I’m making an effort to write as many trip reports as possible. In the past few months I’ve written reviews of trips to Oman, Hawaii, Europe, and the Maldives. Now it’s time for the introduction post for my next trip, which is currently underway. Ford and I are are spending all of June in Europe. While the trip isn’t terribly cohesive, I have lots of (I hope) interesting hotel and flight reviews coming.
Why we decided to travel to Europe
We tend to spend quite a bit of time in Europe in summer, for a variety of reasons. For one, when you live in Florida, it’s kind of nice to leave as the temperatures get warmer. Furthermore, most of my family lives in Germany, so I always enjoy seeing them when I have the chance.
We’re spending most of the month of June in France, Germany, Greece, and Sweden, for a variety of reasons, which I’ll get into as we get deeper into the review.
While we probably wouldn’t have otherwise planned to spend the entire month in Europe, we had a few commitments in Europe throughout the month, and flying back and forth just didn’t make much sense, especially with the current state of travel, not to mention the lack of transatlantic award availability.
One of the primary motivations for this trip is that Sylt, Germany, is one of my mom’s favorite places in the world. She has always asked us to go with her, and since she’s still alive and hanging in there (which we’re indescribably grateful for), we of course were happy to go along with that. We’re so happy we did, because Sylt is amazing… who knew?!
The airlines we’re flying
This series will be more hotel than airline focused, so what flight reviews can you expect?
- I’ll review Emirates’ A380 first class between New York and Milan; as I’ve already explained, we took this flight because our friend Toby was the purser, and he’s retiring from Emirates soon, so we were thrilled to have one more chance to fly with him
- I don’t yet know how we’re returning to the United States, so we’ll see what I can come up with there
- I’ll have several intra-Europe flight and lounge reviews, ranging from SWISS’ A320 business class, to Lufthansa’s E190 business class, to Condor’s A321 business class, to the Library Lounge Nice, to the SWISS Alpine Lounge Zurich, to the Sylt Lounge Westerland (which might just be the most interesting of the bunch)
The hotels we’re staying at
Given how long we’re on the ground in Europe, I’ll be publishing quite a few hotel reviews, including the following:
- Hotel Martinez Cannes, which is a Hyatt Unbound Collection property
- Airelles Saint-Tropez, Château de la Messardière; many will remember our amazing stay at Airelles Courchevel earlier this year, so we were curious if the Saint-Tropez property could live up to that standard (that’s going to be an interesting review)
- Hyatt Regency Zurich Airport The Circle, which is easily one of the best airport hotels I’ve ever stayed at
- The Wellem Dusseldorf, which is a Hyatt Unbound Collection property
- King George Athens, which is a Marriott Luxury Collection property
- Hotel Grande Bretagne Athens, which is a Marriott Luxury Collection property
In addition to hotels, in Sylt we rented an Airbnb, which was one of my first times ever renting an Airbnb, believe it or not, so I’ll be sharing my thoughts on that experience.
There will be some more hotel reviews mixed in (like I said, this trip isn’t fully planned yet, and we’re partly just going with the flow), but that should give you an overview of some of the reviews to expect. As you can see, there are a good number of points hotels, and also one uber-luxury non-points hotel from a brand that I really like.
Bottom line
We’re in Europe for the month of June, and are having an amazing trip so far. While not all aspects of the end of the trip have been finalized yet, it’s time to get started with the trip report series, because I have a lot of content to publish. Thanks for following along, and I hope there’s something for everyone here!
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