

Hilton Vienna Plaza at 40,000 HHonors points/night

Intercontinental Berchtesgaden at 35,000 IHG points/night

Crowne Plaza Salzburg at 30,000 IHG points/night

We'll be checking out Hitler's final hideout while we're in Berchtesgaden — We’ll be checking out Hitler’s final hideout while we’re in Berchtesgaden

I had enough points in my Hilton account to pay for both ours and my parents rooms in Vienna, and enough points to cover our stays in the IHG resorts. I ended up buying IHG points at 0.7 cents each to cover the second room in IHG, which is over my daily budget (180 and 130 Euro/night respectively), but I think of it more as a wash since we had all those IHG points lying around. Again, we haven’t necessarily saved money with our hotel stays, we just are getting more for our dollar (in my opinion).

Intra-Europe Travel and Activities

I rented a car and we also still need to book a train from Vienna to Munich. It’s tough to really save money on stuff like that, though I’ll probably use my Barclaycard Arrival Plus World MasterCard® to get reimbursed for the train tickets. I am planning on cancelling that card soon and I haven’t “zapped” any travel purchases yet so hopefully this will cover most of it.

In terms of activities, there’s no real way to save money using miles and points – we just need to make good decisions. The areas we will be in feature lots of hikes and scenery gazing which is generally cheaper anyway. Although Sound of Music tours probably aren’t cheap – I’m pretty sure we’re gonna have to hit at least one of those.

Final Thoughts

The day will come, possibly quite soon, when we’ll likely only be able to afford economy tickets on points and miles, and that’s okay. Points and miles are just tools by which we can offset the costs of travel we would be doing anyway. Still, while Little M can still go as a lap infant, it’s nice to use them to make life a little more comfortable – which is how we’re using them on this trip. Did we save a ton of money? No – there’s always an opportunity cost (we could have flown to Europe twice in economy with the number of miles we used). But this is how I’ve chosen to use our miles, and I’m looking forward to this adventure. Hope you enjoy my ramblings for the next few weeks!

Other Posts in this Series

Lufthansa First Class Terminal – Good for Toddlers?

Jul 07 2014

Bavarian Summer: Final Preparations for the Little One

As I’m typing this, I currently have seven child travel related tabs open in Google Chrome. Baby M has turned the corner on her illness giving me the confidence that she’ll be ready to leave later this week – so now it’s time to plan. We’ve got a one hour domestic leg, two hour layover, and then a seven hour transatlantic segment to get ready for. Let’s do this.

Conveniently, awty just wrote up a nice little packing guide (so make that eight tabs, ask my wife if you think I’m exaggerating). I wish I was that organized, but I’m not. Instead, I just wanted to share some of my thought process about packing and getting ready for Little M to make her second trip to Europe. I’ve been running through different ideas in my mind so I think putting them down in writing will help me sort them out – plus I’d love to hear people’s opinions (no flaming!).

Contents of Little M’s Carry On Bag of Distractions

Yes, we will be bringing a diaper bag with diapers, wipes, two changes of clothes, and a changing pad. But that’s not the stressful part – the stressful part is what to put in THE bag. AKA, what are we going to bring to distract her and prevent a meltdown. As a little aside, our travel habits unfortunately don’t give us enough practice to come up with any tried and true methods (not that there is even such a thing). Our trip to Italy was super smooth, but we haven’t been on a flight for more than two hours since. No matter how she does on this flight – she’s going to be totally different by the time we’d be able to apply any of the lessons learned from this one. Such is life. So not only do I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I never even get to apply lessons learned. Hopefully my thought process is helpful to some of you, but I’ll never claim to be a Mommy Points or Trips with Tykes or Have Baby Will Travel or if I continue to list my open tabs this will never end. But hey, at least I’m a dad operating in this space. Oh wait.

Our preliminary staging area. Note: Irish Spring not for baby :P — Our preliminary staging area. Note: Irish Spring not for baby 😛

Anyway, here’s what we’re thinking of bringing to distract M:

Comestibles: String cheese, crackers, Cheerios, milk, water

Toys: Legos, stacking cups, wrapping paper

Other Distractions: Drawing (scribbling) supplies, airplane amenity kits, stickers, books, pictures of family (printed)

911: Tablet, Lufthansa in-flight entertainment

Writing down that list, I’m not even sure it’s enough! But we still have a few days. Anyway, we just “practiced” unwrapping things with Little M to try the “give presents for good behavior on planes” trick. I don’t think she gets it, whenever she unwraps something she just gives it back to us to wrap again… She’s a big fan of legos (duplos) although that generally consists of building the longest row of blocks she can make; I sense lost legos in our near future. She is pretty good at getting distracted for long periods of time – the key is having the right distractions; like, she can take a spoon and pretend to move liquids from one cup to another for like ten minutes straight. Mental note: bring some spoons.

I'm not even sure we put a present in there... — I’m not even sure we put a present in there…

Anyway, she hasn’t really watched TV before so I’m not even sure how she will react if we show her some stuff. She sees me on my computer headset all the time so whenever she puts headphones on she starts talking…don’t think she totally gets the concept yet. But at the very least I think she will enjoy looking at pictures on the tablet and on our phones.

What to do about food?

Our first departure is at 1:05 PM for a short flight. This could be great or it could be a disaster. Our current plan is to bring lunch for M to the airport, feed her there, and hope she naps on the flight (it falls right into her daily naptime). Of course, if she’s still a bit under the weather, all bets are off. Our next flight takes off right around dinnertime, so I’m thinking of bringing a second meal just in case she rejects everything on the plane. Honestly, she is not a picky eater at all – except when sick. So best to have a back up plan I think.

Dr Brown's 8 oz bottles — Thought we were long done with these, but they do the trick for milk storage

Milkwise, according to my rudimentary knowledge of calculus, we need to bring approximately 10 gallons of milk for the 12 hours of travel. OK, I’m probably going to round that down to like 24 ounces. Three weeks ago it would have been 16 but she has been on a milk binge lately. Aside from that, I think we’ll just need to bring a bunch of crackers as snacks, maybe animal crackers if we are at Defcon 2. I think we should be fine because there should be a near limitless supply of bread in our cabin. Like any good toddler, M loves her some bread!

What about the stupid carseat?

Ack. Largest source of stress BAR NONE. Life was so easy when we had a carseat + caddy. Take it into the terminal, gate check both, continue your regularly scheduled programming. Now we have a separate carseat and stroller, and I can’t decide what to do!

If only she was a little bit shorter... — If only she was a little bit shorter…

Admittedly, I’ve gone a little loco about this entire situation. First, I bought one of these bad boys. I was like, hey, we’ll just check the stroller in, or maybe bring both and try to gate check both, and wheel M through the terminal with this like COOL PEOPLE.

Now I’m waffling – if I could guarantee that we could gate check both I’d do that, but there are no guarantees since that technically violates the rules. We are bringing our super cheap umbrella stroller though, so I think if necessary I’m more comfortable checking that in with regular luggage (in a garbage bag maybe?). Throw some diapers in that bad boy too. (A week from now I will write a post titled “My garbage bag ripped and we are now diaperless.”) But yeah, I’m still leaning towards dragging it through the airport on that thing. I can throw M in our Beco if she doesn’t want to ride shotgun.

Final Thoughts

Thanks for listening to my ramblings. The reality is, I know everything will be fine, and, oh yeah, my parents are coming so I’m not complaining. Still, this is why we never get to plan our trips anymore – prepping to bring Little M takes up way too much processing power! Better get to packing…

Other Posts in this Series