A Reason for New Zealand

For once--something revolutionary in air travel, that is thoughtful of all of us that fly in coach. (If I read one more article about all the new and exciting things that different international airlines offer in first--from birthday cakes being baked to in-room showers...)
Air New Zealand has created a new seating set-up, which some are calling "cuddle class", on their long-haul flights between LA and Auckland, and London and Auckland, on their 777-300 planes, where the seats become a flat bed. The way this happens is you lose your foot rest area, which folds out to create more sideways sleeping space. We always wanted to go to New Zealand, but now it's on the really short list. Now I just have to find how to use miles to book a flight...I looked at prices for spring break and they were around $1600 per person from LA to Auckland, and around Christmas they jump up to around $2000. 

New Airplane Accessory

I just spotted these at our local food coop the other day. Turns out they have chocolate/peanut butter, chocolate/hazelnut, and a couple of other sweet options. Genius for traveling. 

Charged Batteries Make Life Better

When we flew to Zurich on this last trip, my husband begged me to fly Delta, since he has status with them, and needs all the miles he can get to keep that status. Personally, I never want to fly a US carrier to Europe. I just think that the European carriers are consistently better, especially when you're flying in the back (which is me, most of the time). But this time, I gave in, and rather than flying Swiss, we flew Delta. On the way over, the flight was great--new plane, good entertainment system. But on the way back...it was awful. I sat down, and pointed out to Matt that the seatback had no TV, and mind you this was a 9 hour and 5 minute flight. Thank god I had charged Clara's DVD player, which bought us a solid 5 hours of entertainment. And luckily I had a full bottle of Bach Rescue Remedy, which helped me calm down (even though Matt swears it's just a placebo). The moral of the story is: always bring a DVD player--don't assume the airline will have a functioning in-flight entertainment system, and make sure that DVD player has a full charge. Oh, and fly Swiss if you can.

Time Travel

I'm really not a history buff, although I definitely wish I knew more than I do. My husband heard about this WW II weekend, near Reading, PA, and thought we should all make the trip. It was so amazing, I think any parent in the Northeast should consider going next year. It happens the first weekend in June, and it's a trip that your kids will love you for, and you'll probably really enjoy too. Air show with old military planes, reenactments, walking around the reenactment camps and seeing all the old military jeeps and motorcycles, seeing all these people in period dress, and getting your own dog tag to bring home...it doesn't get much better than that. Plus, if your kid gets a blister, like our friend Sam did, you can just haul them into the Pre-Op tent, and get a free bandage (and cool story). If you wanted to make a weekend out of it, you could also visit Lancaster (see my pos t about that town), or also swing down to Gettysburg (I'll do a post about that later this week), or just stop at the Crayola Factory in Easton (which you drive right through if you're coming from NYC), or spend some time in Bucks County. Oh then there's also the whole Brandywine area (which I'm also writing about this week), and Philadelphia is also in proximity.

JFK Terminal 4 and Virgin Atlantic

We flew out on Wednesday night, and got to the airport extra early, since we figured we should eat dinner at the lounge, since we certainly paid for it (with miles!)... I haven't been to Terminal 4 in so long, and was happy to see that now there's a Peet's Coffee (for morning travels), a Seafood Bar, a Palm Steakhouse, and a number of other places to eat. Our dinner at the Virgin Lounge (see my post as to why we found ourselves there in the first place) was so delicious. We had tilapia (and we aren't even tilapia fans) with salad and green beans, and plenty of champagne. Clara declared her pineapple juice to be fantastic, and she had pannacotta for dessert. Because we were in Upper Class, we got to go through the fast security line, both in JFK, and going through customs in Heathrow. The flight was seamless: we slept most of it, and because of the late departure hour (10:30pm), by the time we landed, it was around 5am our time, so it wasn't so hard to adjust when we got to London. I think a late flight for an international flight is key for families. If you get on a 5:30pm flight, that's only a 6 hour flight, it's more likely that your kid might fall asleep just as they turn the lights on for breakfast service (which I can never understand why they need to do that a full hour and a half before landing). However, I have friends who live in London but have family in New York, and they are strong believers in the morning flight. They take an 8am, which means they are up at 5am to get to the airport, and then they land at 8pm, so they just don't sleep on the plane, and land tired and ready to go to bed.

No, we didn't actually take a shower--this is one of two in the Virgin Lounge.

Cowshed products in the bathrooms in lounge and on the plane

Music listening stations in the lounge

Yep, there it is...the flat bed on the plane. And guess what? Clara said she really didn't like the bed, and prefers the more cozy seats in the back. I swear. Which is a good thing, because it might be five years til we save up enough miles to upgrade again...

Sitting in the Big Seats

We are just three in our family, so the concept of using miles for tickets, and occasionally getting upgraded seats, isn't completely an impossible fantasy. For domestic travel. For international travel, we wouldn't even try. But we were wrong, it can be done. Here's what happened: We're heading to London this week for our friend's 40th birthday and Clara's 7th birthday, and when I started looking into flights about a month ago, everything was around $600 plus for coach seats. Matt is a Delta guy, and wanted to get miles by flying them, but I really don't like flying internationally in coach on American carriers, because I just don't think the service is as good. For a trip to London, coach on Virgin Atlantic, British Airways--so much better. I looked into my credit card's "thank you points" to see how much I could redeem a ticket for, and it was something like 90,000 miles in coach for one seat. Ridiculous. Then I looked at this cool site called Webflyer, and learned that Virgin Atlantic is affiliated with Amex, who we have plenty of miles with. Next step I called Virgin Atlantic, and spoke to a very nice woman, who informed me that I could fly in coach for 45,000 miles, or in Upper Class (I'll talk about that next Monday when I can show you pictures of the experience) for 90,000 miles. And there were three seats available, for the dates we wanted. I was stunned.  This never, ever happens. All I had to do was join the Virgin Red mileage program, then call up Amex, tell them to dump 270,000 miles (I know that sounds like a ton, but we had so many miles and were just so happy to be able to use them for tickets that would cost normally over $5000 a piece) into our new Virgin Atlantic program, and we did have to pay the taxes on the flights, which worked out to be around $500 a piece. This all happened within 20 minutes, I kid you not. 

For more inspiring upgrade true stories and tips, check out this Wendy Perrin piece which was recently in Conde Nast Traveler. I really had given up on using miles for any kind of international travel, and now I see I was just going about it the wrong way. 

Travel Moment

I have two new friends in my neighborhood, and they like to read my blog. Somehow we started talking about flying with children war stories, and I told them about my big on-board disasters. After I gave them the traumatic highlights, they told me I really need to write about this on TWC, because it was refreshing to them to hear that we've also had our fair share of bad luck.

I'd say the top two, which really changed my travel habits, were a flight to SF from NY, when Clara was 18 months old, and a flight from NY to Zurich when she was around two. Both were major accidents that happened before the plane even took off, and involved fluids from both ends, all over her, and all over me. And on both flights, I didn't have a change of clothes for myself.  So here is the lesson dear reader, especially if you have a child under the age of four.  Do pack in that diaper bag, or whatever it is you are carrying on, some kind of thin dark shirt, and thin dark legging, for yourself (of course you need to pack a separate set for them).  I say thin because you don't want to be carrying around anything that takes up too much space.  Another thing I like to bring on board is a travel size bottle of fabric wash. Eucalan is my favorite.